Rail Services

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend the rail Minister visited that station and that very café. As the hon. Lady knows, we are keen to make sure that we fix the roof while the sun is shining. I will talk to the rail Minister and see if we can make progress to ensure that the station is in an appropriate state for her and her constituents.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

My constituents in Yorkshire are brassed off with the fact that public transport is so badly damaged that it is not unavailable. There are 20,000-odd people in my area with no access to a private car, but only 3,000 use public transport. That is because the Government have an ideological drive to privatisation, even though every time those private companies get into trouble the state comes in to support them. It is also because the Government have a pathological hatred of the trade unions. Is it not time that the Government stood aside and made way for a different, better system that serves the public rather than the interests of a particular ideological group in the Tory party?

[Mr Harper]

That question is so far removed from reality I do not know where to start. On the first point, the response to what has happened is that the contract has not been extended. The service has been taken into the operator of last resort because I think it is necessary to reset those relationships.

The hon. Gentleman’s second point about trade unions is fundamentally wrong. When I took this job I decided that it was important to change the tone of the debate. I met all the rail union leaders. I have a perfectly constructive relationship with them. I facilitated fair and reasonable pay offers, which settled the dispute on Network Rail and which was overwhelmingly accepted by members of the RMT. There are fair and reasonable offers on the table for RMT workers working for the train operating companies and the train drivers. All I hope is that those offers get put to the members of the trade unions—those whom the general secretaries are supposed to work for—to allow them to make a decision on what I believe are fair and reasonable pay offers.

High Speed 2: Yorkshire

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I am grateful, even at this late—or should I say early—hour, to discuss the very important decisions to be made about HS2 and its route through Yorkshire, and particularly South Yorkshire. What this debate loses by the hour at which it occurs, it gains from the quality of the Members who are present.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

On this side.

[Edward Miliband]

On both sides of the House.

I am grateful to all my right hon. and hon. Friends who have supported the debate, and particularly to my right hon. Friends the Members for Rother Valley (Sir Kevin Barron), for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton), my hon. Friends the Members for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) and for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), and indeed all my hon. Friends.

I want to make it clear right at the outset that I have always supported the principle of HS2, and I still do. But the whole reason for it must be to seek to do something about the deep inequalities our country faces, and my colleagues and I fear that that will not be the outcome of the decisions currently being advocated. We have called this debate because HS2, having supported the Sheffield Meadowhall route year after year, has changed its mind and is now recommending what is called the M18 route through my constituency, with a spur to Sheffield Midland. In my remarks, I want to take on the issue of whether that makes sense. I do not believe it does make sense in terms of maximising the economic benefits of HS2 or tackling the deep inequalities in our country, connectivity and value for money. I hope the Minister, and indeed the Secretary of State, will be as fair minded as we have been in listening to the arguments that have been made.

There are five arguments that HS2 is making. The first is around what it calls the conflicting demands of the region. In considering this issue, it is worth remembering why Meadowhall was originally chosen—it was because of its excellent connections to the rest of the region, with a journey time to London of 68 minutes and five trains an hour. This is what Sir David Higgins himself said in October 2014 about the alternative option, which he now recommends. HS2 examined

“a spur terminating at Sheffield Midland station. While this provided limited benefits for the city centre market, it did not provide the connections and journey times necessary to serve the wider Sheffield city region effectively, particularly Rotherham and Barnsley.”

I could not have put it better myself. He went on to say that this approach would not deliver

“an equitable approach across the North or meet the vision of a truly high speed network for the country.”

So HS2 is currently recommending an approach it describes as worse for equity, connectivity, capacity and journey times.

Given all that, Members might think that the M18 option was better for Sheffield city centre. My colleagues from Sheffield will obviously take their own view on that, but I contend that that is not the case. Why do I say that? The so-called city centre option that is now being recommended actually means slower journey times from London to Sheffield city centre than the previous Meadowhall option. The House should not take my word for it; it should listen to HS2’s own figures.

According to HS2, the old Meadowhall route meant a journey time into Sheffield Midland from London of 79 minutes, even with a change of trains. The time on the new route is somewhere between 85 and 87 minutes, and could actually be longer. Not only that, but there would have been five trains an hour—now there will be a maximum of two. The trains will be half the length of HS2 trains, and they will not be on the HS2 track; they will be on what HS2 euphemistically calls “classic” track—I think that means the old track, which is subject to all the delays and problems that exist. I believe that Sheffield and South Yorkshire are being sold a pup on this route. That is true whether we look at the economic benefit or the passenger numbers; on all the issues that matter, the benefits of Sheffield Meadowhall are much greater than those of the Midland option.

The second argument HS2 makes is around city centre connectivity—the need to go from Leeds city centre to Sheffield city centre, for example. When I have asked HS2 about this, it has said, “Well, Transport for the North”—hon. Members will know about that organisation—“has really changed our thinking on this.” So last week I rang up the head of Transport for the North, David Brown, who was bemused, to say the least, to hear that he had driven this change. He told me that he certainly had not expressed a view about which option was better. He actually said that it was disingenuous to claim that he had driven this change. That is not surprising, because the old Meadowhall route meant a journey time from Leeds city centre into Sheffield city centre of 27 minutes, which is under the half an hour that is the ambition that Transport for the North has for this city centre connectivity.

There is an even more serious problem with the Sheffield Midland option that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) has exposed with persistent questioning—whether there is the engineering capacity at Sheffield Midland to meet the ambitions of Transport for the North for up to 20 trains an hour. There are real doubts about this. I would like the Minister to tell us—because I have asked HS2 and it has not given a straight answer—what the engineering constraints are at Sheffield Midland. Currently two trains an hour are being proposed, and there is the potential for two more if other links are built.

The third argument that HS2 makes is about demand. This basically says that there is not the demand in South Yorkshire that justifies the five trains an hour that would have run to Meadowhall, so instead there will be up to two trains an hour, which could of course be one or two—and we have to remember that they are half the size of the old HS2 trains. I think that this is the same as the defeatism that the proponents of HS2 often accuse its critics of. In other words, it is saying, “This kind of economic intervention isn’t going to make a big difference so we are talking about one fifth of the capacity of the original Meadowhall proposal.” That is defeatist and wrong. It is downgrading South Yorkshire, and that is the wrong thing to do.