Railways: Trans-Pennine Rail Line

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Shutt of Greetland for initiating this debate and for the contributions made by other noble Lords. Despite the fairly small number of speakers, the key issues have been clearly identified and the Minister has been given a large number of questions to respond to. It is likely that I will add one or two to that list.

Back in the middle of June we had an excellent debate on transport in the north, and on that occasion I spoke about the importance of thinking in a pan-northern way, pointing out that connectivity east to west matters far more than perhaps transport planners based in London understand, and that Transport for the North as a single body with a clear remit to promote investment in the transport infrastructure of the north of England is a very welcome development. We have moved on from the position of a few months ago. As has been pointed out, there was real concern just a few days after that debate when the commitments made before the election were paused, leaving the electrification of the trans-Pennine route in doubt.

A lot has been written and said about the matter. It does not affect only the trans-Pennine route between Manchester and York, and real concern has been expressed about the capacity of Network Rail and its planning. I hope very much that those issues have been overcome. It is possible that it may prove to be a blessing in disguise that the pause has happened at all. It may give time for the problems of projects suffering overruns caused by poor planning and poor estimation of costs by Network Rail to be identified and acted upon by the chair, Sir Peter Hendy. I welcome his work, and I welcome, too, the appointment of John Cridland as the first chair of Transport for the North. He said on his appointment a few days ago:

“There is much to do to improve transport capacity and links across the North”—

and he is absolutely right. I hope that he will bring some clarity to the planning process because we still lack a strategic transport plan for the north. Indeed, we lack a strategic transport plan for the whole of the United Kingdom. We have elements of it, but we do not have a single plan.

There are elements of a rail plan for the north of England and we certainly have ambition. I pay tribute to the Minister, to the Secretary of State for Transport and to colleagues in the department because a lot has been happening, and I welcome some of the achievements of recent months. However, we need much more work, and the debate today has identified a number of ways in which the improvements need to be made.

I welcome the decisions announced this week on the Northern Rail and First TransPennine Express rail franchises. I hope that I do not sound churlish when I say that I wish that the hyperbole of DfT press releases could be toned down a bit. This week there was an assertion that the planned rail improvements will,

“make the Northern Powerhouse a reality”.

As a statement that is slightly over the top. It will certainly help, but actually it will take a great deal more than that, including work by other departments of state, to deliver the northern powerhouse. But the sense of direction is right and I pay tribute to Ministers for that.

From the perspective of the north-east—as your Lordships know, I live in Newcastle upon Tyne—there will be 500 new carriages, new peak-time services, greater capacity, an end to Pacer trains, improved stations, better ticketing and full electrification between Liverpool and Newcastle by 2022. That is all welcome news, even though of course it has actually been delayed, as was pointed out to us by my noble friend Lord Shutt of Greetland.

In addition, the First TransPennine Express franchise will deliver £400 million in premiums to the Government over the seven years of the franchise. That is a level never previously achieved. It is good that it is being managed out of the north by the Department for Transport and Rail North Ltd, which represents 29 local authorities across the north and which will build capacity in the north.

I noted that in his press release the Secretary of State for Transport felt that:

“Arriva Rail North Limited and First TransPennine Express Limited went far beyond our requirements with exciting, ambitious plans”.

That made me wonder why the Department for Transport’s requirements were so limited in the first place. If it is easy for those running the franchise to deliver more than was expected in the bid documentation, it seems to me that maybe government underasked. The result demonstrates to me that there is demand for the services, and thus income from travellers will be forthcoming. That is a vindication of those who have been campaigning for improved services.

I ask the Minister to clarify the question of fares, given these two new franchises. Is all of the additional income that is coming in and the improvement to services to be achieved from current income, or is there an expectation that there will be higher fares? I have assumed that fares would not alter, but I would appreciate the Minister’s confirmation that fares will not go up on either of these new franchises over their lifetime.

I referred earlier to the need for a strategic transport plan for the north. There has been mention of integration with HS2, and we have talked about the issues around Leeds and in Sheffield, which I will not repeat. However, there does need to be better integration. I would like to hear the Minister’s observations on my view that the cost of spurs and links between HS2 and city centres should be appraised and budgeted for now as part of the overall HS2 project. There are some big costs that need to be thought about, but they do not form part of the current HS2 budget plans.

Paragraph 60 of the Command Paper that was previously referred to suggests that this can happen “seamlessly”. If these links to HS2 are to happen seamlessly, they have to be planned clearly, but I am unclear what that plan is. We have had a mention of the Leeds-Manchester link, but I am not clear what the top of the Y will look like in the context of HS3. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us what the plans are for HS3, because I am not clear what the policy is on how the two sides of the Y will join up. The Chancellor has talked regularly about this, but I do not know what that link would look like.

Perhaps I could also ask about the east coast main line. Paragraph 51 of that recent Command Paper talks about the HS2 connection to the east coast main line via Church Fenton and states:

“We continue to believe that a link onto the ECML is necessary and complements the Government’s commitment to deliver better transport across the North-East and Yorkshire”.

The timescales are too long. If West Midlands to Crewe can be advanced by six years, there should be a clear commitment that the link to the east coast main line should be put in as part of the extension to Leeds; it should be constructed at the same time. I hope very much that some thought can now be given to that.

I turn to growth within the northern powerhouse. In the end, this is all about growth. Because local authorities will be able to keep 100% of business rate growth in future years, areas that attract development will grow faster, pay more in business rates and therefore enable those areas to invest in better infrastructure. A big worry for areas not on the high-speed line, even if they have the classic compatible rolling stock, is that they will miss out on that increase in business rate income. What assessment has been made of the impact of 100% retention of business rates on areas not on the HS track?

Finally, the point made by my noble friend Lord Scriven about planning cycles and funding cycles is extremely important. If some parts of the country can avoid five-year funding cycles, why cannot the north of England avoid those, too?