Railways: East Anglia Network

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for achieving this debate. For me, the East Anglia rail network is one of the most important parts of the network in our country. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. I will not talk just about freight but about Sizewell, which is in the region. Most speakers have commented on the lack of sufficient track on most of the network. Most places are two-track, except the Felixstowe branch which is a single track. As the noble Baroness has said, Felixstowe is a very successful port.

In spite of that—I say “in spite of”, although there is an hourly passenger service on the Felixstowe branch—Felixstowe is achieving 30 trains in each direction on the single track, which is a credit to the port, Network Rail and others. The noble Baroness mentioned the chord that allows the trains to go straight from Felixstowe to Peterborough and Nuneaton without reversing. I call it the bacon factory chord which is a much nicer name. It will make a great difference to the volume.

It is a lovely challenge to have all the jobs at Felixstowe but the intermodal traffic by rail is forecast to at least double, probably more, in 20 years. Whether it will go to Felixstowe, London Gateway or Southampton is a matter for debate. I know that the port will work very hard to get a good market share of that. A new rail freight terminal has just opened at Felixstowe. I do not know whether any noble Lords went to the opening. I could not go myself but I was told that it was very good. However, there Felixstowe is, connected to a single track, which needs to be doubled quickly. It is not a difficult job as it goes mostly through fields. A lot of improvements have already been done to the bacon factory chord, Ipswich, Nuneaton through Peterborough. The gauge has been enhanced to take the nine-foot six-inch boxes on standard wagons and the signalling is being improved. A few other things also need doing.

The next stage is to have the line electrified. Around six months to a year ago, the Government announced an electric spine from Southampton, which will be very useful for freight and which we all welcome. However, there should also be an electric spine from Felixstowe, which would improve the capacity. It would obviously reduce the emissions that there are from the diesel trains. It would also enable more freight trains from Felixstowe to the Midlands and the north-west to avoid going along the North London Line in London. Our colleagues in London are not very happy about having all those freight trains. It is rather odd to have freight trains going through virtually the centre of a major capital city. That suggestion would help a great deal.

Electrification needs to be on the agenda in a firm programme, whereby the train operators will invest in the electric locos necessary. It is really good news that in the past month Direct Rail Services announced the order for the first new electric locomotives probably for 25 years. The beauty of them is that they also have a diesel donkey engine in them so that they can do the last mile into terminals. It needs doing, and it needs doing properly and planning in advance. For me, freight is a very important part of the East Anglia region. I am sure that those who are keen to see better passenger services will be pleased that more freight in the future will probably go a different way rather than through London.

As regards Sizewell, a big nuclear power station will probably go ahead and will employ a large number of people. I have been talking to EDF, the developer, about whether it could try to avoid too much damage to the local roads in Suffolk and the area by making more use of the railways. I know there has been an improvement in Beccles, which is good but it probably needs double tracking, where there is none, from Woodbridge or somewhere around there.

There are two reasons for doing this. One is to get the workers to work. Why cannot they go by bus or car? Of course they can, but in a great big traffic jam, which would be very bad for all the other users. Why could there not be a bit of a link? It would be the old, original link to Aldeburgh, extended into the Sizewell site to run passenger services for the workers—the commuters, if you like—from Ipswich or wherever. I see that as a big Section 106 improvement, which I hope the local authorities will push for. I think they will.

The second reason for making more use of the railways is, of course, to try to stop too many deliveries coming by road. This was done very successfully in the construction of terminal 5, and it was done reasonably successfully for the Stratford Olympics. All the bulk materials can come and go—they can go by sea as well now. In the construction of terminal 5, when it came to bringing things such as desks, basins and all the smaller things that you would not necessarily bring by rail, there was a series of consolidation centres around the country, wherever was convenient for the manufacturing or supply. The contractors called up for what they wanted the day before, and the goods were sent down by train overnight. It just needed a rail terminal in the area.

The combination of passenger and freight benefits for Sizewell and for the residents who live around there would be immense. I hope the Government will encourage EDF to look at that very positively when it comes to the planning process, and make it all part of a Section 106 agreement. Again, I am very pleased to welcome the new Minister to this debate and I look forward to what she has to say.

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[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the chance to say a few words in the gap. When I was a schoolboy after the war, living in Suffolk, we had a wonderful stopping service. It was a direct line between Liverpool Street and Lowestoft. I would get out at Wickham Market and change to a little steam train that went to Framlingham. I would get out at Marlesford. Sometimes I was allowed to stand on the footplate, and I would be met by my mother with a pony and cart at Marlesford station.

My next real experience of rail was that for five years I was on the board of British Rail Anglia. It was the worst commercial experience I have ever had; it was so frustrating. The quality of the management was just not there—and the key is management. There has been talk about producing good franchises. When considering who you should give a franchise to, it is necessary to look at the management and the targets that they are prepared to set themselves. Let them be judged by those targets. Interview the management. We all know that if you are in the advertising world and you decide to hire an advertising agent, you do not just see the agency, you see the person who is going to handle the account, so insist on that. It is a matter of buying a good franchise by doing it properly, and that has not been done.

In the old days when you had the wonderful non-stop service from London to Ipswich and Norwich, you could guarantee an hour between London and Ipswich. Now, however, it is different. One of the things that I had as a non-executive on the board was a first-class free ticket to wherever I wanted to go, but I virtually never used it on my own line if a journey was time-sensitive. As has been said, reliability is crucial. Trains are about reliability. You cannot blame someone else when you are in a car, but you jolly well can when you are on a train. That is another factor which should be properly taken into account.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was absolutely right to say that something has to be done about Felixstowe. We should have a new target for the amount of freight that is carried; I think that it is only about 20% at present.

[Lord Berkeley]

I think it is about 30% now. It is one of the best in the country.

[Lord Marlesford]

Well, it wants to have a new long-term target, maybe 50%, and in my view let us forget about HS2.

I shall end on a positive note because I am allowed only two or three minutes in which to speak. At least the difficult communications that we have to East Anglia have kept Norfolk and Suffolk the very beautiful counties that they are, and I proudly declare an interest as president of Suffolk Preservation Society.