Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Jones]

I understand that my hon. Friend is aware that it is for the two local transport authorities of Lancashire and Cumbria County Councils, in consultation with their respective LEPs, to assess whether to take forward the development of that ambitious scheme, which would include any feasibility study. I understand that he has had meetings with both authorities and urge him to continue those discussions and keep me informed of progress.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

T4. Some 85% of internal and cross-channel freight goes by lorry. A substantial modal shift of freight from road to rail cannot happen unless and until full-size lorry trailers can be carried on trains, which is impossible on the existing network. When will the Government look seriously at investing in new large gauge rail capacity to accommodate lorry trailers on trains and linking the regions and nations of Britain both to each other and to the channel tunnel?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for his long-term promotion of this large rail project, the G8 freight project. He will know that I was delighted to renew the modal shift grant. We are very focused on getting freight off the roads and on to trains. One freight train saves 72 HGV journeys. I am happy to meet him on this. I understand that the proposal has been looked at several times and was declined about 10 years ago. If he has new information, I would be delighted to see it.

High Speed 2

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Gillan]

I am proud of my colleagues who are in government—and should remain in government—who have spoken up and pointed out the failings of this project from within Government, as I did when I was part of the Government. I have had the good fortune of being liberated on the Back Benches, and am able to speak out freely in public. That is not always possible. However, I always observed Cabinet collective responsibility and only spoke on platforms in my constituency. I wish the same could be said of the Liberal Democrats, who seem to have cast Cabinet collective responsibility, and that sort of responsibility for being in government, to the wind. The politics of convenience are not my politics, so I am proud of the part that my colleagues have played. They have been stalwart compatriots in a very difficult subject area for all of us. None of us here is really naturally a rebel, and this is a difficult issue to grasp, as I hope people will appreciate.

By default, HS2 has been part of that long-term economic plan. As the doubts have been growing about it, I think we need to ask ourselves whether this is the best way forward for the honestly held ambitions of Conservatives for this country—or indeed, of any other party. There is only a small chance that the incoming Government will totally abandon the plans, and if they do, it may now only be because they are being held to ransom by a smaller party. Alex Salmond declared that one of his demands as the price for propping up a Labour Government would be to start the high-speed rail link from Scotland to England, before connecting Birmingham to London.

I like and admire many of my Labour colleagues. No prisoners are ever taken by them, and I am second to none in my admiration for the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), who has trodden this path with me over five years, but surely even the Labour party, should it be successful, would not want that sort of political blackmail as the hallmark of its term in government.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Gillan]

I will, but my next sentence is that I do not want a Labour, or Labour-led, Government.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I just say that if the Scottish National party is so keen, perhaps the Scottish Parliament could pay for it.

[Mrs Gillan]

There is a lot of support for that on this side of the House. I do not want a Labour-led Government, and certainly not one that will be blackmailed by a smaller party. I want an incoming Conservative Government with a healthy majority to rethink, refine and re-engineer this project before we are locked into the most expensive Procrustean bed in history.

I turn to some of the detail and the increasing problems. On the current plans for HS2 phase 1, there is still no confirmed connection to central London. The Euston proposals have gone back to the drawing board and Old Oak Common just might be the final terminus. That will connect with nowhere meaningful for many years.

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[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and to follow the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan). I have spoken on HS2 on previous occasions in the House and I remain of the view—in fact, it has got stronger—that is wholly unnecessary and ridiculously expensive. The figure of £50 billion is talked about quite a bit, but Hansard on 5 March shows that my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) drew attention to evidence presented to the HS2 Committee that

“hidden costs will raise the overall cost of the HS2…to £138 billion”. —[Official Report, 5 March 2015; Vol. 593, c. 1062.]

That is a massively higher figure. My contacts in the industry suggest that that figure is perfectly justifiable and some say that the real figure would be even more.

Even if things are expensive, I would still support them if they are the right thing to do, but this project is not. I made a written submission to the House of Lords Committee to set out my views in more detail, which is available on the internet. I have spoken on them before, but let us get the first nonsense of HS2 out of the way first of all: that must be Euston. It is the wrong station in the wrong place. The last place that a business traveller from Birmingham or whatever who wants to get to the City or Canary Wharf wants to arrive is Euston. They would want to get to somewhere linked on to Crossrail to get through to those places, and not have to struggle with their laptop and wheelie case from Euston on to the tube and then the docklands light railway to get to Canary Wharf. That is a nonsense.

[Michael Fabricant]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Is he also aware that a business traveller from the Birmingham area first has to get to Birmingham New Street and then, with all their baggage, has to walk across Birmingham to get to Curzon Street station, only to end up at the wrong station—Euston? As I said earlier on, any hope of getting directly to France has now evaporated.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am not yet a Privy Counsellor and I do not suppose that I ever will be, but the hon. Gentleman’s point about Curzon Street was absolutely right; I was coming to it myself. In my submission to the House of Lords Committee, which was titled, “Sensible alternatives to HS2”, I gave three specific alternatives that would cost a fraction of that amount but solve all the problems that HS2 might supposedly solve.

First, I suggested the electrification of the Birmingham Snow Hill line, via Banbury, to London. It currently goes to Marylebone or Paddington, but it could easily be linked—the tracks are already there, so all it needs is a bit of track work—to Crossrail going in both directions. If we had an electric train from Snow Hill in the middle of the Birmingham business district that went direct to Canary Wharf at 125 mph, someone could work on a laptop without changing trains and I bet that train would beat HS2 if otherwise that person had to get to Curzon Street and then get two tube trains at the London end. HS2 is a complete and total nonsense, but that suggestion would provide wonderful extra capacity.

That would also allow travel direct to Heathrow from the centre of Birmingham and it could be linked through from Leamington Spa on to the west coast main line, so we could have Birmingham airport linked to Heathrow airport with a direct, 125 mph, one-hour service. They could almost be hubs or satellites for each other. There could be trains from further north—from Manchester—coming down the west coast main line, joining the Banbury line and going directly from the centre of Manchester to Heathrow or Canary Wharf. It is possible for a tiny fraction of the cost of HS2.

[Frank Dobson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is the benefits that the alternatives to HS2 would bring to other parts of the country that probably explain why there is a majority against HS2 in every region of this country, according to the opinion polls, even in the north-west, where people are most enthusiastic about it? Even there, the divide is 43% to 39%.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My right hon. Friend has spoken wisely, as always.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Will the hon. Gentleman bring his remarks to a conclusion, please, so the Front-Bench spokesmen can respond?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Yes, indeed.

My second alternative to HS2 is to upgrade the east coast main line. It needs to be four-tracked at Welwyn with an extra viaduct, a flyover at Peterborough, a flyover at Newark and four-tracking in various places, so that there can be non-stop services from King’s Cross to Edinburgh in three and a half hours, which was done on a test run in 1990; indeed, that test run was slightly faster than is being proposed with HS2. [Interruption.] Not a problem.

Finally I will propose what I have proposed before, which is the GB Freight Route. That is a dedicated rail freight line, to carry lorries on trains from the channel tunnel to every major region of Britain, using old trackbed and under-utilised lines, without causing any environmental or planning problems. The details are included in my paper here, which I have submitted to others from time to time.

Those three alternatives together would cost a tiny fraction of what it is proposed HS2 will cost and would be infinitely more useful. Indeed, the freight line would pay for itself.

I will leave my case there. I would love to speak for longer; I can speak for another two hours unaided, if you wish, Mr Betts, but I have probably said enough.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I will not aid the hon. Gentleman in that course.

I ask the hon. Gentleman—Nick Hurd—just to keep his remarks to two minutes. I am sorry, but the Minister needs to have time to reply to the debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I confess that I have several ideas on that front. I will send the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) a copy of my lecture to the Hansard Society of last Monday. If he fancies a cup of tea with me at any time I am happy to encourage him.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I speak as a member both of the Public Administration Committee and of the European Scrutiny Committee. Does the Leader of the House accept that the effectiveness of such Committees depends more on the Government responding to their conclusions and recommendations than on what the Select Committees do?

[Mr Hague]

Of course that is an important part of it. The Government do respond thoroughly to Select Committee reports and bring many recommendations to the Floor of the House. We will be announcing in Business Questions a debate on the Floor of the House on two recommendations of the European Scrutiny Committee. Of course it is important for Governments to respond constructively.

National Policy Statement (National Networks)

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

I beg to move,

That this House approves the National Policy Statement for National Networks, which was laid before this House on 17 December 2014.

The draft national policy statement was published and laid before Parliament on 4 December 2013. Following public consultation on the report and recommendations from the Transport Committee, the final NPS has now been prepared for designation. I thank the members of the Transport Committee and their Chair, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), for the important work that they undertook in scrutinising the draft NPS and publishing a report on their findings. I also give thanks for the scrutiny that was undertaken in the other place, which made an important contribution to the final document.

It may be helpful if I begin by clarifying the role and purpose of the NPS, as it is a specific document with a specific purpose. It is a technical planning policy statement that will comprise the decision-making framework for nationally significant road, rail and strategic rail freight interchange projects, as set out in the Planning Act 2008. First, the NPS establishes the need for the development of our national networks at a strategic level. Secondly, it provides the policy framework by which proposals will be decided. It includes, for example, policies on safety, environmental projections and design quality. The NPS sets out a compelling case for development of our national road and rail networks to sustain and drive economic growth, improve quality of life and safety, and deliver better environmental performance.

According to central forecasts, road traffic is set to increase by 30% and rail journeys by 40% by 2030. Rail freight has the potential to nearly double by 2032. The strategic road network makes up only 2% of roads in England but carries a third of all road traffic and two thirds of freight traffic. Under the Government’s 2014 estimates, we forecast that a quarter of travel time will be spent delayed in traffic by 2040 if we do nothing. Our national networks are already under considerable pressure, which is expected to increase as the long-term drivers of demand for travel—economic and population growth—are forecast to increase substantially over the coming years.

Without action, congestion on our roads and crowding on our trains will affect the economy and reduce the quality of life. Congestion has a significant economic cost. In 2010, the direct costs of congestion on the strategic road network in England were estimated at £1.9 billion per annum. Developments are also needed to achieve our broader environment, safety and accessibility goals. There is a need to tackle safety issues, improve the environment, and enhance accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists—an issue very close to my own heart.

