Great Western Railway Routes

Debate between Kevin Foster and Johnny Mercer

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gray]

rose—

[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

I think my hon. Friend was there.

[Kevin Foster]

That is very ungentlemanly of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer). I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

You will be delighted, Madam Deputy Speaker, to know that my speech will be very brief indeed.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) for securing this debate. I shall not repeat what has already been said. I am going to disappoint my father again—I am no railway engineer. He dragged me round, trying to introduce me to the lost art of trainspotting when I was a young man, but it never caught on.

I want to talk about why the rail connection is important to my city, Plymouth, and why we as a Government need to get it right, to deliver for that part of the world. I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray). For much of the time we have a remarkable service, though there are some serious challenges to be faced. We must rise to the challenge of severe weather, without denigrating everything we have already achieved. That would do us a disservice.

Almost two years ago exactly, the Dawlish rail disaster happened. The railway fell into the sea, cutting off my city, as has been mentioned. The idea that the Government have done nothing since then is one of the myths in the literature from the Opposition that is piling up in my office. In the past two years, £70 million has been invested to keep that railway open and to increase resilience generally in the south-west. That is not an insignificant sum. We have that resilience at Dawlish. Admittedly, it sometimes faces challenging weather, but the weather may be a little beyond our control.

I urge the Government not to heed the divisive words of those who seek to further their own personal agenda in this rail debate. Many of us in the south-west feel that we have had investment to a point, but we now need to go to the next level. Let me explain why that is important. As I said, I am no rail engineer, but I am an extremely mediocre politician. That gives me the opportunity to knock on people’s doors in Plymouth and hear what is important to them. People often ask me why, despite our history in Plymouth and our astonishing Janner spirit that has seen us conquer the seas and make the largest contribution to this country’s defence in matériel and men, and despite reviving ourselves spectacularly after a devastating blitz during the second world war, we still have in our city some of the most deprived communities in the United Kingdom. The reasons are many, and clearly far too varied for this debate, but the answers are part of it. We must address the life chances we give people in Plymouth. If we were to cross a particular bridge in Plymouth tonight, we would see the average life expectancy drop by seven and a half years—that is seven and a half years in my city.

We must aggressively fight our way out of the state dependency that has dominated our city since the heady days of the 1980s, when 35,000 Plymothians worked at the dockyard. As the economy and society have changed, we as a city have changed with them; the central economy based around the dockyard has given way to a bright, positive and emboldened city that has become a hub for small businesses and start-ups, driving an astonishing 48% drop in unemployment in the last Parliament.

We have two world-class universities, but they are further from an airport than any in the UK. Marjon University is ranked first in this country for social mobility, which is really important in Plymouth. We as a Government must do everything we can to assist its onward development in that respect.

[Kevin Foster]

My hon. Friend is making some powerful points, which also relate to my constituency, where we, too, are trying to diversify. Does he agree that that is what makes the debate so important, particularly given the comments by the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) about the need for western access to Heathrow, which acts as the south-west’s key air link?

[Johnny Mercer]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. At its heart, this is about developing opportunities and bringing skilled employment to places outside London—to communities that have been deprived for so long.

Plymothians have adapted to the challenge of modern Britain in a way that only they can—with a positivity and a spirit that make some of us proud to call Plymouth our home. However, we as a Government must now play our part in that revival and tackle the single totemic issue that will fuel this onward journey towards a better, more prosperous and more healthy Plymouth. The biggest, most rewarding and highest-pay-off issue the Government could get right in the next five years is this railway. The jobs, the opportunities for our young people and the skilled manufacturing opportunities will come only if we have a transport link that is resilient, fast and befitting of a 21st century Britain. I say again that this is the totemic issue for this Parliament for us in the south-west.

At the last election, Plymothians showed their true colours and, for the first time, elected three Conservative Members of Parliament. Plymothians have aspirations, and they want life chances, and we need to do everything we can as a Government to enable them to achieve those and to provide them with the ladder, so that we can bring my city forward and enable it to achieve the potential it so clearly has. The rail link is the single thing that will do that to the greatest effect.