Regional Transport Infrastructure

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that. I hope other hon. Members take it as their cue to make similar representations on projects for which they seek funding, and I hope that the Government will give them the same support that they have given the hon. Gentleman.

I will make one final point on the importance of devolution. There is little point in giving regions the funding if we do not have the robust frameworks through which to decide where best to spend those resources. I know that my Yorkshire neighbour, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), gives a huge amount of consideration to that. He knows, as I do, that there is great potential in Yorkshire. The Great Yorkshire Way shows the power that investment can have in unlocking possibilities for businesses and communities across our region.

We also know that political leaders in the north are ready, as they have shown in recent weeks and months, to work constructively together and with stakeholders to make a real difference. We have seen great enthusiasm for devolution in Yorkshire; not everyone in this room is entirely convinced, but I am working on them.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. He tempts me on devolution. I am absolutely committed to devolution in Yorkshire, but we have to get the right type of devolution. He is a trailblazer with the city region devolution deal that he has struck with the Government. Does he agree that the best form of devolution to Yorkshire would be on a city region basis, including to Sheffield, Leeds, Hull and York?

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, which he has made with consistency and clarity over a number of years. I always enjoy having that debate, as we will be having in Leeds on Friday, although I am not sure whether he will be there.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am not sure I’m invited.

[Dan Jarvis]

I extend an invitation to him. There is an important debate to be had about Yorkshire devolution, and I was pleased to meet not only the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government but the Government Chief Whip at Fountains Abbey on Friday to discuss it. I think we agree that there is an absolute requirement to move as quickly as possible to put in place a system of devolution that will best serve our great county. We may not be able to agree on precisely what that is today, but it is important that we reach agreement in the near future.

When thinking about regional transport infrastructure, we should be guided by the simple principle that we should connect our people to the places that they want to go for work, to access public services and for leisure, creating opportunities where we can and connecting people to them. That is how we give people a stake in their communities and in our country.

As we prepare for the future and life beyond the Brexit debate, all our regions and nations must be given the very best opportunity to contribute to our national prosperity. If we do not invest in regional transport infrastructure, we will not give the people we serve the tools they need to thrive, nor will we answer the concerns that motivated people to vote leave in the referendum. However, we can only do that if the Government support us. There are real opportunities before the Minister to help us to do that. I hope he takes them up.

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[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan, and to follow the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). I thank him for securing the debate. I will touch briefly on devolution, which has proven to be the most intractable political situation in Yorkshire—much more so than Brexit—over the past five or 10 years. However, I am sure that there is a way forward, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is crucial that we find it, so that we can properly exert our influence over central Government on hugely important matters, such as transport investment in our counties.

As the Chancellor admitted in his Budget speech in November 2016, no other major developed country has as large a productivity gap between its capital and its second and third cities as the UK. We are the most regionally imbalanced nation, which is a huge issue that we must deal with. London is 50% more productive than the regions of England—not only the north—and has 50% higher wages, on average, than the north. There is a direct correlation there. This is not about spending for spending’s sake; it is about the prosperity of the people we represent. There is no doubt that infrastructure spending has been disproportionately higher in the capital than in the regions, and redressing that imbalance will transform the economy right across the UK.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, in seeking to redress that imbalance, it is critical to present an ask, as it were, to the Department for Transport? When the Cheltenham cyber-park needed transport infrastructure, the Department provided £22 million, showing that, where there is a clear goal to improve infrastructure, it is keen to help where it can.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I totally agree. I will come shortly to the clear ask, which has been set out for us by Transport for the North.

The Government are doing much. By 2021, infrastructure investment spending as a percentage of GDP will be at its highest for the last 30 years, while the national productivity investment fund will increase to £37 billion by 2023-24. The Government recognise that this is an issue. We must always make sure that we spend wisely and, in many cases, the minimum amount, because this is taxpayers’ money.

However, in my view there is a difference between recurrent spending—much of which is important but which we clearly have to keep under control, making sure that we run a surplus, rather than a deficit—and investment spending. A business would treat the two things differently in its accounts. Businesses have balance sheets and they also look at profit and loss. Investment spending goes on the balance sheet. We should look at investment spending in our regions in a completely different light from other types of spending, particularly in the north.

I support Transport for the North’s recent strategic plan. The hon. Member for Barnsley Central rightly referred to £3 being spent per capita in London for every £1 spent per capita in the north. However, it is not all to do with central Government spending or central allocations. Much of it is about local authority spending and private sector investment. It is important that we recognise that difference. Nevertheless, Transport for the North’s strategic transport plan sets out very clearly the £70 billion of spending needed between now and 2050, which would contribute an extra £100 billion gross value added to our economy and 850,000 jobs. That is a compelling case, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) referred to earlier.

