Transport Connectivity: North-west England

Lizzi Collinge Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms McVey. In the few minutes available to me, I would like to put transport in the north-west into perspective. I would not like anything I say to be taken as a criticism of the mayor or of Transport for Greater Manchester. The Bee network, which is an excellent scheme, has put Greater Manchester to the situation London has had for the last 45 years, which we see as progress.

As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) has just said, investment in transport is vital for economic growth. However, when we look at the national objectives, and as we have seen forever—since the second world war—more money is going into London and the south-east than the north-west. For all of Transport for Greater Manchester’s successes, it has had to fight the Department for Transport to get extra investment for Metrolink and fight Labour and Conservative Ministers to get money for investment.

There is great potential in the north-west. In fact, we would get more out of investment in transport links in the north-west than the south-east, because of what we are, in effect, doing when we invest in London and the south-east. All transport investment creates jobs and growth, but in London and the south-east we are then, in effect, subsidising congestion, because we get so much congestion that we need more investment afterwards. That is not the situation in Greater Manchester and the north-west. I am not against the Lower Thames crossing, but three quarters of a billion pounds has already been spent on assessing whether it will be any use whatever, and that money would benefit transport in Greater Manchester, and jobs and investment for the whole country, much more than it will the Lower Thames area.

[Dr Andrew Murrison in the Chair]

We have suffered, in that we are not getting High Speed 2 at the moment. I think the campaign to get the rail link from Birmingham to Manchester and Manchester airport should continue. It is extraordinary to see the billions of pounds that have been spent on high-speed rail from London to Birmingham, mainly on tunnels.

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that some of the benefits of HS2 have been masked by the name High Speed 2 and that one of the main benefits of HS2 is actually capacity, which we desperately need on the railways?

[Graham Stringer]

My hon. Friend is precisely right: the real case for High Speed 2, as I am afraid it will always be called, was capacity. We are not getting that extra capacity between Birmingham and Manchester without HS2. If that capacity were to happen—it should happen—it would lead to the necessity of extra investment in the rail system east, west and internally within Greater Manchester. It would lead to more investment, so we need to campaign for it. All we have at the moment is an extension to the London underground system, which will benefit London and Birmingham.

The hon. Member for Hazel Grove mentioned the Metrolink going to Stockport, and I agree with her. For the first time for nearly a quarter of a century, we do not have viable plans that we know will happen, and we may have to carry on fighting Ministers and the Department for Transport for the next stage. Obviously, I would like trams to go to Middleton, as I represent part of it, but I agree that trams going to Stockport and other parts of the conurbation—perhaps Leigh as well—would mean transport and economic development. So I think we have to keep campaigning and making the case that bucks spent on transport in Greater Manchester will get us more than money spent in London and the south-east.

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) for securing this important debate.

My constituency is semi-urban and semi-rural. Without good public transport, my constituents cannot get around, and the visitors we so enjoy having in our area cannot get in. A lot of people in my community struggle with access to services such as GPs and hospital appointments and with getting to work. That creates more pressure on services such as patient transport services and GP home visits. It also affects the nature of my constituency, in that we have an ageing population, with fewer young families able to move in. My rural businesses and organisations that represent them, such as the Sedbergh Economic Partnership, also tell me that transport connectivity in rural areas is a massive bar to growth, because businesses cannot get the staff they need to expand.

Sedbergh itself is struggling at the minute. There has been a bus service change, so the service is now less accessible and frequent. At my suggestion, Sedbergh set up a bus users’ group—I am a big fan of buses and bus users’ groups. In Lancashire we have a fantastic bus users’ group, the Lancaster Bus Users’ Group, of which I am a proud member.

I thank the Government for their investment in bus services—£27 million in Lancashire and £4.2 million in Westmorland and Furness. I hope to see my local authorities take on the new powers that the Government will give them, so that we ensure we have rural bus services that serve my constituents, work together, fit together and fit in with people’s lives.

I am also a big fan of trains. My constituency has the highest main line train station in England, in Dent. It is beautiful, although it is not actually in Dent village, which causes some confusion. We have some other fantastic stations, such as Garsdale, which is also beautiful, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) will know, and Arnside. However, we have real problems with accessibility, so older people and people with disabilities cannot get the train—when the train turns up. Because these are not areas with huge populations, they struggle to access grant services, such as the Access for All fund. There is real inequity in how some of the funds for station improvements are allocated.

Finally, I want to talk a little about active travel, which is important. Active travel means moving ourselves around, whether by wheeling in a wheelchair, cycling on a bike or walking. It is good for our health, and spending more time in London, with its fantastic public transport service, I have walked a lot more. I have actually lost weight since the election—I think that is unheard of—because I am walking so much. That shows the health benefits of an integrated public transport system and proper transport connectivity.

I want to highlight a visionary project in my constituency, the Lune Valley Greenway, which is a path that people can walk, wheel or cycle on from the coast at Morecambe right into the Yorkshire Dales national park. It currently goes from Morecambe, via Lancaster, up to Bull Beck near Caton. The ambition is for it not only to go from the coast to the national park, but to link up with public transport systems, so that people visiting our area, as well as people living and working in my constituency, can access the countryside and good public transport. I would love to invite the Minister to visit.