Transport Connectivity: Merseyside

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Robertson. I join my comrades in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) for securing today’s important debate.

This Government have attempted to make levelling up their watchword of the day, but instead of tackling regional inequalities, they are rolling back on their promises, abandoning northern towns and cities to cope with failing transport infrastructure.

The integrated rail plan was seen as a once- in-a-generation opportunity to tackle fragmentation, deregulation and underfunding in our railways. It recommended a new line between Liverpool and Manchester, which would have transformed Merseyside, promising to bring 100,000 jobs to urban areas across the north and contributing £3.4 billion to the economy by 2040. Instead, the north has once again been failed, with no significant improvements to journey times, compromised capacity for local and freight services, and the promise of severe disruption and delays.

The bleak reality is that, with spending per head in the north half of that spent in London, transport across Merseyside and in the broader region is woefully lacking. People needing to get to work on time or get to hospital appointments are left wanting, forced to travel for hours. In failing to integrate Liverpool into High Speed 2 and the Northern Powerhouse Rail network, this Government have undermined economic growth in the city region. It has condemned us to up to six years of disruption to existing lines coming in and out of Liverpool, costing at least £280 million in every year of that disruption. If this Government are truly serious about levelling up for so-called left behind areas such as my own city of Liverpool, they need to put their money where their mouth is. Instead, they have shown once again that their promises ring hollow.

Labour leaders in the north-west and elsewhere are leading the way in investing in integrated sustainable transport systems. Liverpool’s metro Mayor Steve Rotheram has done some incredible work to roll out state-of-the-art, fully accessible and publicly-owned trains for the Merseyrail network later this year. He has already begun to deliver on a 600 km network of cycling and walking routes for the city region. He has secured £710 million to invest in further infrastructure improvement, including new green bus routes, and he submitted a welcome bid of £667 million to re-regulate and increase bus services across the network, to begin the roll-out of zero-emission hydrogen vehicles and to slash bus fares.

The task before us is enormous. We need radical change to undo the decades of decline of our transport network. The piecemeal policies and additional funding allocated so far do not face up to the scale of the challenge ahead. Instead, we need additional powers for combined authorities to bring services such as Merseyrail into public hands. We need the Government to engage with, support and finance the radical and ambitious transport plans that the metro Mayor is implementing.