The NPS sets out high-level policies and a general requirement on the need for better infrastructure. It does not set out specific locations where development of the national networks will take place. Although the NPS is not spatially specific, it recognises the need for a high-performing road and rail network that connects our cities, regions and international gateways to support economic growth and regeneration, and to improve the user experience. For strategic rail freight interchanges, the NPS identifies a need for an expanded network located near the business markets they serve and linked to key supply chain routes, especially in poorly served areas.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The Minister talked about rail freight interchanges. Is not the problem with our railways that the gauge is too small for trains to accommodate lorry trailers and the large containers in use today? We need large-gauge special rail freight systems to deliver that kind of freight.

[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Gentleman has a long history of campaigning for freight cars that will carry semi-trailers such as the type used on our roads. It is not the Government’s policy to move to that type of gauge. The High Speed 2 network and the improvements to electrification will free up capacity on the existing network for container freight. There might not be lorry trailers on the trains, but capacity will be released for more container freight on the railways. That will mean that motorways are less congested, which will be good news for everyone else who uses them.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Sure, some containers can go on the existing rail network on low-loading and flatbed trucks, but the containers that are now becoming common are too large to go through, even on those low-level, flat trucks.

[Mr Goodwill]

We are slightly digressing from the NPS. I well understand the hon. Gentleman’s long-held belief that we should move that way, but I gently remind him that to improve the gauge of our existing Victorian network would mean extensive work on tunnels and bridges and other work. We only have to look at the disruption that the west coast main line improvements caused to realise that such work does not come without a cost.

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[Mr Goodwill]

I was very careful not to blame the previous Government, but to state the fact that, because people were not buying as many new cars—for a variety of reasons, which I will not go into because we have just had a debate on that—we were not getting as many clean vehicles on to our roads. Moreover, it is always disappointing to see how the published fuel consumption figures at the bottom of an advert compare with use in practice. I have had discussions with the motor industry to see how we can make the test cycle, which is meant to give a clear indication of a car’s performance, more relevant to normal operating conditions.

Although we have made tremendous progress in reducing sulphur dioxide emissions by cleaning up fuel—we have taken lead out of petrol—we still have the problem of “knocks”. That is due not to the fuel but to the atmosphere, and is produced in the engine by the combustion process. However, it is linked to fuel consumption, so as we have more fuel-efficient cars, we will have fewer nitrogen oxides, which cause air pollution and health problems.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Would not a scheme to take 5 million lorry journeys off the roads and on to rail every year contribute enormously to improving air quality?

[Mr Goodwill]

We do have a scheme to take a lot of lorries and freight off the roads and on to rail—it is called High Speed 2—and it will deliver that. We are committed to investing in High Speed 2, to creating capacity on the existing rail network, which is currently blocked up with commuter and inter-city trains, and to getting more freight off the roads and on to rail. Indeed, the interchanges that are part of the NPS will also help to increase rail connectivity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I will not speak for long, but I have a helpful suggestion, and I hope Ministers will at least give some consideration to it, and perhaps even ask their officials to look into its feasibility. I suggest that we develop an existing route, which would not be difficult or expensive but would be an enormous advantage as a transport route.

My proposal is that we electrify the route from Birmingham Snow Hill to London, which goes through Leamington Spa and Banbury. At present, a small number of trains use that route mainly to go to Marylebone, but it is also linked to Paddington. More significantly, that route is physically linked to what will be Crossrail and could easily be linked without much expense to Crossrail going in both directions. If it were electrified, it could accommodate 125 mph trains from Snow Hill, which is in the middle of the Birmingham business district and would link it directly to the City of London and Canary Wharf and other stations on Crossrail. Business people could literally walk from their offices to Snow Hill and walk from the destination station into an office in the City of London or Canary Wharf.

We have a simple rule-of-thumb costing of the scheme. We have not done any detailed work yet, but my engineer friends suggest that the cost of electrifying that route and making the necessary links would be in the order of £1 billion. There are 125 mph electric trains already available, but obviously new rolling stock might be needed.

Not only would that route be enormously useful and tremendously beneficial, but there would be no need to change trains or get taxis from mainline stations into the city as there would be a direct route into the city where the offices are, so business people could work on the train and walk straight to their offices at both ends.

Moreover, this could easily be linked from Leamington Spa through to Birmingham airport, the Birmingham national exhibition centre and the Birmingham New Street line, so direct 125 mph electrified trains could come from the north of England on to this line and go straight into the City of London, and also to Heathrow. As a result, there could be a link between Birmingham airport and Heathrow—those airports could serve each other—perhaps, at this speed, with a service of no more than an hour’s duration. One could almost be seen as a hub for the other, and, certainly, linking those airports would be beneficial to the midlands economy, and I think possibly to Heathrow as well.

As for points north, the ability to get on a train in the middle of Manchester or Liverpool and be taken direct to Heathrow without having to change would be an enormous advantage. That route is already there. It is under-utilised, it is capable of 125 mph working, and it could easily be electrified.

This is so obvious that I am surprised it has not been suggested already. These views are not only mine; they are the views of experienced railway engineers, who tell me what can be done and the likely costs.

I think there is a compelling case for this, and I hope the Minister will at least give it some consideration and take it back to his Department for further thought. I am happy to provide further details if he wishes, but I hope this speech has at least provided a taster.

Rail Network (Disruption)

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. It may be possible for that issue to be revisited by the inquiry that is being conducted by the Office of Rail Regulation, and the industry’s inquiry relating to the best time for big repair works to be carried out. In the past, the aim has always been to carry out repairs over the holiday period, because that disrupts fewer people. As I have said, there were works on nearly every section of the railway throughout the country: on the midland main line, on the Scotland, Anglia and Wales lines, at Reading, and on the west coast and east coast main lines, and a huge amount of work was also being done at London Bridge.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Following another rail crisis some six years ago, it was decided to take many engineering staff in house. Now similar problems have arisen, so it can only be that Network Rail’s management is at fault. Is it not time to seek a root-and-branch investigation of Network Rail’s management systems, and to look again at the much better methods of operation employed by British Rail before the disaster of privatisation?

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. This is a matter for local authorities, and of course they are keen to reduce the carbon footprint resulting from having needless lights on. The experience around the country is mixed. In fact, some local authorities have shown that turning off lights does not detract from road safety.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

A large gauge rail freight network capable of carrying lorries and lorry trailers on trains is being developed across the continent of Europe. In Britain, such traffic can only reach as far as Barking from the channel tunnel, so Britain is being left behind on these developments. Will the Secretary of State look seriously at proposals to develop such a rail freight network in Britain?

[Mr McLoughlin]

The hon. Gentleman speaks with passion on this subject and has led the campaign for some time, but I have to say he has not succeeded in persuading me, just as he did not succeed in persuading the last Government, on this matter. However, I am pleased that over the last 10 years we have seen a 60% increase in freight on our railways, and I will do everything possible to encourage the freight industry to transfer more of its freight to rail, because it is in the long-term interests of this country. HS2 will also allow us to concentrate on that.

High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill: Select Committee

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Gillan]

I am grateful for my colleague’s offer. I am sure that the Minister will have taken it on board. What worries me is that so many members of environmental groups have been insulted so often in the course of this project that he might have to provide his services, because people might be unwilling to come forward if they are going to be treated so roughly.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I apologise for missing the first part of the right hon. Lady’s speech. I agree with her strongly about the advice of technical experts. However, even technical experts have views. Is it not important to ensure that we hear a range of views about the project and that we get honest technical advice on all the detailed points?

[Mrs Gillan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, which extends the point that I am making without labouring it. The members of the Select Committee will bring common sense and the view of the Member of Parliament to the Committee, but they will still have to rely on the people who have the expertise to take them through the detail.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Gillan]

That is helpful of my right hon. Friend and I am sure his experience of these matters will be taken into account. It is worth while airing such issues at this stage because if we do not discuss them now, there will be little opportunity for any Members of the House to make their feelings known. It is also important that petitioners know how long their hearing could last. If it is a long, complicated or difficult case, perhaps people will need to come back again after the Committee has taken expert advice, and knowing how much time they need to give up is important.

Amendment (j) has been referred to by others and there are subsequent amendments to it. I think that six members is a good number for the Committee—if I were able to, I would restrict it to six and keep it to those same six people for continuity. However, I am worried about the quorum of three and have suggested that it be increased to four. We in the House set a great deal of store on the balance of Committee membership. When there is a Committee of six and a quorum of three, and three of those members are from the Conservative party, it will be possible for the Committee to sit with only Conservative members. If the quorum was four, we would always ensure a cross-party membership of the quorate Committee. I would like Ministers and the House to think about that issue because a quorum of three would be inequitable. If the Bill is to be scrutinised properly, it must be scrutinised—as other Bills are—with membership from both sides of the House. The danger is in the maths. We are still in the early stages, but I hope that the Committee will let us know how it will divide up the work and update Members who have not been able to attend the sessions, and how it will co-ordinate and ensure continuity between individual Members.

I have tabled amendments (a) and (c) to motion 4 on instruction to the Committee. If the Government are willing to accept amendment (a), that will go a long way to repairing the damage I referred to earlier, which has been done by insulting campaigners, environmentalists, and even MPs alike. That has seemed to be the hallmark of some of the engagement up and down the line, and it is certainly not confined to Chesham and Amersham. We need an understanding of how passionately people feel about these subjects. Indeed, some have engaged experts to provide advice and offer alternatives to the Government on how to do the project better. Those include the new tunnelling proposals that were launched by Chiltern district council, Buckinghamshire county council, Aylesbury Vale district council and the Chiltern Countryside Group last Friday. I know those proposals will be considered very seriously at the highest level, and I hope within HS2 Ltd and by the Committee.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

On that important point, if someone whose views are different from one’s own is abused, that is not the right way to approach politics. We should address the arguments and not commit sins by making ad hominem attacks, to use the Latin phrase. When people have serious concerns about their lives or the environment, they should not be abused. They should be listened to and perhaps if their arguments are wrong they can be countered, but they should not be abused.

[Mr Speaker]

It must be said that there is no better practitioner of that principle in this House than the hon. Gentleman. Whatever is said about anything else, I feel sure that his proposition will command universal assent.

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[Sir John Randall (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the Old Contemptible himself, the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson). I may be sitting on the other side of the Chamber, but I shall try to emulate the wisdom and greybeardedness that is associated with him.

Perhaps you should have been in the Chair earlier, Mr Deputy Speaker, when we were discussing what would be done with the £20 fee for the lodging of each petition, and Mr Speaker suggested that it would be down to the Chairman of Ways and Means to be in charge of all that. I suspect that you will need to read the report of the early part of the debate in order to be prepared to deal with some of what was discussed at that stage.

I think that those of us who voted against the motion last night knew that their actions would constitute one of those magnificent but futile gestures, rather along the lines of the charge of the Light Brigade—apart from not being a mistake. The British rather pride themselves on doing something that will be regarded as a great victory despite having been, in fact, a complete defeat. The real work, however, is just beginning. The new Select Committee will listen to the views of constituents and others who have presented petitions, which will form an integral and very important part of the whole process, and I thank those who volunteered to sit on it. Contrary to popular belief, such Committees are not punishment details. The Members of this Committee may begin to think otherwise, but I have been led to believe that they all volunteered freely.

The Committee’s members should be commended, because theirs will probably be some of the most difficult and time-consuming work that the House will have to do for a considerable time. I am sure that they will approach that work in an entirely fair-minded way. While I understood what my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) said about the composition of the quorum, I do not think there will be any question of party political partisanship. After all, as is clear from yesterday’s voting figures, all the political parties back the proposal; it is opposed by just a few mavericks with, perhaps, a bit more foresight.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I should remind the right hon. Gentleman that, although only 50 of us voted for the amendment yesterday, 150 Members were missing from the total vote.

[Sir John Randall]

I am grateful for that intervention from another venerable greybeard. Something of a theme seems to be emerging. Yes, it is true that those Members were missing in action, but I am afraid that the figures on which we always work relate to those who actually go through the Division Lobbies.

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[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I will not speak for long and I apologise for not being here at the very beginning of the debate. I was a member of the Crossrail Committee for two years and, contrary to what some have speculated, the Whips put me and some of my colleagues on it as a punishment. We had voted against some civil liberties legislation and one of my colleagues, who is no longer in the House, remonstrated with our Whips and was told, “You’re staying on—get on with it.” It was definitely seen as a punishment. However, the Whips did not appreciate that I am a railway enthusiast. I know a lot about railways. I do not want to seem immodest, but I also know a lot about the engineering of railways, and I receive advice from a series of friends, colleagues and acquaintances who are skilled in engineering and running railways. I therefore had something to offer that Select Committee and I enjoyed my two years on it. It was quite onerous—two solid days a week and so on—but it was a nice experience, and I like to think that I made some positive contributions.

That brings me to the important point about skills. It is important for Committee members to have engineering advice at their disposal so that they know what they are talking about and what other people are talking about. Barristers will appear before the Committee, and other people will give evidence, but it is important to develop the expertise of Committee members. They are fine Members, but as there are six of them, they will have a hard job for quite a long time. If they are not interested in railways and do not receive skilled advice, they will find it even harder. I hope that that point will be taken care of.

I think that the House has become more democratic in the way in which it appoints people to Select Committees. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) talked about the modernisation of the House and the Wright Committee. I served on the Select Committee on Public Administration under the chairmanship of Tony Wright for several years. I still serve on that Committee—it is an interesting Committee, now chaired by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), and I really enjoy that work. We are constantly looking at the way in which government operates and the way in which the House interrelates with government, and we try to raise the status and effect of the House in holding the Government to account. That is what we are about.

Previous Governments, both Tory and Labour, have not paid sufficient heed to the House of Commons, and have adopted a rather high-handed manner. I was kept off Select Committees for a long time, perhaps because I was regarded as a radical person of the left. For five years, I tried to serve on every Select Committee, but the Whips would not hear of it. Now, the process is much more open, and anyone with any particular view in the House can become a member of a Select Committee, provided that there is a vacancy. That is a great advance. Two Members made that advance: Tony Wright and, before him, Robin Cook, who should be praised for his work in trying to improve Parliament’s control over the Executive. I want that process to continue and become more significant.

A number of points have been made about the project by hon. Members, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson). My view is that the Euston terminus is complete nonsense. It would be horrendously expensive, and it is in the wrong place. If the railway stopped at Paddington or even Old Oak Common, and linked directly to Crossrail, people would use Crossrail to go straight through to the City and Canary Wharf. There is a lot of talk about business links between the centre of Birmingham, our second city, and the City of London, and being able to make an easy trip from Birmingham to the City, particularly Canary Wharf, is a sensible way forward. Going to Euston would be expensive, and it would require at least two tube journeys to get to Canary Wharf. All the time that might be saved by a slightly faster train to Euston would be lost, given the time taken for those journeys from Euston to Canary Wharf.

The Euston terminus is nonsense, and it is my belief—and people have said this to me—that it is really about property development and making money out of such a development at Euston. It is not really about transport needs. I have criticisms and reservations about the whole project, as my vote indicated last night. Unfortunately, I was unable to speak in the debate yesterday; otherwise I would have made some serious points. If Old Oak Common or Paddington were the terminus, that would save billions and would immediately—

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

What about Stratford?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Well, Stratford possibly. That would save money and would put people straight on to Crossrail. I supported Crossrail, which was a difficult, expensive project, but we improved it as a result of careful analysis by the Crossrail Bill Committee. We drove certain projects. For example, we proposed that there should be a station at Woolwich, and we managed to get that into the Crossrail Bill. There will be a Crossrail station at Woolwich, which is a valuable improvement.

There are environmental problems. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North chairs the Environmental Audit Committee. It is important to know how we will overcome such problems. One problem with Crossrail was that it went under Soho, where there are a lot of significant and economically important recording studios, which are sensitive to vibration and noise. I know from friends and advisers that one can do various things to tackle such problems, including the use of floating slab track. Not every Member will know what that is, but it is a way of insulating the track from the concrete channel on which it runs, thus avoiding vibration. Builders do not want to know about that, because it costs more money, although not very much more. If that option had not been proposed, such a measure would not have been included. It is therefore important that expert advice to Committee members is provided by engineering specialists who know what they are talking about.

I have friends who criticise the route of HS2. It seems that, in the first instance, the route was created by non-engineers drawing lines on maps. As a small child, my son used to take Ordnance Survey maps, and used a felt-tip pen to draw railway lines across them. It ruined the maps, but the method used to determine the route of HS2 was not far from that. Even now, there are serious criticisms about the precise route, even from those who go along with HS2.

[Mrs Gillan]

The hon. Gentleman is making some valid points. I am sorry that he did not manage to speak at great length yesterday.

It is important that there is flexibility in the way in which the project is considered, because the route was just a straight line drawn on a map for speed purposes. Many reasons for sticking to the original route design have now gone. What gives me heart is the fact that the Government have made much of the £14.4 billion contingency fund. We must ensure that if that fund is available, it is used to get the best possible mitigation, whether environmental or urban, as in the case of the recording studios in Soho. There is capacity in the budget to afford those protections and include them, and it is important that we secure them.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I agree, and I very much appreciate what the right hon. Lady said in her speech.

There are measures to deal with environmental damage. I mentioned floating slab track to deal with vibration, but there are also noise barriers disguised by foliage and tunnelling where necessary. All sorts of things can be done: they cost a bit extra, but they make the project much more acceptable. Getting the line right in the first instance is absolutely fundamental, and many of my good friends tell me that the line is not right, especially north of Birmingham, but also between London and Birmingham. All sorts of details need to be argued, which will take the Committee a long time. HS2 is a much bigger project than Crossrail, and the Crossrail Bill Committee took two years. We met every week, and there were lots and lots of petitions. There will be many more for HS2, so we are looking at a big job.

The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) mentioned speed, and recently there was talk about reducing the maximum speed from 250 mph to 183 mph—or 300 kph—and going at the speed of HS1. It was an arbitrary decision—“Oh well, let’s just reduce the speed”—which changes a lot of suggested journey times. I have spoken in the House about journey times, and criticised the project in that regard, as it seems that someone can just make a quick decision—“Oh well, we won’t go there. We’ll decide to change the speed.” There is a problem with high-speed trains, which cannot go round tight curves as they would fall off the track. Curves have to be gradual and of a large radius, which causes all sorts of problems. That does not apply to trains on standard rail, with a speed of up to 125 mph or 135 mph.

Raising the speed from 300 kph to 250 mph demands a tremendous increase in energy. Energy costs are much greater at higher speed, and extra emissions from power stations required to drive electric trains are disproportionately increased. Optimum railway speeds are much lower—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Quite a few more Members want to speak and I do not want to allow the hon. Gentleman’s speech to turn into a Second Reading speech. I would have thought that the motions are more important at this stage.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I shall conclude in a moment as I have basically made my points.

I would be happy to support all the amendments of the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham were they ever put to a vote, but I hope that the Government will take them into account. I am also in favour of the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, who is not her place, and all the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras. I hope that we see some common sense in the long run.

Inter-City Rail Investment

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered inter-city rail investment.

As well as London, the eight largest English cities have city deal status and another 20 are being agreed at present. I want to talk about rail travel between these city regions, especially those journeys that do not involve London. My speech will not be about HS2, except in passing, partly because that subject has already been aired at length, but also because journeys between the 29 city regions involve 465 possible trips, only 13 of which are directly covered by HS2. Those figures do not include Welsh or Scottish cities, but I am sure other Members may wish to comment on them.

If we look at past priorities for inter-city rail investment, we see that there has often seemed to be an assumption that the only thing people want to do when they get on a train is travel to or from London. Research shows that prioritising transport heavily on connections to a capital tends to suck economic activity into that capital. As Chris Murray, director of Core Cities, observed recently, this over-concentration is bad for the national economy in the long term. In contrast with other developed countries, such as France and Germany, the UK remains one of the most economically centralised countries in the world. The vast majority of significant companies and other institutions are headquartered in and around London.

London itself has major capacity issues, whether they be housing, schools, airports, local transport, water, sewage treatment or even land and labour. Immigration pressures from abroad or from elsewhere in the UK are felt heavily in London as it deals with its overheated economy. A London MP recently exemplified affordable housing in her constituency, it being defined as a two-bedroom flat costing £750,000. There is constant pressure for billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to be spent addressing those capacity problems in the capital. Meanwhile, other areas, such as the one I represent, have all those assets freely available, including houses, none of which cost £750,000, surplus school places and capable people ready to take jobs.

The Government have a stated aim to rebalance the economy and I believe that inter-city rail investment can play a pivotal role in that endeavour. Others share my concerns. The former Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, said recently:

“There are literally dozens of rail and public transport projects urgently needed across the country that would make a significant economic and social impact.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 October 2013; Vol. 748, c. 1228.]

