North of England: Transport

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, judging from the many excellent speeches so far, the subtitle of this debate should be, “The North Fights Back”. We have just heard a very good example of that from the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. I congratulate the Minister on what I believe is his first speech from the Dispatch Box in his new role. I hope that he will not mind my saying but, coming after the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who was in her place earlier, and my noble friend Lord Adonis, he has two very hard acts to follow. Both those Ministers presided over and contributed to the revival in Britain’s railways, in which I wholeheartedly rejoice.

Since 1997-98, the annual growth in passenger journeys has been around 4%, compared with just 0.3% in the previous 16 years. The Office of Rail and Road recently reported that the total number of journeys on franchise operators last year was up to 1.654 billion—the highest ever. Noble Lords, I think, will have heard me speak before about the contrast in recent years with the situation in which the railways found themselves in the post-Beeching 1970s and 1980s, when decline, contraction and penny-pinching were all the order of the day. I had better at this point declare my interests as the co-author of a book that described what happened with the railway during those years and to trail the fact that its sequel will be out in the autumn. I should also declare an interest as chair of the First Great Western stakeholder advisory board.

Just over 50 years ago, the Beeching report condemned local rail services in the north of England to a policy of retrenchment and disinvestment. The philosophy was that intercity rail and bulk freight might have a bright future and could be made profitable, but that local and commuter services would always lose money, and most should be replaced by buses. We look today with incredulity at northern towns such as Richmond or Ripon, Keswick or Washington, and wonder how they could have been stripped of their railways half a century ago or how the direct line from Manchester to Derby through the Peak District could be axed—I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate of Derby is not in his place to hear me say that. It is no surprise that campaigners are now supporting plans to bring trains back to Skelmersdale and Blyth, and between Skipton and Colne. How valuable the Harrogate to Northallerton line would have been in relieving the overcrowded east coast main line or providing an alternative during the regular engineering works.

Apart from local services—the north was exceptionally hard hit by closures outside the main conurbations—the Beeching philosophy also stripped out many east-west routes where better connectivity is now urgently required. The old Great Central line between Manchester and Sheffield, built for carrying heavy coal traffic, was the shortest route between the two cities. Its closure, soon after it was electrified and a new tunnel opened under the Pennines at Woodhead, is in retrospect utterly inexplicable.

Yet it could all have been a great deal worse—and indeed would have been had it not been for the creation of the passenger transport executives in 1968 for Tyne and Wear, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside. They did a great job in putting rail at the heart of their transport strategy and, in those areas, a significant heavy rail network has led to progress, with more services, affordable fares and better marketing. Outside those PTE areas, however, British Rail local services continued to decline for another 20 years. Instead of investing in the railway to stimulate and satisfy demand, money was spent—and wasted—on pointless bus substitution studies and on developing the concept of a low-cost local railway, with most stations unstaffed and minimal station facilities. The drive was to cut costs, not to meet the demand for rail that grew with road traffic congestion and parking problems.

When the first generation of diesel trains finally wore out in the 1980s, many were replaced by the much-reviled Pacers, the low-cost trains based on bus technology, about which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, spoke earlier. They fall well short of the standards expected now and of the rail cars used on local lines elsewhere in Europe. But we need to remember that without their introduction from about 1985 onwards, many local lines would have disappeared. At the time Pacers were an affordable way for a cash-strapped British Rail to keep the services going. For a while it looked as though the Pacers would be around for some time yet. Indeed, according to the railway press, the bean counters in the Department for Transport advised the Permanent Secretary and the Secretary of State that the economic case for their replacement did not stack up. Can the Minister confirm that Mr McLoughlin was having none of that and took the very rare ministerial step of issuing a directive to the Permanent Secretary that the Pacers had to go?

Keeping our faith in the railways has really worked. During the fourth quarter of 2014-15, the introduction of additional services between Leeds and Manchester—to cite just one example—led to the largest increase in timetabled train kilometres anywhere. I welcome very much the Secretary of State’s statement on 23 March, when the stakeholder briefing document, Transforming the North’s Railways, was published at the same time as the invitations to tender for the next northern and trans-Pennine franchises. I particularly welcome his assertion that:

“These publications mark an important first step in the transformation of the train services in the north of England to support economic growth”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/2/15; col. 318WS.]

