Camp Hill Line Railway Stations, Birmingham Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Transport
Khalid Mahmood
Main Page: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)Department Debates - View all Khalid Mahmood's debates with the Department for Transport
Camp Hill Line Railway Stations, Birmingham
Khalid Mahmood Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
It is always a privilege to serve under your stewardship, Ms Nokes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali) has secured a very important debate, because we in Birmingham now have the clean air zone, which affects a lot of constituents on the train lines across the city. A lot of my constituents have relatives in the Camp Hill and Hall Green areas, and they find it difficult to meet the additional expense to go through the clean air zone, so they want to use the train lines across the city to get to those places. Unfortunately, we were not successful in that.
We have one train station in my constituency, which was built because of the Commonwealth games. We wanted Hamstead Hall and other stations to be updated so that more people could use public transport, and particularly trains, but we had a different idea from our Mayor, who wanted to create a bus service connecting Walsall and Birmingham through my constituency. It was supposed to happen, but it did not. After taking money from the HS2 connectivity fund, it still did not go ahead, because there was not enough preparation to do it. Through the consultation period, which lasted almost two years, my constituents were very distressed because their inputs to the consultation were not seen as appropriate, and the right answers were not given. I remember attending a huge number of the meetings myself.
In Birmingham, we have fantastic infrastructure, particularly our train lines, but that is no good to my constituents if it is not connected. That is the direct responsibility of Mayor Andy Street. I hope that, rather than looking at new white elephants, he will look at the existing structure that we have so that our constituents do not have to suffer greater amounts of nitrogen oxide gases polluting our city and community.
We want to ensure that we have good, clean transport across the city, which is why I support my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne).