Inter-City Rail Investment

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) on securing this debate, which has addressed some national issues. Important constituency concerns have been raised by hon. Members, including those who represent Plymouth, Brighton, Cleethorpes, Luton, Edinburgh, and St Austell and Newquay.

There has been shared agreement across the House that strengthening rail links between our cities is an important step to achieving balanced economic growth for individual cities, city regions, and the nation as a whole. I am sure that all Members who have spoken today will work to ensure that although individual disagreements may arise, the commitment to an ongoing programme of investment endures.

There has been much positive talk today about future developments, and I know that for many hon. Members, those projects cannot be delivered fast enough. I entered Parliament with a pledge to campaign for the electrification of the midland main line, and although some issues still need to be addressed, the improvements look on course to reach the east midlands by 2019, and Sheffield by 2020.

Electrification will ensure faster, more reliable services, as well as delivering environmental and efficiency gains. We have heard other examples of how planned projects will benefit communities, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), and other south-west MPs who are very much looking forward not only to electrification, but to modern Intercity Express Programme trains, investment in improved resilience, and even wi-fi and power sockets.

As we begin to plan for control period six spending in the next Parliament, we must consider how other links can be strengthened, new links made, and Beeching-era lines reopened where there is a clear business case to do so.

It is worth remembering just how far the rail industry has developed in the past 15 years. The 1997 Labour Government inherited a fragmented rail network. Years of underinvestment had left a dated fleet, much of it still using slam-door carriages, which was to prove inadequate against a backdrop of rising passenger numbers. The popular and successful inter-city brand had been broken up. There had been 1,000 days without orders, which had caused permanent damage to the supply chain. Disastrously, the recently privatised infrastructure body had little understanding of its assets, and Railtrack’s over-reliance on subcontractors put passengers’ safety in danger.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her speech. Would she say that it is a tragedy that Britain, which gave railways to the world and built them all over the world, is now importing railway equipment because in some cases we cannot build it ourselves?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that it is important that we support and develop our railway engineering industry, which has such a proud history and continues to provide important sources of employment, particularly in my area in the east midlands.

Contrary to what the hon. Member for Redcar said—I have to disagree with him on this—I think we should be proud of Labour’s achievements. After ending the failed Railtrack experiment and establishing a tough new regulator, our railways became the safest major European network by 2010. There was a major programme of investment in rolling stock. More than 5,000 new vehicles were ordered between 1997 and 2006 alone, both to replace older trains and to allow for an expansion of services. The number of long distance passengers, and the services run to accommodate them, doubled since the mid-1990s, and with that growth came new pressures on our existing lines. We are now accommodating the same number of passengers as we did in the 1920s, but on a network that is less than half the size. That is why the previous Government committed to a number of important projects to improve capacity and overall performance of the network, including the electrification of the Great Western main line to Swansea and key lines in the north-west, and a new generation of inter-city express trains to replace the ageing rolling stock on the Great Western and east coast main lines.

It was the Labour Government who committed to Crossrail and introduced a £6 billion upgrade of the Thameslink route that will massively increase capacity on one of the busiest stretches of track in Europe. After the completion of HS1 in 2007, Lord Adonis set out plans for a new network to relieve capacity constraints on our north-south main lines, and to provide better connections between cities in the midlands and the north. They will address some of the very slow journeys highlighted by the hon. Member for Redcar, and provide improved capacity and connectivity to our national network.