He also commented on the cuts to other inter-city services that accompany the HS2 proposals, including loss of service from Stoke, Stockport, Coventry and Wilmslow, and long journey times to Carlisle. The Institute of Directors reports that 80% of its members support increased investment in the existing inter-city network.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman on what he has said so far. Does he not also agree that a spinal, dedicated rail freight route capable of carrying lorry trailers on trains and serving the north-east would have an enormously beneficial effect on the economies of the regions?

[Ian Swales]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I certainly agree with him and will mention rail freight later in my speech. He makes a powerful point which I know he has raised in the House before.

With excellent assistance from the House of Commons Library, I have conducted research on all the journeys between the English city regions, comparing fastest rail journey times against road miles as the best indicator of the actual distance between them. Many interesting facts emerge. The fastest journey times from nearly every single city region are on the lines to London. Average speeds range from 63 mph from the south coast to well over 100 mph from many other parts of the country.

For journeys between cities outside London, however, the overall fastest miles per hour speeds are in the 20s, and many are in the 30s and 40s. Fastest journeys can involve absurd dog-legging through London—for example, Cambridge to Sheffield, Ipswich to Newcastle and Swindon to Leicester—and journeys between the 29 key city regions can involve as many as four changes. Those figures are the consequence of past investment focused on hub-and-spoke systems based on London, and of under-investment on other routes, which has helped to concentrate economic and administrative power in the capital.

The record of the previous Government was poor, with too much micro-management but only nine miles of electrification investment. Fares went up by 66%, but subsidies went up £1.7 billion as well. Journey times are slower than they were 15 years ago, and 61% of UK businesses are concerned that the UK’s transport infrastructure lags behind international competitors.

I welcome the steps that this Government are taking. A good example of the work needed is the Milton Keynes to Oxford route. At 22 mph, it is one of the slowest possible journeys, so the Government’s decision to revive the east-west route to join those two city regions is very welcome and will provide the connectivity to help release potential. However, the Milton Keynes to Cambridge route, at 24 mph, will remain one of the slowest in the country. Other examples of very slow connectivity are the routes from Leicester to Coventry, Bournemouth to Bristol, Southend to Ipswich, Sunderland to Darlington—I could go on.

It is certainly welcome that the east coast main line is at last due to get modern rolling stock. Despite being one of the most profitable lines in the country, botched franchising deals have led to a sense that it is somehow a basket case, with consequent high fares and old trains. Passengers richly deserve the investment in new rolling stock and, as a regular user, I suppose that I should declare an interest.

It is worrying that a briefing I received for today’s debate from the Rail Delivery Group, a consortium of Network Rail and the train operators, states that the east coast line

“essentially serves two main destinations…Leeds and Edinburgh”.

It makes no mention of services that terminate in Newcastle or Aberdeen, of the 750,000 people in the Tees valley served by Darlington, or of numerous other towns and cities served directly or through connections. Sadly, the geography of many of the decision makers seems to get sketchy outside the M25.

One area that I want to highlight is the wide corridor of national importance through south Yorkshire and south Lancashire. It contains four of the six biggest cities in England, as well as many significant towns and other cities, and it is home to more than a quarter of the UK’s small and medium-sized businesses. Although it is already an economic powerhouse, it could be so much better with proper inter-city rail investment. Our forefathers recognised its importance by building one of the first cross-country motorways, the M62, to link Hull and Liverpool. How is the rail service through the region? The answer is, very poor. The 120-mile journey from Hull to Liverpool takes 30 minutes longer than the 214-mile journey from Hull to London, which means that it is at exactly half the speed. The vital commercial centres of Leeds and Manchester are joined by a service that runs at only 46 mph, whereas they both already have services to London at more than 100 mph.

Slow train times lead to far more people travelling by road, which in turn has an impact on train passenger numbers. They also give the appearance of low demand: no doubt that affects perceived investment, but this is surely a classic case of “Build it and they will come”. Getting people, and of course freight, off the roads also has major environmental benefits.

I welcome the many improvement projects contained in the northern hub initiative and the associated forecast of growth in passenger numbers, but they fall short of providing the kind of radical improvements that could transform the economy of the region. We need speedy train services to link our northern cities to each other, not just linking them separately to London and the south.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Swales]

I thank the hon. Lady. I am sure the Minister is logging the various bids that are being made.

My area of the north-east has good journey times to London, but very poor journey times to other places. Is it right that it takes longer to get from Darlington to Manchester on a single train than it takes to get to London? The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills was stunned recently when he discovered how long he had to spend on the train when travelling from Liverpool to Darlington. Ironically, he was making the trip to be present at the inauguration of the new inter-city train factory at Newton Aycliffe, which is hugely welcome in my part of the world.

Rail investment is not just about passengers, but about freight, as the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) mentioned. It was good to see the recent but long-overdue investment by the Government to enable modern-sized containers landing at Teesport to join the east coast main line. However, a large modern port needs good connections to a wide hinterland and, again, the cross-country links are very poor. If such a container was destined for Preston, which is less than 100 miles away, it would have to go via Birmingham, so poor are the trans-Pennine links.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman is talking about freight, even though this debate is essentially about passengers. Some 80% of freight in Britain and across the channel goes by lorry, not by container. Containers are splendid things and lorries are the problem. Do we not need to be able to get lorry trailers on to trains? To do that, we need a dedicated route with the height and gauge capacity to deal with it.

[Ian Swales]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. I am certain that the current trans-Pennine links would also be inadequate for that solution. I agree with what he says. This matter needs to be considered seriously. What is the point of investing heavily in rail freight handling in the Trafford area of Manchester, which is going to happen, if there is no easy route to the major ports on the Tyne, the Tees and the Humber? The ability of east coast ports to collect goods from northern businesses for export and to deliver imported goods and materials to them by rail should be a key economic driver.

As part of rebalancing the economy, the Department for Transport should be accelerating inter-city investment in the regions for three reasons. First, the economic benefits of constructing that infrastructure would be felt most strongly in the regions concerned. Secondly, the manufacture of infrastructure materials tends to be concentrated away from the south-east. An example is Tata Steel’s construction beam mill in my constituency. Finally, the provision of good infrastructure tends to lead to more economic development in the local region.

Rail investment should be used proactively to drive our regional economies, not just reactively to address overcrowding. Quicker travel would make existing businesses more efficient. Better city links would allow regionally based businesses to set up and expand more easily, and to take on London-based competitors.

As Jim O’Neill, the chair of the City Growth Commission, observed in a recent article in The House magazine entitled “Going for growth”,

“We already know that around the world, mid-tier cities generate higher economic growth relative to their populations.”

In the same magazine, Alexandra Jones, the chief executive of the Centre for Cities, noted that

“most of the UK’s largest cities…punch below their economic potential.”

The underperformance in the UK is due partly to our transport infrastructure. The excessive focus on London recently led the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to say that London

“is becoming a giant suction machine draining the life out of the rest of the country”.

In closing, I want to emphasise the following points. A business person’s time is just as valuable when they are travelling from Newcastle to Bristol or from Norwich to Liverpool as it is when they are travelling to or from London. It should be possible to run an effective, competitive national or international business from any of our city regions, not just from London. The Government have a key aim of rebalancing the economy. I commend the work that is being done on city deals and through the regional growth fund. The Department for Transport needs to take up the challenge and play its full part in that rebalancing. After decades of under-investment, I welcome the renewed focus on rail investment that the Government are driving. I hope the Minister will explain how the Department’s inter-city rail investment policy will meet the ambition of making the whole economy more successful, and not just that of London and the south-east. I look forward to his response.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales). I was pleased to hear him say that we should talk about something other than High Speed 2. The money being spent on it is an issue in the far south-west, but we also have a lot of common concerns with his constituency. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate, which is important to my constituents and those of other Members who are in the Chamber.

I have lost count of the number of times that I and other Members with seats in the south-west have raised concerns about the need for investment in our inter-city services and improved resilience. Yet again, extreme weather is causing pressure, so we need that investment, but we keep getting batted away by London and Whitehall.

My constituents, local authorities and businesses all rely on rail connections, which have to be reliable and affordable. They also have to work around the need for freight, the importance of which I know my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) will speak about again today. He is right—if we want to grow our economy in the south-west, we need freight services that work and that fit around essential inter-city services.

We need to manage and plan growth to ensure that people are not priced off trains because of massive rises in ticket prices. Plymouth is more than three hours away from London—it can be three hours-plus-plus, depending on how fortunate people are on the day, and in the not-too-distant future it will take even longer because of the continuing works at Reading. Those works, which were started under the last Government, will make a difference, and there is no doubt that they are valuable, but they will extend the travelling public’s journeys for the moment. Of course, there is also the work on the Whiteball tunnel, which I suspect will mean a journey of closer to five hours.

We also have no air link to the city of Plymouth, and people often ask whether that is sensible for a city of such a size. Frankly, it is unlikely that there will be an airport, despite the hard work of a lot of local groups, without some guarantee of slots in London when the airport there is extended.

We have only two strategic road links into Plymouth. When I chaired the South West Regional Committee in 2010 and we reviewed transport across the south-west, the evidence that we received made it clear that the infrastructure, whether road, rail or air, was inadequate and could not support the level of growth that many local authorities and businesses feel we are capable of producing and adding to the wider UK economy.

Over the years, we have had less investment than any other part of the United Kingdom, with the possible exception of the north-east. Journeys to major cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool all take much longer than a journey to London and are convoluted. Part of the problem that we have on our stretch of line—the main line between Penzance and Paddington—is that to get to those cities we have to go on the slow, shared section of line between Taunton and Plymouth, which goes along Dawlish sea front and is frequently disrupted.

Inter-city train services that connect with community rail services and buses, with reasonably priced car parks at hubs, come at a price, a large part of which has to be borne by the passenger. I was gobsmacked to read the lobbying document that we received prior to the debate from the Rail Delivery Group, which made me ask whether its members ever travel on trains. The main thrust of the document was to act as an apologist for the privatisation process and laud the fact that it has

“significantly increased revenue whilst controlling operating costs.”

Really? Apparently, that has led to a financial surplus, but who benefits from that? Passengers on my wi-fi-less inter-city trains to Plymouth, who sometimes have to stand as far as Exeter, are certainly not feeling the benefit.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I wish to reinforce my hon. Friend’s point about privatisation. Sir Roy McNulty concluded that our railways cost 40% more to operate than continental railways that are integrated and publicly owned, and that before privatisation, British Rail had—believe it or not—the highest level of productivity of any railway system in Europe.

