Transport: North-east

Debate between Lord Beamish and Tom Blenkinsop

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) on securing the debate.

My constituency, like that of the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), is rural, although it is not quite as large as hers. She made an interesting point, because in parts of my constituency, too, without access to a car people cannot even get to the public transport system. Many of my constituents travel out of North Durham—as hers do from her constituency—to work in Teesside, Tyneside or Wearside. The important thing, therefore, is to have good transport links to those jobs that exist along the A1 corridor and in areas in the north-east.

Is the answer a metro for my constituency? No, it is not. My hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South talked about quality contracts, but she knows that I disagree with her about that. A quality contract would have done nothing for North Durham or, I hasten to add, for the constituency of the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, because the Tyne and Wear councils would have got control over buses in my constituency. What saddens me a little is that the councils of the north-east, having lost that case—anyone who looked at the finances knew it was going to be lost, right from the beginning—seemed then to park the issue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) spoke about Oyster cards and smart ticketing. It is vital that the combined authority and the councils sit down with the bus operators to consider how to introduce things such as shared ticketing and Oyster-style arrangements. Bus companies tell me that they are willing to speak about the situation but that they are not getting a great deal of traction from councils.

We will do the travelling public of the north-east a great disservice if we simply wait for the national Government to come up with something or think that some future regulation will be the answer. The combined purchasing power of north-east councils is strong, given what they put into security services, for example. Leadership is needed, rather than thinking that in future we will somehow get a quality contract mark 2, as though that were the only game in town. I do not think it is.

There are opportunities to make a real difference, such as being able to change tickets between different operators, a smart-ticketing process like an Oyster card, or some agreement on children and young people’s fares, which I know that the bus companies are prepared to look at. Is that partly down to the Government? Yes, but some things are in our hands, and combined authorities and council leaders could act. I press them to start negotiations now to see what can be done, at least in the short term.

We have no large employers in my constituency, which is a former coal-mining area, and many people move out to work around the region. The other main network for my constituents, apart from the buses, is the railway and Chester-le-Street station. It is 10 minutes from that station to Central station in Newcastle. However, trying to get any investment, not only in upgrading the station but by ensuring that the operators stop more regularly and at times when people actually want to travel, is very difficult.

That could be dealt with straightaway by ensuring more stopping services and hourly services not only during the day—that is what we have at times; at other times they are half hourly—but at peak times, to ensure that we have regular stopping services at Chester-le-Street. That would avoid many people having to use their cars to travel into Tyneside, as they do at the moment.

Increasingly, my constituents complain about the poor service that they get from the operators, whether that involves trains being late, trains not turning up or, when they do turn up, trains being frequently very overcrowded. People sometimes do not even have the opportunity to stand for 10 minutes, because there is not enough room for them to get on at the station in Chester-le-Street in order to go to Newcastle Central.

I ask the Minister to look at the situation. The formidable Alex Nelson, the stationmaster at Chester-le-Street, always argues very strongly when it comes to refranchising for more trains to stop, but there seems to be a blind spot on the part of the operators and the people who draw up the timetables. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central talked about extending the metro, but I am sorry; I do not think that is the answer, certainly in parts of my constituency and in Berwick and other places. We need investment in rail—whether it be the Blyth-to-Tyneside route, the Leamside line or others—to increase capacity on the east coast main line, but I fear that over the next 20 to 30 years, most of the money will be sucked into the vanity project that is High Speed 2 and High Speed 3.

Some people in the region, including the chamber of commerce, try to lecture us about how important that project is to the north-east, but I do not think it is. It will be a drain on investment—investment that could go into rail projects in the north-east. It is not even a matter of jam tomorrow; it is a matter of the ingredients and possibly the recipe for creating jam. It will have a detrimental effect on some of the small changes that could be made to the north-east rail network that would make a huge difference to connectivity. The one thing that always gets me is how long it takes to travel from Tyneside to Teesside on a track that with some investment could be radically improved. I do not see that happening in the next few years, because, like I say, most of the rail investment in this country will be sucked into HS2 and HS3, which will not benefit my constituents or many other north-east constituents.

We need to put forward doable plans, but we should not think that everything is in the hands of central Government. On buses, there are certainly things that could be done now. The answer to getting people in the north-east out of their cars and on to public transport is not necessarily just to upgrade more roads. The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed has campaigned for many years for the dualling of the A1, but that will not directly improve connectivity in the north-east or the region’s economy. Although that would be a good feather in her cap, it is certainly not a priority when it comes to the sea change in connectivity that we need to ensure happens in what, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central said, is quite a small region. People in the north-east increasingly do not live near their jobs but have to travel around the region, and it is difficult for people without direct access to public transport to get to those jobs.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I am on the other side of the argument. Re-regulation of buses is acutely needed, particularly in my constituency and especially in the rural parts of east Cleveland. My main concern is the growth in the use of taxis. I am not at all against hire cabs, but there is encroaching monopolisation in the industry. An aspect of transport that is not talked about is the ever-increasing employment of people in the industry, which is highly unregulated and does not best serve my constituents. One Middlesbrough company with a dubious background is encroaching into Redcar and Cleveland. My main concern is that the lack of regulation of rail and particularly local buses, where that problem is acute, is causing ever-growing demand for taxi services, particularly among disabled users.

[Mr Jones]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, but the quality contract was put up as the only game in town for the north-east bus network. I am sorry, but it never was. Proper regulation is important, but the way that it was done meant that it never stacked up financially. It would have meant that my constituency was more poorly served; for example, Durham taxpayers would have subsidised the Tyne and Wear metro system.

I hear what my hon. Friend says about taxis. I have scars on my back from my time in charge of taxi licensing at Newcastle City Council. May I give him some advice? If the political will is there, the regulation is there to be used; it is a matter of how it is used locally. I accept that that is not easy, because taxi drivers are a vocal section of the local electorate, but we made some major changes when I was in charge of taxi licensing in Newcastle. The regulations are there; it is a matter of how they are used.

Was there anything for the north-east in today’s autumn statement? No, there was not. There is a reason for that: the only bits of the north-east that were ever going to get anything under this Government or the previous Government were those with Conservative Members of Parliament. It is not surprising, for example, that money has gone into the A66 and the A1. Those Governments have made pork barrel politics a new art form. It is sad that people in the north-east are being penalised by the Government and denied any major structural investment just because they do not vote Conservative.