Yes, part of it is about Northern Powerhouse Rail, which is so important to connect Liverpool to Manchester, to Bradford, to Leeds, to Hull and to Scarborough, and to go up into the north-east as well, but when that is delivered is also key. I would like my hon. Friend the Minister to consider, if possible, in his closing remarks when Northern Powerhouse Rail will be delivered, because the key ask in the Transport for the North strategic plan is that it be delivered to coincide with High Speed 2 delivery in 2033, and that would involve bringing forward the very important Northern Powerhouse Rail plan.

I again congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley Central on initiating the debate. I look forward to listening to further contributions.

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[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, Ms Ryan, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on securing this important debate.

The figures are plain to see, and I am afraid I cannot agree with the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths). I am sure the level of investment in the year ’50 was wonderful; it certainly is not in the year ’19. My issue for the Minister is fairness. We have seen tables produced by the Library detailing the inequalities in investment between London and the south-east and the northern regions, particularly the north-east. It is clear that there is a question of fairness.

I know figures are manipulated. Yesterday, I attended a debate on school funding and there were arguments about whether funding for schools has increased and, depending on which baseline is used, whether local government funding has increased, but I want to talk about the actual experience of my constituents. We have very old Pacer trains, overcrowding and a lack of resilience on the A19, which is the main arterial route that serves my constituency. It is a potential engine of growth that is so important to the future prosperity of the region. There are accidents on a weekly basis—on a daily basis, when the weather is inclement—and that causes massive disruption. We really need the Government to look carefully at where money is spent. They have a moral and political obligation to tackle the inequalities in investment with regard to the older industrial areas—mine is a former coalmining area—that are being left behind, and they have an opportunity to address that inequality.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The A19 runs through my constituency as well, as the hon. Gentleman may know. He makes a good point about fairness, but does he concede that the point is not a party political one? The situation has been going on for decades under Governments of different political persuasions.

[Grahame Morris]

I do not want to delay things by making a lengthy reply, but everything is political in this place and, whatever has gone on before, there is an opportunity to put things right now. I appeal to the Minister in the interest of fairness to address some of the fundamental issues. This is not a pipe dream. It is important, and it is about a vital part of the national infrastructure. Please do not leave the north-east behind.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

It is an absolute pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Ryan. I am not a huge reader of Tom Clancy, but I think that Jack Ryan could take your correspondence course when it comes to bravery in public office, so thank you very much indeed. I congratulate my friend the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on securing the debate, and all hon. Members who participated in the wide-ranging conversation.

I know that the hon. Member for Barnsley Central, with his mayoral hat on, will hope, as do the Department and I, that he will be able to complete the devolution deal that he has in mind for the Sheffield city region, releasing powers and funding. Although I know that is not always the position held on the Government Benches, we have been working closely with him on that. As he said, transport is essential for prosperity, growth and wellbeing across the whole country. We recognise that good transport infrastructure is absolutely essential to productivity. That point was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who highlighted the productivity gap in this country. That means delivering new infrastructure, from strategic and regional priorities all the way down to the local level. I will touch on all of those levels, while addressing as many of the points that have been raised by hon. Members as I can.

As hon. Members will know, in 2017 the Government published a very ambitious transport investment strategy, setting out our ambition to build a stronger and more balanced economy within the industrial strategy more widely, and responding to local growth priorities. That has conditioned the investments we have made ever since.

On the road side—hon. Members know that I am the roads Minister—we have invested heavily in existing transport infrastructure and new schemes, with some £15 billion being spent through road investment strategy 1 between 2015 and 2020. In the 2018 Budget the Government published objectives for road investment strategy 2, which will run from 2020 to 2025 and include £25.3 billion to be made available to further develop and improve the strategic road network. We are developing an affordable and deliverable investment plan for RIS2, which will be published later this year.

I could not help noticing that the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) was extremely rude about road building and called it catastrophic. Does that constitute a change of policy on the part of the whole Labour party? I encourage her not to think of it in that way, because road investment strategy 2 not only includes hundreds of millions of pounds for cycling and walking schemes and an enormous investment in skills, which she cares very much about, but paves the ways for autonomous and electric vehicles, which will be the vehicle—if I may use the pun—for the decarbonisation and greening of our economy in the longer term.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jesse Norman]

I do not have time; I apologise.

In the 2018 Budget we also provided a top-up of £420 million for local roads, particularly to repair potholes. A share of £3.5 billion of the national roads fund over five years from 2020-21 will fund improvements in the middle tier of the country’s busiest and most economically important local authority A roads, such as the A66, which connects Cumbria to the north-east. I have made no secret of the fact that, in the spending review, I am pressing for a local roads settlement that follows a similar five-year pattern so that local authorities have more visibility and more capacity to make strategic decisions at a level that is, hopefully, at least as good as the present one.