[Alison Seabeck]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point about the different ways of managing a rail network. When we compound that with the botched franchising process, which exacerbated problems, particularly in the south-west, I think the travelling public are beginning to lose faith. Of course those companies have invested in their services, and there is no doubt that their staff are working hard to ensure that the passenger experience improves—indeed, it has improved and they deserve credit for that. I am still not sure, however, how much that increased revenue has reached down to the far south-west where we still have slam-door rolling stock.

On our line, the new fare for an anytime standard open return from London to Plymouth with First Great Western is £271, and to Penzance—where at least some consideration has been given to the needs of the area—it is £284. If families who are struggling with the cost of living decide to holiday in the lovely south-west—who would not want to come to the south-west?—that starts to look like a very expensive option, unless they can get one of the cheaper deals which, as we know, disappear very fast indeed. I genuinely feel that passengers do not think they are getting value for money.

Plymouth’s inter-city connections are vital to the city’s growth plans, yet spending per person in the south-west is now in negative real-term figures—the hon. Member for Redcar spoke about how his region is suffering in a similar way in terms of investment. How does that square with the supposed policy of regional growth? The total identifiable expenditure on rail in my region has slumped from £286 million in 2008-09 to just £218 million in 2012-13. So much for a Government who believe that growth and investment in infrastructure are linked. Actions speak louder than words.

We in Plymouth are also concerned that we are not on the strategic national corridor, which for some bizarre reason stops at Exeter and does not go on to the 15th largest city in England. As long as that continues and we are not part of the strategic national corridor, we will continue to see poor levels of investment in our routes in inter-city services. Indeed, I would go further and suggest a real lack of interest in Whitehall in any area outside that corridor.

There is no doubt that distance and accessibility impact directly on the way business costs are assessed and on the logistics of companies. It has been estimated that for every 100 minutes of travel time from London, productivity drops by 6%. Tackling that underperformance by supporting our rail links, inter-city services and connections to the main line could be hugely beneficial to the wider UK economy. We are, however, talking a little bit about jam tomorrow. I am sure the Minister will mention the benefits of electrification, but those will not percolate down as far as Plymouth—certainly in the immediate future—partly because of the unresolved issue of the line between Exeter and Plymouth via Dawlish. Any benefits of electrification are decades away, and whoever is in power after the next general election must stop pushing the issue away. That is why we must ensure—as those on the Labour Front Benches have insisted—that High Speed 2 is not some open-ended cheque, and that we keep a lock on how much money goes into it.

I have not even mentioned resilience and the importance of keeping the rail line open to rail companies as well as our local economies. Some £178 million was lost when the line was closed last year because of flooding at Exeter and further down the line, and we had no inter-city service for some considerable time. I cannot understand why it has been so difficult to get the heads of the Environment Agency and Network Rail to agree on a plan. We were told that £31 million had been earmarked for work to ensure the trains could get through, but we now hear that that has gone down to single figures. What is going on? Perhaps the Minister will answer that when he responds to the debate. Is the CEO of the Environment Agency correct when he says that cuts will impact on that type of maintenance? In questions to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) asked a question on that issue. Significant remedial investment is needed if the far south-west is to have more than a fair-weather inter-city service.

My key asks for Plymouth and its inter-city connections are: that the Secretary of State continue to guarantee the money for the resilience work at Exeter and beyond, and that it is clearly aimed at keeping the network open and not just blocking it off; that we get an early morning arrival in Plymouth from London, which was promised by the franchisee but appears to have drifted off the agenda, like so much else; and that we benefit from newer rolling stock, rather than the ancient units that currently serve our railway and undoubtedly slow the service down. Demand is expected to outstrip capacity on both branch and inter-city services, so we need confirmation from the Minister today that the displaced diesel stock following the electrification of the main line in south Wales will be cascaded on to the main line between London and Penzance. On that, I will finish and allow other Members to express their concerns.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate on a subject about which I feel very strongly and in which I have a great interest. I congratulate the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) on securing the debate and on what he said during his speech, which contained a good deal of common sense. In fact, it reflected the conclusions of the Eddington report of some years ago, the focus of which was on improving the network as it was, rather than on more adventurous schemes.

Railways are clearly the major mode of land travel for the long-term future. Anyone who tries to drive by car to and from London these days has a problem, despite some improvements in motorway traffic. It is the railways that will provide the transport of the future. Passenger numbers are increasing massively in spite of privatisation and higher fares because rail travel is the only practicable way to get to and from work. I speak as a 45-year rail commuter on Thameslink and its predecessors from Luton. I see every day the problems on the other side of London—on the same line that the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) mentioned. Fortunately, I live far enough out to get a seat most days, but by the time we get to St Albans passengers have to stand. Indeed, yesterday, there simply was not enough space on the train and many passengers were left on the platform, having to wait for later trains—it was that crowded.

There are severe difficulties on those commuter routes, but we are talking today about inter-city rail. Forty years ago, I was responsible for transport policy at the TUC. In those days, railways were seen to be in decline and people lauded the car as the future. Even then, I passionately believed that railways were the future and that we had to preserve what we had. Fortunately, we hung on to just enough to make it credible, and we still have the great Victorian-built lines providing city centre to city centre travel, which is so valuable. The convenience of being able to get on a train in a city centre and be taken directly to another city centre is an enormous advantage.

I urge the Minister to support specific investments, some of which are already moving forward—rather too slowly and very late, but they will, I hope, get there eventually. It is vital to continue the electrification of all major routes, so that we have electrified major routes across the country.

[Oliver Colvile]

The hon. Gentleman makes a serious point about electrification. Tim Smit runs the Eden project. In the last five or six years he was asked what one thing would make a great difference to the south-west. He told the then deputy leader of the Conservative party that electrification down to Plymouth would do an enormous amount of good for the west country.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I entirely agree, and I was intending to mention the point later in my speech.

We need to extend direct electrified services not merely to cities on the major routes. I support electrification to Hull, so that direct electrified services can run from King’s Cross to Hull without the need to change trains. I see in his place the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who represents an area on the other side of the Humber. Electrified services to Grimsby and Cleethorpes would be a good thing, too. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) mentioned the south-west, and it is clear that that area needs improvements.

[Ian Swales]

As we are all bidding for electrification, let me point out that the Grand Central service from Sunderland to London runs on a non-electrified line north of Northallerton through Eaglescliffe and Hartlepool.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I think we are well behind the rest of the world in electrifying our rail routes and we need to do a lot more. It is happening, but it is going to take some time yet. We should have done this years ago.

Hon. Members have mentioned some of the corridor routes I intended to speak about, such as that from Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds to York. A modern, electrified fast service linking those great cities would be a tremendous boon to the north. I am obviously not speaking on behalf of Luton here; I am speaking about my interest in railways and in the country in general.

A second electrified route should link York, Sheffield, Derby, Birmingham, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth and Penzance, which would provide a real chance for growth, particularly in the south-west, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View said. Those are two important corridors, and I could provide more detail on others. Fast electrified services would greatly benefit the relevant regions.

In a rail debate on 31 October I set out a scheme for upgrading and improving the east coast main line from London to Edinburgh. I shall not go over the detail again now, as I want to reserve my time to deal with other schemes, other than to say that this is another important investment that should go ahead to improve capacity and speed on the east coast.

I want to focus today on a particular scheme. I have mentioned it before, but I want to re-emphasise its importance. I believe it would be a major advance to upgrade the Birmingham, Snow Hill to London line, which passes through Solihull, Leamington Spa, Banbury and other towns, on which only a handful of trains currently run each day to and from Marylebone. The line also runs directly to Paddington—a much more useful London terminus that links directly with Crossrail and thus to the City. Snow Hill is in the centre of Birmingham and easily accessible to the business district.

There is, however, a much more compelling and exciting possibility for this route. If it were to be electrified, a simple link to Crossrail at Old Oak Common would provide direct passenger services between the centre of Birmingham and the City of London and, indeed, Canary Wharf. Business travellers would have available direct travel from city centre to city centre with no changes required, thus saving time and inconvenience. But there is more: the electrified Snow Hill to London line could also branch off at Greenford to join Crossrail going west, thus providing a direct service from Birmingham city centre to Heathrow. The electrification of that line and those two links with Crossrail would together cost no more than £500 million.

There is still more. The Snow Hill line has a branch at Leamington linked to Birmingham airport, which opens up the possibility of direct, non-stop electrified 125 mph services between Birmingham and Heathrow airports, as well as a direct link between Birmingham airport and the City of London via Crossrail. A journey time of one hour between the airports would be a boon to both of them, making Birmingham effectively a satellite of Heathrow and possibly removing some of the pressure from the growth of passenger traffic there, as well as being advantageous to workers in Birmingham.

I believe that the scheme would be enormously beneficial economically at both ends of the route. It would breathe extra life into the economy of the west midlands, and it would take a bit of pressure off London. It would also be helpful to services going further north. It would be possible to travel to the airport from Birmingham New Street and on to that route directly as well. There are numerous exciting possibilities, provided that the whole line is electrified and upgraded. Even now, it would be capable of 125 mph services, which I think would be sufficient for the journeys to which I have referred.

I urge the Minister, Opposition Front Benchers and Network Rail to give serious thought to my proposal. It is not just my own idea; it is based on detailed advice from experienced railway engineers. It would work, it would be easy to construct, and it would bring great benefits at modest costs. I commend it to fellow Members, and especially to those on both Front Benches.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who always speaks so knowledgeably about railway matters.

I join others in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) on securing the debate. It has given us an opportunity to praise the Government for a remarkable and very welcome increase in funding for our rail network—a network which, since privatisation, has seen a staggering increase in passenger numbers and in the amount of freight carried. It has also given Members an opportunity to argue in favour of yet more investment in their constituencies, or, at the very least, the transfer of some of the existing resources to their own areas. I shall say more about that shortly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Redcar spoke of the importance of connections to London and, indeed, to other areas. My constituency suffers badly as a result of its lack of such connections. There was a time, in living memory, when it was possible to get on to a train in Cleethorpes and travel to other major cities such as Leeds, Birmingham and Leicester. I know that Ministers are fully aware of the importance of good transport links to the economic development of all parts of the country, but I must emphasise their importance to more peripheral areas such as northern Lincolnshire.

The Government have recognised the importance of northern Lincolnshire and the wider Humber region as a major centre for the renewable sector, and have demonstrated their commitment to the area by creating the largest enterprise zone in the country and providing support through the recently signed Humber city deal. More recently, the Department for Transport gave Able UK permission to go ahead with its South Humber energy park and associated developments, which should provide thousands of new jobs. That is all good news, but if we are to maximise the benefits to the area, we shall need improved rail connections.