The railways’ contribution to economic growth is not something we have heard about very often from Transport or Treasury Ministers or their officials in recent years.

Another assertion by the Secretary of State that I am happy to welcome, since this is a non-partisan occasion, is what he said about High Speed 2 in his speech in Leeds on 1 June; the Minister echoed some of it today. Mr McLoughlin said that the argument for HS2 had been won and construction on the full Y network from London to Birmingham and Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds will start in just two years. He said that,

“we are moving forward with plans for new high-speed rail links, running right across the north, from Liverpool in the west, to Hull in the east. It will slash journey times, provide a substantial boost to capacity and help bind the north together as a single, powerful economic force. We believe in the power of transport to change things”.

The Secretary of State is right and I am afraid that my noble friend Lord Beecham, in what he said about High Speed 2, is quite wrong.

I commend to my noble friend the report by the consultancy group Greengauge 21 on the consultation for High Speed 2, which it says produced four main points. First, there is an ambition that High Speed 2 should be developed from north to south, rather than from London northwards. Secondly, related to that, there is a wish to see phase 2 implemented earlier than 2032-33—either the whole project or parts of it. Thirdly, there is an ambition for there to be more connections with existing lines so that services can be provided to and from city centre stations on to the high-speed network. A particular aim is that there should be fast connections and more capacity provided using High Speed 2 for travel between regional cities, where the existing network is often particularly weak. That would supplement High Speed 2 services to and from London and make fuller use of the new line capacity. Fourthly—and we have heard about this from the noble Lords, Lord Kerslake and Lord Shutt, and my noble friend Lord Woolmer—there are concerns, particularly along the eastern side of the route, that the chosen station sites will require significant complementary investment to provide good access and should perhaps be looked at a bit more. Leeds in particular needs better and fuller integration of the HS2 station with the existing station, and I believe that the same applies in Sheffield.

I conclude on a positive note. We can see that the future of rail transport in the north is looking good, with huge benefits likely to flow into the regional economy from High Speed 2 and from projects such as the northern hub, which will transform passenger journeys into and around Manchester. It was from the mid-1990s that strong and continuous growth in passenger numbers started, and this has continued to the present day. Local authority engagement, community rail partnerships and higher train frequencies have all helped, while traffic congestion, parking constraints and the unpredictability of the road system have all helped rail growth as more and more people see the advantage of taking the train. This growth is set to continue, and all the official forecasts point to the need for more rail capacity.

In this House, we tend to be somewhat London-centric. With 70% of rail journeys starting or finishing in London or south-east England, it is inevitable that more focus will be on that region than on any other. But the problems of overcrowding are shared around the country and are not limited to London. Indeed, growth rates on regional and long-distance services are currently outstripping growth in London and the south-east. Trans-Pennine trains from Leeds or Manchester are just as overcrowded as trains leaving London in peak time, and passengers get left behind at stations, unable to board, whether they are approaching Sheffield or Surbiton. The difference is that the trans-Pennine trains, typically, have only three cars, whereas those around London may have eight or more. Longer trains will obviously address this problem, but the rail industry is not building any new diesel trains and is relying instead on the transfer of existing diesels as routes are electrified and new electric trains provided. However—this is a very big “however”—the electrification programme is a long one and is slipping, as a number of noble Lords have pointed out in this debate. I hope that the Minister will be able to give the House some comfort that the electrification programme in the north of England, and indeed the west of England, will get back on track.

There should be no north/south divide on this. The needs of the north are as important as those of London and the south-east, although different in nature. Both will benefit hugely from high-speed train travel, which, with High Speed 3, will address many of the connectivity issues within the north of England as well as those to and from the capital and beyond to the rest of Europe—issues which other noble Lords have referred to today and which I know the noble Lord will wish to respond to in his speech later.