Of course, we are not just investing in the strategic road network; we are continually investing in upgrades and improvements to rail, including £1 billion that has been invested so far in the great north rail project and £3 billion that will be spent over the next few years to improve rail journeys between Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York. Every train on the Northern and TransPennine networks will be new or modernised by 2020.

On Northern Powerhouse Rail, the strategic outline business case has been received and is under review. We expect to develop a response to it in close co-operation with partners across the north. It has been suggested that scrapping HS2 is the best way to secure Northern Powerhouse Rail, but that is naive, if I may say so. The Government’s commitment remains unchanged. HS2 is one of the keys to developing Northern Powerhouse Rail, not least because Northern Powerhouse Rail trains will use HS2 infrastructure, including on the approach to Manchester and between Sheffield and Leeds. That may mean that HS2 infrastructure will have to be built first, as a priority, before NPR can be implemented on those stretches.

Rightly, active travel has been mentioned and has been a focus of the debate. The hon. Member for York Central spoke about mode shift, and I could not agree more—I spoke at the Modeshift awards earlier today. It involves investment in air quality, cycling and walking schemes, our new road to zero strategy and the future of mobility. We are heavily involved in all those things.

We have published a cycling and walking investment strategy, which sets out ambitions for 2040. So far we have made £1 billion available to local bodies over the next five years to invest in local cycling and walking schemes. We have supported 46 local authorities on specific schemes that they have in mind. I share the view of the hon. Member for Barnsley Central and am delighted that he is appointing an active travel commissioner. I take my hat off to Chris Boardman and to the other highly engaged local teams at mayoral authorities that are making transformative differences.

There is a question about the city versus town balance. Recent Government initiatives, such as the future high streets fund and the stronger towns fund, which was just announced, have tried to recognise that. That city focus has been well picked up by mayoral authorities, however, and in Manchester we have invested £250 million through the transforming cities fund, of which £160 million is going on cycling and walking schemes through the transformative Beelines project.

Hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have expressed concerns about regional investment. There cannot be much doubt that successive Governments have under-invested in the north, which we recognise. However, we are investing in the north not just because of that, but because it is the right thing to do and it is essential to our future productivity as a nation.

The hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) rightly mentioned perceptions of unfairness. He is probably more sophisticated than I am in looking at the specific regional differences, but he ought to know that new figures from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority show that central Government’s planned transport capital investment spend will be higher in the north-west, north-east, and Yorkshire and Humber than for London, the south-east and the south-west as a whole. That conceals regional variations, as he will be aware, but it is a highly encouraging sign overall.

I will crack on in the few minutes I have left, because I want to leave some time for the hon. Member for Barnsley Central to reply. At a regional level, we have supported sub-national transport bodies, which are important from our point of view, particularly in the production of a regional evidence base for our major road network. Hon. Members will know about the transformative move that took place on 1 April 2018, when Transport for the North became a statutory body. It is not just about the north; the Government have been clear that investment in the south-west is also important to that region’s economy, as the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) touched on. That is why we have just published “Investing in the South West”, building on ambitious plans to grow the region’s economy.

The hon. Member for Barnsley Central rightly said that there has been a lot of focus on cities. I have mentioned three obvious ways in which we have tried to address that head-on: first, through devolution deals and wider city regions; secondly, through the £2.5 billion transforming cities fund; and thirdly, through the new stronger towns fund and the future high streets fund, which comprise nearly £1.3 billion.

The future of mobility is of great importance. We are thinking hard about how to improve mobility, which does not just mean the autonomous and electric vehicles that will require higher quality road surfaces and that underpin the need for continued road investment. It also involves the £150 million that we have invested in Transport for the North for smart and integrated ticketing and the investment we have made in future mobility zones across the west midlands.

In the minute remaining, I will quickly pick up on some of the points raised by hon. Members. The hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), who is no longer here, which is a pity, asked whether we were dragging our feet on western rail links to Heathrow. The answer is absolutely not. The consultation concluded in June 2018 and Network Rail intends to submit proposals for planning powers later this year.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely) asked a whole host of questions—I wish I could respond to all of them. I have looked closely at the Green Book and think there is still work to be done on it. Frankly, in many ways the Treasury takes a Department for Transport lead on it, precisely to get away from an overly financialised or economic view. We have a five-case model, which includes environmental impacts and others. If hon. Members would like to come and discuss with officials how that works in specific cases, I would be happy to curate a roundtable or something of that kind.

A question was asked about the fragmentation of transport, which is always a concern and something that the Williams reviews is looking at. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is no longer here, made a point about connectivity. I could not agree with him more. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) expressed her gratitude. I remind her of the definition of gratitude in “Yes Minister”, which is, “a lively expectation of favours to come”.