The main passenger services to northern Lincolnshire are provided by First TransPennine Express. There is a good hourly service between Cleethorpes and Manchester airport in each direction, which, with stops at Doncaster and Sheffield, connects with the wider network, but changes are inconvenient and add to journey times. Let me give a couple of examples. Last autumn, I attended the annual dinner of the Grimsby and Immingham Chamber of Commerce and Shipping. One of the guests was the Finnish Ambassador, who expressed his surprise at how long it had taken him to travel to Grimsby from London. Another example can be found in an article in The Sunday Times on 29 December. The journalist A. A. Gill travelled to Cleethorpes last October and in his article he says that he could have flown from London to Moscow quicker than it took him to get from London to Cleethorpes.

The Grimsby-Cleethorpes area needs more direct train services, particularly to London, in order to achieve the full economic potential I mentioned. To give an historical perspective, until 1970 there were two direct trains between the Grimsby-Cleethorpes area and London via the then east Lincolnshire line through Louth, Boston and Spalding through to Peterborough and on to the main line. I remember travelling on the last service train on 4 October 1970. The service fell at long last after a seven-year fight; it was sacrificed to the Beeching plan.

For the following 22 years we retained direct services to London. They ran via Market Rasen and Lincoln. That remains one of the options for a new franchise-holder. Certainly improvements are needed on that line, which is the Cleethorpes to Lincoln line. Most of the services are provided by a single car unit.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Beeching, and there are still a large number of corridors that are unused. Does he agree that it is vital to protect those corridors for possible future use, when, hopefully, we invest in even more railways than we have now?

[Martin Vickers]

I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman and I think that even people who were connected with producing the Beeching plan have since acknowledged that the closure of the east Lincolnshire line was a marginal decision at the time and certainly in today’s climate it would not have been closed. Unfortunately, however, at various points that line has now been blocked off and it would take billions of pounds to reinstate it.

I was mentioning the services on the Lincoln-Cleethorpes line provided by a single unit. When passengers get on the conductor says. “When we reach Market Rasen, passengers will have to stand. Please make sure that all seats are clear.” East Midlands Trains acknowledges that the service it provides with that single unit is inadequate, but apparently there is such a shortage of units that it is unable to improve on it.

The Government have an excellent record on electrification. Electrification of the route from Manchester to Sheffield is edging nearer and the possible extension through to Doncaster is being considered. If that becomes a reality, which it must, then completion of the final 50 miles into Immingham, Grimsby and Cleethorpes must surely be worthy of inclusion.

Immingham is a major centre for railways; indeed, it was the railways that built it. It was a creation of the Great Central Railway just over 100 years ago in 1912. Today, measured by tonnage, around 25% of the freight moved by rail starts or ends its journey in Immingham, much of it of strategic importance—oil, coal and the like. That, together with the growing potential for passenger traffic, must make a case for, at the very least, a feasibility study into the viability of electrification of the final section of the south Trent-TransPennine line, the Doncaster to Immingham and Cleethorpes section.

Despite considerable capital investment over recent years the main route from Cleethorpes to Doncaster, which covers just 50 miles, takes 70 minutes. We must do better than that, particularly since we describe the trains on that route as TransPennine Expresses.

In this afternoon’s earlier debate on rural communities I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) refer to the Saturdays-only service from Sheffield through Gainsborough and Brigg to Cleethorpes. This line was the Great Central main line and yet it has come to this—a once-a-week service. It provides a shocking service not only for my hon. Friend’s rural community, as he said, but for the industrial centres around Immingham and Grimsby and for the east coast premier seaside resort of Cleethorpes.

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[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) on securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it to take place. I cannot help but reflect that, should our predecessors of 40 years ago walk in here today, they would be surprised to see the extent of the interest across the House in rail investment. We might disagree on some of the mechanisms for achieving it, but there is now a high level of agreement that this is the way forward. This follows a period in which, sadly, we were diverted towards the wrong future, and I hope that we are now heading towards the right one.

Regrettably, some decisions are still going the wrong way. For example, the Scottish Government have chosen to build a new road bridge across the Forth, connecting Fife and Edinburgh, without any new rail connection. That is a missed opportunity. We had an opportunity to put in some sort of double-decker bridge; there are ways to build both road and rail together, if we did indeed want more road capacity. We are going to regret this decision in the not-so-distant future. The building has started, so the bridge is, unfortunately, going to go ahead, but I think that within months of it opening the call will be, “What on earth did you do that for when the congestion in the area and the car drive into the city are going to get worse and the rail link would have been a fantastic advantage?” Of course, we do have a rail bridge, of considerable antiquity. It is an iconic piece of rail architecture for the whole UK, but it does act as a bottleneck on a journey that more and more people want to make, in a way that they did not before. Even in a general atmosphere where railways have come back into their own, we are at times in danger of making the wrong decision.

I wish to discuss the mechanisms and the Government’s decision to re-privatise inter-city services on the east coast main line, because that is having an impact on investment on other inter-city routes. I have raised this matter previously and I do not apologise for doing so again, because it is important; I have not yet been given any clear answers from Ministers, so I am going to ask some of the same questions.

I wish to make some brief remarks on High Speed 2 and public investment in inter-city rail generally. There are different views across the House on HS2, but those of us who support it must deal with the danger of a perception that it will not have any benefits for the rest of the network. HS2 will enhance capacity on other key routes: trains will continue on the classic network to serve other destinations; space will be freed up for services to smaller towns and cities; and, providing high-speed platforms are properly integrated into existing stations, people across the country will have access to high-speed trains. We need that form of travel, in both directions. I understand the fear about the pull to the south-east, but that pull is happening in any case, for all sorts of other reasons, not least the lack of employment in the north. We need to address that, but not grasping the nettle is the wrong way to go.

Futurologists from 40 or 50 years ago might well have thought that people would not need to travel now because they would be able to talk to each other by all sorts of new mechanisms, and indeed they can. I used to tease my husband, who works in IT, in the academic community, which has always been quite far ahead on things such as networking, by asking him why he needed to travel to conferences and to London because he could do everything by video conferencing. I asked why on earth he was going yet again. Of course, as I pointed out to him when I thought about it, people cannot have conference dinners by video conferencing. That is not an entirely facetious point to make, because, as we all know from our party conferences, when people meet at events what goes on outwith the main setting in terms of networking, catching up with people and having those debates and conversations is hugely important. Human communication has not been supplanted by all the technology at our fingertips.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend is making a sensible point. Does she agree that trains also provide opportunities for human interaction, business talk, discussion and work to be done? Trains are wonderful things in that respect.

[Sheila Gilmore]

They certainly do provide those opportunities, but occasionally I hear more about other people’s business on the train than I want to know. For that reason, I am glad to see more quiet coaches. When my father used to complain about people talking on mobile phones on the train, I used to think that he was being an old fusspot. However, I have to say that although it is good to have some sort of business interaction on the train, it would be nice not to have it right in my ear when I am trying to work. Interestingly, on the east coast main line, the quiet coaches are now the most popular and most booked up of all the coaches. That suggests that I am not in a minority on the matter. It is true to say that we can do a lot of work on trains that we cannot do flying.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore]

My understanding is that when phase 2 is in place, we could save a full hour—perhaps slightly more—of the journey time. As we are talking about a long time scale, I am not averse in any way to looking at ways of improving the speed on existing rails. One thing East Coast has done, which is helpful, is introduce a train that leaves Edinburgh early in the morning and arrives in London at a time that allows people to attend meetings. It does that by having fewer stops, so there is always a trade off. By only stopping at Newcastle and then coming straight through, it has shaved off time. The only downside is that the train departs very early in the morning. We are privileged here in the House of Commons. As we go through until 10 pm on a Monday night, we do not start work at 10 am, which would be difficult.

Leaving aside the whole HS2 debate, we welcome the fact that intercity lines in other parts of the country are receiving significant public investment for electrification, new rolling stock and so forth. Of course, it is important to emphasise that all that investment is public and coming from the taxpayer. That fact was reinforced last month when the Office for National Statistics announced that it would reclassify Network Rail as a central Government body from September. That is an acknowledgement that it is not outwith the Government.

Part of the promise of privatisation was that it would generate investment, but it has not done so. We must be realistic about that. What about the level of private investment in other inter-city routes following the Government’s decision to prioritise the franchise competition for the east coast? I am sure that Members will remember that under the Government’s initial franchising timetable, a new contract for the west coast main line was due to start in October 2012, with Great Western starting in April 2013 and east coast in December 2013.

After the debacle of the west coast bidding process, a new timetable was announced last March. The east coast main line, which was previously last in the queue of those big franchises, was brought forward so that it would be let before April 2015. As the Government accepted the recommendations of the reports produced after what happened with west coast that only one major franchise should be dealt with at a time, that was only made possible by giving the current operator of the west coast main line—Virgin—a four-and-a-half-year franchise extension to April 2017. The operator of the Great Western line, First, was given a two-and-a-half year extension to September 2015. That is 77 months of extensions between the two operators.

Ministers who prioritised the east coast franchise and justified it by referring to the Brown review are presumably reiterating their belief that competition in the bidding process should drive private investment. Although franchise competition might achieve that, franchise extensions clearly do not. The Government have lost any bargaining chip they had in the process. Having made that set of decisions, they had no option but to negotiate with the existing operators. The only bargaining chip Ministers could use would be to threaten to call in East Coast’s parent company, Directly Operated Railways. The operators know the Government’s reluctance to do that and the very fact that they want to extract the east coast franchise from DOR shows that, quid pro quo, they would not want to put the other routes into DOR’s hands. That means that competition is effectively absent.

The companies have no incentive to invest during the remaining time for which they are operating the routes and have every incentive to demand significant subsidies. The extensions are likely to cost us, the taxpayers, dearly. In 2011-12, Virgin paid the Department a premium of £165 million and First Great Western paid £110 million. Will the Minister confirm that following the agreement of the extensions, payments of such an order are unlikely to be made? Perhaps he could confirm what sort of payments he anticipates. Will the Minister also confirm that apart from the roll-out of wi-fi on First Great Western, which we would have expected from any operator, the two extensions offer no improvement for passengers?

