Sub-national Transport Body (Transport for the North) Regulations 2017

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I strongly welcome the regulations. I am glad that the Government are bringing them forward, and I echo the words of the Minister when she said that some excellent work had been done by Transport for the North since its inception.

I shall raise two issues. The first relates to the constituent authorities and the definition of them. There is a list of them on the second page of the regulations. What happens if the structures change? There could be different structures of combined authorities, for example. How easy might it be to change the regulations to reflect any structural changes to those constituent authorities? I am thinking in particular of the North East Combined Authority and North of Tyne, but also of the discussions going on in Yorkshire.

The Minister is absolutely right that the main function of Transport for the North is to prepare a transport strategy for its area. It is hugely welcome that there will be one; as the Minister said, it will be by the north for the north. However, I would like to ask the Minister about money. Does she accept that the north of England has not had its fair share of investment in recent years? Given that, does she accept that one of the key roles for Transport for the North will be to define and prioritise the resources needed across the north of England? In that event, do the Government accept that there would be little point in Transport for the North doing a lot of work and raising expectations if the Government do not meet the financial consequences of that work?

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Cumbria County Council and, more particularly, as a railwayman’s son from Carlisle. I, too, welcome the establishment of Transport for the North. I think it is excellent that we will now have a planning and co-ordinating body that will bring some coherence and, we hope, a transport strategy for the north.

I follow up what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said about resources. In repeating the statement, the noble Baroness referred to a sum of £260 million for which Transport for the North would be responsible. What caught my eye in the recent Budget Statement was paragraph 4.53 on infrastructure delivery, which talks about the Infrastructure and Projects Authority setting out a 10-year projection of public and private investment in infrastructure in Britain of around £600 billion.

The interesting question is how much of this £600 billion will come under the purview of Transport for the North. I very much look forward to the noble Baroness being able to tell me in her reply. Mr Hammond promised some worthwhile things in the Budget. For instance, in the transforming cities fund, there was £243 million for Greater Manchester and £134 million for the Liverpool City Region. There was a £300 million fund for ensuring the links between HS2 and other infrastructure in both the north and the Midlands, but £300 million is not very much. Of course, there is the new rolling stock for the Metro—one of the finest achievements of my friend the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, when he was Transport Secretary in the Callaghan Government.

We need more information. My county of Cumbria has vast unmet infrastructure needs. I have a letter here that I could read out about Cumbria’s requirements for road investment. I am conscious of the requirement for rail investment. The west coast main line has been modernised, but the coastal railway, which goes through some of the most beautiful country in England, up to Sellafield and then on to Carlisle, is back in the 19th century in its infrastructure. Yet we are talking about a new nuclear power station being built in west Cumbria and how we try to relieve traffic congestion in the Lake District. These questions need to be addressed, and they will all cost money.

I say just three things on money. First, in my view, London and the south-east should make a bigger contribution. They constitute one of the richest parts of Europe, and I would like the Mayor of London given power to raise more money through property taxation in London for infrastructure investment. Secondly, as long as you stick to the traditional cost-benefit analyses of how transport schemes are assessed, you will always end up with London and south-east projects at the top of the list. That is because there is not a broad enough conception of public value in how transport projects are assessed.

Thirdly, I do not want the Secretary of State for Transport telling us that he has no money in his budget, because that has been exposed as a total fallacy by his decision on the east coast franchise in the last few weeks. He has basically allowed Virgin and Stagecoach to run away with hundreds of millions of pounds that they owed on their franchise payments—possibly as high as £1.5 billion, I am told. He has allowed them to run away with that, because he was not prepared to go along to the House of Commons and admit that their franchise had failed. That is money that could have been spent on transport projects in the north of England; it has not been spent—and what is the explanation?

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the fact that so many local authorities have got together and persuaded the Government to form this new organisation. As the Minister said, in geographical terms it is probably the 10th-largest area of its kind in Europe. It goes from Newcastle down to Lincolnshire, right across to Cheshire and Liverpool and up to Cumbria; it is an enormous area, and it is a real success that they have managed to do this.

The Minister said that it would be useful for the Department for Transport—I hope that I have got this right—to give advice. From Regulation 5, “General Functions”, it seems to me that Transport for the North will be giving advice to the Secretary of State. It says that among its general functions is,

“to prepare a transport strategy”—

yes. Then it refers to providing advice to the Secretary of State about how he should exercise his transport functions. Thirdly, it has the function,

“to co-ordinate the carrying out of transport functions”.

Fourthly, it says that it must tell the Secretary of State if it thinks that TfN can do it better. To me, that is very much the Secretary of State retaining control. Perhaps the Minister could explain where the devolution is in all this. It is nice having lots of advice, and everything, but the devolution does not seem to be there; it is still going to be the Secretary of State who has the control.

Other noble Lords have mentioned money. The £250 million that the Minister mentioned is really pretty derisory, compared with Crossrail 2, which I believe will cost £30 billion and HS2, which I think will cost £100 billion, which, of course, connects to the north. But I suspect that many people in that enormous area, as other noble Lords have said, would like to be better connected within the area rather than getting to London 10 minutes quicker. So there is a real mismatch between what London is getting and what the north needs to get. I hope that the Minister can put me right on both those issues. Is it real devolution? Can Transport for the North really make decisions and have the money to spend it as it wants?

Last week, in a local newspaper in Bolton, Lancashire, a comment was made that the Secretary of State had refused the Mayor of Manchester—and this may also be the case regarding other big stations in the north—control of the station so that they can do it up and make it more attractive, getting more passengers and more retail. Why does London have to control the colour of the paint, or what is done locally in these stations, if the local people want to do it and can make some money? We really have to let go of London having control of everything and let this new organisation have real powers. If it fails, the Government know what to do, but I think that it will be a great success.