My key contention is that if the east coast franchise had not been prioritised, those extensions would not have been necessary and the competitions for the west coast and Great Western franchises could have been held much sooner had the Government wanted to pursue them.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Does that not illustrate that the determination to re-privatise the east coast main line is driven by dogma, not reality?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I think that it is. I do not propose to reiterate all that has been said by so many of my Opposition colleagues in several of the debates we have had on this subject about how East Coast has performed. Given the history, it is particularly frustrating. As I have campaigned on the issue and talked to people about it, I have found that the levels of support we get are extremely high.

People who are not politicians and who are not involved in the debate at that level are baffled as to why, when the east coast main line has already been through two difficult franchising periods, this should be happening in that way. Given what we have learnt, they ask, “Why are we doing this if it is working well? If it is working well, why not leave it in place and see what happens?” As I have said, that would not necessarily have prevented the Government proceeding with other franchises, if that is what they were determined to do—some people would certainly have preferred it if they had not been. It seems particularly perverse to pick this one. That is what many members of the public feel, and not just those who travel on the line regularly.

There is a lot of concern about how this will work out. If East Coast had been performing badly in the public sector, it would have made sense. An imperative to turn it around might have trumped the disadvantages of negotiating extensions on the west coast main line and the Great Western main line. But East Coast was and is performing well, and that defence is simply not available to Ministers.

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[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) on securing this debate, which has addressed some national issues. Important constituency concerns have been raised by hon. Members, including those who represent Plymouth, Brighton, Cleethorpes, Luton, Edinburgh, and St Austell and Newquay.

There has been shared agreement across the House that strengthening rail links between our cities is an important step to achieving balanced economic growth for individual cities, city regions, and the nation as a whole. I am sure that all Members who have spoken today will work to ensure that although individual disagreements may arise, the commitment to an ongoing programme of investment endures.

There has been much positive talk today about future developments, and I know that for many hon. Members, those projects cannot be delivered fast enough. I entered Parliament with a pledge to campaign for the electrification of the midland main line, and although some issues still need to be addressed, the improvements look on course to reach the east midlands by 2019, and Sheffield by 2020.

Electrification will ensure faster, more reliable services, as well as delivering environmental and efficiency gains. We have heard other examples of how planned projects will benefit communities, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), and other south-west MPs who are very much looking forward not only to electrification, but to modern Intercity Express Programme trains, investment in improved resilience, and even wi-fi and power sockets.

As we begin to plan for control period six spending in the next Parliament, we must consider how other links can be strengthened, new links made, and Beeching-era lines reopened where there is a clear business case to do so.

It is worth remembering just how far the rail industry has developed in the past 15 years. The 1997 Labour Government inherited a fragmented rail network. Years of underinvestment had left a dated fleet, much of it still using slam-door carriages, which was to prove inadequate against a backdrop of rising passenger numbers. The popular and successful inter-city brand had been broken up. There had been 1,000 days without orders, which had caused permanent damage to the supply chain. Disastrously, the recently privatised infrastructure body had little understanding of its assets, and Railtrack’s over-reliance on subcontractors put passengers’ safety in danger.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her speech. Would she say that it is a tragedy that Britain, which gave railways to the world and built them all over the world, is now importing railway equipment because in some cases we cannot build it ourselves?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that it is important that we support and develop our railway engineering industry, which has such a proud history and continues to provide important sources of employment, particularly in my area in the east midlands.

Contrary to what the hon. Member for Redcar said—I have to disagree with him on this—I think we should be proud of Labour’s achievements. After ending the failed Railtrack experiment and establishing a tough new regulator, our railways became the safest major European network by 2010. There was a major programme of investment in rolling stock. More than 5,000 new vehicles were ordered between 1997 and 2006 alone, both to replace older trains and to allow for an expansion of services. The number of long distance passengers, and the services run to accommodate them, doubled since the mid-1990s, and with that growth came new pressures on our existing lines. We are now accommodating the same number of passengers as we did in the 1920s, but on a network that is less than half the size. That is why the previous Government committed to a number of important projects to improve capacity and overall performance of the network, including the electrification of the Great Western main line to Swansea and key lines in the north-west, and a new generation of inter-city express trains to replace the ageing rolling stock on the Great Western and east coast main lines.

It was the Labour Government who committed to Crossrail and introduced a £6 billion upgrade of the Thameslink route that will massively increase capacity on one of the busiest stretches of track in Europe. After the completion of HS1 in 2007, Lord Adonis set out plans for a new network to relieve capacity constraints on our north-south main lines, and to provide better connections between cities in the midlands and the north. They will address some of the very slow journeys highlighted by the hon. Member for Redcar, and provide improved capacity and connectivity to our national network.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)]

It is an honour to address the debate this afternoon. I congratulate the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) on securing the debate and on the way he conducted it. His speech was interesting and thoughtful, and he proved by his journey time calculations and recalculations that he can do mathematics.

We heard some fascinating contributions from a number of other Members. The three Members from the south-west were united across the political divide in wanting to see improvements to train services in the south-west, particularly the three-hour train to Plymouth. I remember campaigning in the city, along with the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), back in 2007. The failure of investment about which she complained has not happened only under this Government. I can, of course, bring her good news. She quoted a fare of £271. Should she choose to travel tomorrow morning, there is a return fare of £92, so one needs to be careful about saying that only one fare is available.

I heard the pleas of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) about Mayflower 2020 in Plymouth. I do not know whether he will see President Christie turning up there. He invited me to come to a meeting, and I would be delighted to do so. I follow his lark in saying that I hope he is here for rather longer than just for 2015, and I am sure he will be.

I say to the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) that I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to go back to the constituency in the middle of the night to find that the film has been lost. The prospect of corresponding with him fills me with unbounded joy. I look forward to receiving and acting on his suggestions none the less.

The two Members representing Brighton shared a moment of political unity. I certainly hear their pleas. I can confirm that the Department received a draft in December of the report to which Baroness Kramer referred—the London to south coast rail study, which was carried out by Network Rail—and I expect to see a final version within the next couple of months.

I can bring some good news to my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) on the basis that Thameslink will see 116 new trains of eight and 12 cars coming into operation, which will directly benefit his constituents. I am delighted to tell him that when he opens his post tomorrow morning, he will find a letter from me accepting his challenge to come and travel on the early morning train. I very much look forward to doing that.

I was not entirely surprised to hear the contribution of the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins). He and I have enjoyed sparring over issues for the last few years. I listened with interest to his comments about the Birmingham Snow Hill line, and I am sure that he will want to raise his point about it with us again.

I understand the call of my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) for more initiative and private sector innovation in franchising. I hope that, through the direct award and the new refranchising process, we will be able to deliver that for him.

I enjoyed the contribution from the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), although I had obviously heard it before in previous debates of this nature. The simple fact is that the east coast main line is the worst-performing of the long-distance franchises. Its passenger satisfaction figure may be up, but it is still six points behind the figure for the west coast main line.

We heard a wide range of contributions today, and I am grateful to Members for taking the time to be here. The debate has shown how valuable the railways are to our country, and to communities throughout it.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Will the Minister give way?

[Stephen Hammond]

I am sorry, but I do not have time.

As for what was said by the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), let us have some honesty in this debate. When Labour was in office it crashed the economy, and gas and council tax bills doubled. Had her party been in office today, the average fare would have risen by 11% rather than 3.1%. Moreover, in 13 years, we saw just 9 miles of electrification. Just as we are dealing with the economic mess that was left behind by the last Government, we are determined to deal with the massive infrastructure deficit that we inherited. [Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Hammond]

My hon. Friend is right. We have consistently made the point that we are not only investing in High Speed 2 but that we are investing £37 billion in improvements across the network. He is right to pick out that example, which illustrates exactly what the Government have been saying—that capacity is being added across the network.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that 80% of freight in Britain goes by road, both cross-channel and within Britain, and that serious modal shift from road to rail cannot take place until the railways are capable of taking lorry trailers on trains. Will he look seriously at schemes for investing in rail freight capacity capable of taking lorries on trains?

[Stephen Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman is aware, of course, that there has been a huge increase of some 60% in rail freight over the past 10 years. The capacity that is being added will add the prospect and the potential for extra rail freight and extra transference from road to rail. If there are serious schemes, we will look at them, but they would have to justify the economic business case and provide better value than the capacity that we are adding, which will allow that transfer from road to rail.

High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Randall (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), to the Front Bench. It is a pleasure to see him there.

Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, at least from this side of the Chamber—I must say what a great view one gets from the back of the stands—I am happy to speak in support of amendment 17.

I know that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has had to go to Westminster Hall to check up on GCHQ, but, to use words that he would understand, I give him my fraternal solidarity and will support amendment 23. I know that it is rather impractical, but that does not always stop us supporting an amendment. The issues with Heathrow, which affect his constituents badly, also affect mine.

As the Heathrow loop is in the second phase of the project, we cannot have a decision on it. The Minister said that connectivity with Heathrow will be amply secured through Old Oak Common, so regardless of any decision on the expansion of Heathrow, which I hope will not happen, perhaps we can save a bit of money and scrap the Heathrow loop straight away. That would bring great benefits to the London borough of Hillingdon where we stand as one, although not to my constituency specifically because there will be tunnelling there. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) and I face some severe problems. It would help immeasurably if there was no Heathrow loop, because the tunnelling could be extended past the houses in Ickenham. There is understandably a considerable amount of opposition to HS2 emerging just next to those properties.

I will not take long, because I want to get on to the proposals on compensation and mitigation. Perhaps I am being rather optimistic. It is a very important subject. I would like to have had the chance to mention the awful position of the Hillingdon outdoor activities centre. I want that to be looked at. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner has written to the Minister about various matters and I back him up entirely.

Unlike the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, who will oppose the Bill tonight, I will support it in the hope and expectation that our gentle requests will be looked on more favourably if I am not too much of a pain during this early outing on this matter. However, I say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench that after this rare outbreak of good-natured bonhomie, I will be going back to the default position of grumpy old man of Uxbridge.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It behoves all of us who are sceptical about HS2 to suggest practical and realistic alternatives.

Some people say that the project is about capacity, not speed, and others say that it is about speed, not capacity, but most of the emphasis has been on capacity. The capacity problem is between London and Birmingham, not elsewhere in the country, where we could have more trains without any difficulty. It is that section of our railway network that I will address.

There is an alternative route from Birmingham Snow Hill to Paddington. The trains currently run to Marylebone, but they could easily run to Paddington, which would be quicker and would link up with Crossrail. InterCity 125s could run on that line from the centre of Birmingham to Paddington—a very convenient station—at very little expense. That would solve the capacity problem between London and Birmingham.

I will go further and say that that route should be electrified, which could be done at a modest cost. If it was electrified, electric trains could run directly from Birmingham Snow Hill—and, indeed, from Birmingham airport and elsewhere—into the City of London, Canary Wharf and beyond via a link to Crossrail at Old Oak Common.

[Nadine Dorries]

My constituency neighbour is a renowned expert on the railways. Would his proposal cost less than HS2? Does he have a figure for it?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My railway expert friends tell me that the electrification of that line would cost about £500 million and that the track work that would be required at Old Oak Common to link it to Crossrail would cost about £10 million. We are talking about tiny amounts of money in comparison with HS2.

There could also be a direct link to Heathrow for the electric trains, which would go off at Greenford and on to the Great Western main line. That would link to Heathrow at one end and to Crossrail at the other. Trains would be able to go from Heathrow to Birmingham airport or the centre of Birmingham, as well as from Canary Wharf to the centre of Birmingham. That would double the capacity between London and Birmingham very easily. The line could even go on to Stratford and there could be a transfer—although perhaps not an easy one—to the channel tunnel rail link and to Eurostar. That would solve the only real capacity problem, because the others involve train frequencies. My railway engineer and signalling friends say it is easy to run more trains, but the problem is that franchisees of privatised railways like crowded trains. It is more profitable to run crowded trains than half-empty trains, so if as many people as possible are crammed on to fewer trains, more profit is made.

[James Morris]

The hon. Gentleman talks about capacity between London and Birmingham, but HS2 addresses capacity around Birmingham. Commuter traffic has increased by about 20% in and around Birmingham—a capacity issue that HS2 will address. It is not just about capacity between London and Birmingham.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I would like to explore the hon. Gentleman’s argument further. I would have thought that was a local transport matter and that we need more investment in local transport, not HS2.

[James Morris]

The development of HS2 will free up capacity on the west coast main line and on the radial routes serving Birmingham. That is an important benefit of increasing capacity with HS2.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am convinced that elsewhere on the network train frequencies and train paths are the problem. We have far too few trains on the existing network, and we could run many more trains much more quickly. The only real tight capacity is between London and Birmingham. Beyond that it is not difficult.

I do not want to speak for too long, but I want to mention other routes. In 1990, British Rail ran a test train from London to Edinburgh on the east coast main line. They cleared the line of everything else, ran the train straight through with a two-minute stop at Newcastle, and did the journey in three and a half hours—two minutes faster than the original time proposed for HS2.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Is not the answer to my hon. Friend’s objection the fact that, as he said, they cleared the line of everything else? The point is that we cannot just clear the line of everything else.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Perhaps my hon. Friend will allow me to continue. Clearing the lines is obviously not possible all the time, but upgrading the line so that we can have through trains is not difficult. [Hon. Members: “It is!”] I have specifics. We need to double the viaduct north of Welwyn, and four-track the line between Huntingdon and Peterborough. We need flyovers at Peterborough and Newark, and we could then have non-stop trains straight through to Edinburgh if we wished. The train would have to slow down at Newcastle and York, but by and large the journey could be done in three and a half hours maximum. That is the east coast main line.

As we know, the midlands main line is going to be electrified, and we also want it to improve. With some track remodelling at Leicester and Derby we could make the trains run faster there. We need to straighten out the line at Market Harborough and restore the straighter line that used to exist, and we must take freight traffic off those three lines. That is the key to more train paths, because if we can take all the freight off those lines, we will not have a problem. To do that, however, we need an alternative. We have such an alternative: a GB freight route, which I have been promoting for some years with colleagues from the railway industry. We have a detailed scheme, carefully worked out and costed, to build a dedicated freight line from the channel tunnel to Glasgow, linking all the main conurbations of Britain, and capable of taking lorries on trains. We need to take freight off the road—and off the main lines, of course, but 80% of freight travels by lorry, not by container or other means. To get lorries on trains is crucial to modal shift, and to do that we need a gauge capacity that is capable of taking lorries on trains.

[Nadine Dorries]

The hon. Gentleman is incredibly generous in giving way a second time. Will he say why he feels that his proposal—which, knowing his interest in this subject over many years, I have no doubt is well thought out and accurate—has not been considered? Why is HS2 on the drawing board if the hon. Gentleman’s proposal is less invasive and more cost effective?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I thank the hon. Lady—my close neighbour—for her question. We took a team of 15 people, including rail constructers, and representatives from Eurotunnel and the supermarkets, to meet Geoff Hoon when he was Secretary of State for Transport. It was clear they were worried that our scheme might conflict with HS2, not because it would take up the same track, but because it might remove freight from the railway lines and make the case for HS2 weaker. We argued that HS2 could go ahead if it was thought essential, but that a GB freight route is much more vital to Britain’s economy than HS2 has ever been. What is the total cost of the scheme? A generous figure, based on outturn costs for HS1, would, we think, be less than £6 billion—a tiny fraction of HS2.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned various lines, links between the west coast and east coast main lines and so on, but he has not mentioned the Trent Valley spur on the west coast main line, on which Nuneaton station in my constituency sits. That is an extremely important junction, and the hon. Gentleman’s proposals will not do anything to help capacity there or improve fast services from Nuneaton, which HS2 would do.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I think I mentioned that on other lines there is no problem with capacity, provided we are prepared to increase train frequencies. We do not do that, however, because it is not profitable to do so while private franchisees can make more profit by running fewer trains with more people on them—very simple. The rest of the railway network clearly needs heavy investment, and Network Rail is undertaking a lot of that. This specific scheme would solve many problems and be a fraction of the cost of HS2. Indeed, upgrading the other lines I have suggested would solve almost all the capacity problems that we are now facing.

I am a passionate believer in railways, but if we are serious about them we must invest in dedicated rail-freight capacity, as I have suggested. At the moment the continent of Europe is building large rail-freight capacity right across the continent; indeed, trains can go from China to Europe even now. We will miss out on that if we cannot transport lorries on trains. We must be able to put lorry trailers on trains, or we will not see a shift from road to rail and the rest of Europe will leave us behind. For the sake of our economy, we must invest heavily in dedicated rail freight that is capable of taking lorries on trains.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend was here when this was discussed, but we tabled an amendment on Report that was agreed by the Government and which makes it clear that any contingency spend must be reported to the House annually.

We will continue to hold up the weaknesses of the management of HS2 until every one of them has been addressed. We want to see swift progress with the hybrid Bill and we shall scrutinise the latest strategic case, published this week, to satisfy ourselves that it is based on sound assumptions. The Government must drive down those contingency costs and have a clear strategy for doing so. This fiscally disciplined scrutiny is what one would expect from any credible official Opposition seeing a Government desperately mismanaging a project. We will go ahead with the project, but the Government must bring down the costs, and the benefits to the nation must be clear. We say: get a grip on the project, get control of the budget and get it back on track.

The increase in rail usage during our time in government was a record to be proud of, but we now face serious challenges. We understand that current and future capacity constraints on the existing rail network place a brake on regional and city growth. We know that demand for rail travel continues to grow, despite the tough economic times, and our support for a north-south line rests on tackling that capacity problem and supporting 21st century transport infrastructure. This week’s strategic case shows the intense pressure our major mainline stations are under, and not just in the south. In four years, there will be 200 people for every 100 train seats arriving into Birmingham New Street at 5 o’clock. Rail freight is growing at 3% a year, and HS2 would free up space for more freight trains on the east coast, west coast and midland main lines, and take those lorries off our roads.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

As I said in my speech, if we want a serious transfer of freight on to rail, we must make it possible to transport lorries on trains, but we cannot do that on the existing network because the gauge is not big enough. We need a dedicated freight network for that to happen.

[Mary Creagh]

I am not sure whether my hon. Friend is proposing that we build an entirely new freight network—

[Kelvin Hopkins]

indicated assent.

[Mary Creagh]

Okay, well perhaps we will park that thought for another day, because many others want to come in. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, though, that we have to shift freight from the roads and on to the more environmentally friendly railways, and we want to ensure that this line can do that. We want HS2 to give people a real choice between short-haul aeroplanes and the more environmentally friendly trains. We want to see more inter-city services for cities that currently have a poor service to London. We want HS2 to free the west coast, east coast and midland main lines for new commuter services between the midlands and the north.

These are not just transport arguments. They are social and economic arguments about the sort of country we want to be: a country in which no town or city is left behind. We want to ensure that cities such as Wakefield, which currently enjoys a twice-hourly inter-city service to London, are not downgraded. I obviously have a particular interest in Wakefield’s twice-hourly service to London, which I am happy to declare.

The public consultation on compensation arrangements is important, and the Government need to ensure that they respond fully to specific local issues such as those raised by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), and that proper compensation is given to residents who are affected or blighted, such as those in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson). We will maintain pressure on the Government to work closely with the communities affected.

We will vote today in favour of this paving Bill to allow preparatory expenditure on the scheme. We believe that how we build something is as important as what we build. This is not just a transport project; it is also a social and economic project. I am glad that the cities are already looking at how they can invest in skills so that local people can benefit from the employment opportunities that HS2 will bring. We are pleased that the Government have agreed to our amendments on vocational training audits for the scheme. That will help us to realise our Labour vision of creating 35,000 high-quality apprenticeships over the lifetime of the project, representing a step change in vocational education for this country’s young people. HS2 is not just a transport project; it is also an employment project.

We are glad that the Government have accepted our amendments on annual reports to Parliament on contingency spending to ensure that the scheme is kept on budget, and on linking the railway with active travel such as cycling and walking. Having said that, I will not make any promises about cycling the new cycle path that will run alongside the track. After cycling from London to Brighton, I think I know my limits. We will also continue to scrutinise Ministers to ensure that they work closely with UK companies to use procurement to deliver the maximum jobs, growth and skills for UK companies, small and large.

High Speed 2 is a huge project which, if managed properly, will bring great social, economic and environmental benefits to this country. The project is about how we deliver capacity for more passengers and services, and connectivity to bring cities closer together, while ensuring that the trains run on time. We will serve our great cities by having HS2 come in with a budget that is under control and with benefits that are clear for all to see. The Secretary of State should do his job and I will do mine, and my job is to ensure that he does his job properly.

High Speed 2 is a project that is in the national interest. It has suffered from the fiscal and project management incompetence of this Government, and I hope that this Secretary of State will get it back on track. Britain deserves better than this. It will fall to the next Labour Government, a one-nation Government, to build HS2—on time, on budget and in the national interest.