North of England: Transport

Lord Shutt of Greetland Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to take part in a rare north of England debate in this House. I had the joy of taking part in the sixth day of the debate on the Queen’s Speech on 4 June and it is good to return 13 days later to resume discussing some of those themes. This debate is being held because the Government believe that they have something to say and, in fairness, I think they have something to say about transport, to which the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, alluded.

On the day of the Queen’s Speech debate on transport I spoke specifically about railway electrification. However, I sought further information about the northern powerhouse. I learnt that the northern powerhouse is more than trans-Pennine and includes the north-east. It appears to cover a population of 15 million, nearly double that of London. I sought a definition of “northern powerhouse”—I thought it sounded like the American dream—and I have received a letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who said this:

“You asked ‘What is the Northern Powerhouse?’. Rebalancing the economy by creating a Northern Powerhouse is part of our long term economic plan. The objective is simple: to allow the Northern cities to pool their strengths and become greater than the sum of their parts; to raise the growth rate of the North, which could be worth an extra £44bn by 2030”—

I wonder who worked that one out and what it will amount to. The letter goes on—

“and to capitalise on the success of transport investment in London to create a second powerhouse region in the UK in the North”.

So I have a little help there.

My noble friend Lord Greaves has also been attempting to get some definition. He put down a couple of Questions for Written Answer which were answered by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford. She said:

“The Northern Powerhouse is a long term plan to enable the north to reach its potential as a driving force in the UK economy”.

She went on to talk about northern cities, and finished by saying:

“The Government will also empower the towns and counties of the north to build on the economic strengths outside cities”.

There we have it: the northern powerhouse is a long-term plan. It is about the whole of the north of England— 15 million of us—and it is about the towns and counties as well as the cities. I would like to put a question to the Minister. It seems that this is rather more than a concept, but where is the plan, who is writing it and when is it to be published? If this is a plan that is to cover a quarter of the UK, it will be a serious and no doubt lengthy document; there will be quite a set of tomes when we have the great plan for the northern powerhouse.

Following on from my theme of 13 days ago, I should like to make some specific points. I commended the Government on their plans and looked forward to the reality of the railway electrification plans. However, one of the plans referred to is the important trans-Pennine electrification scheme. This was announced in 2011 and was expected to be completed by 2018, some seven years later. However, a statement was made, again on 10 June, saying that the Manchester/Huddersfield/Leeds/York electrification scheme has been delayed indefinitely—never mind going on to Hull. What is happening? What has gone wrong? When will “indefinite” end and become “definite” with a new date? Is it not strange that a scheme for the north of England which was announced in 2011 can be delayed to 2020 or beyond? Reference has already been made to Crossrail. It is interesting to note that that scheme was started in May 2009, and the Mayor of London Boris Johnson announced in March this year that following the completion of 26 miles of tunnel, Crossrail was,

“on time, on budget and coming soon”.

Crossrail will be ready in 2018, a project that from start to finish will have taken nine years. The trans-Pennine scheme was announced in 2011, and we do not know when it will be ready, and of course this is a scheme that will be considerably less costly than Crossrail. It seems to me that in this, the northern powerhouse is looking pretty powerless.

Reference has also been made today to HS2 north and HS3. Those are a bit beyond the electrification of the trans-Pennine railway. When I first heard about HS2 north, I was concerned about what seemed to be the rather silly idea of having a “hammerhead terminus” in Leeds so that there would be no connectivity whatever because of it. However, Sir David Higgins was going to look at connectivity in Leeds so that HS2 and HS3 would link and would be compatible with the present railway network. Is there any news about Sir David Higgins’s work on connectivity for Leeds?

There has been another delay for the north of England in the transport field, again in Yorkshire. The tram-train experiment, announced in March 2008, involved the route between Huddersfield and Barnsley. That was dropped in 2009 and it was decided to have a go at Sheffield to Rotherham instead. I understand that 2017 is now the expected completion date; nine years on, again, from the start of the idea in 2008. This is a relatively modest scheme, compared to the likes of Crossrail or trans-Pennine electrification. I have heard no news of this and do not know why it is taking so long. Would it take as long if the tram-train experiment were in the south of England? It is not that big an experiment—there have been several like it in Germany—it is just a new thing here. I would be interested to hear any news on it.

Talking of transport connectivity and infrastructure in the north of England, I recommend that the Minister looks at some underused infrastructure and I cite a couple of rural to urban railway lines. The line from Morecambe and Lancaster coming into Leeds in Yorkshire has five trains a day but there is not one that would get anyone into Leeds before 9 am and the last one to get anyone home is at 4.45 pm. There is a very similar situation on the line from Whitby to Middlesbrough where there are four trains a day each way. The first train from Whitby sets off at 10.17 am, so anybody wanting to work in Middlesbrough would start pretty late. Much more could be achieved using our existing assets.

I have touched a little on just four railway infrastructure schemes which the Minister may like to comment on or write about. There is, of course, more to transport than railways and there are other important matters to which noble Lords have referred: ports, roads, air and so on. I happened to look in my Pocket Oxford Dictionary for a definition of “infrastructure”. It says it is:

“A basic structural foundation of a society or enterprise”.

When it comes to the big northern powerhouse plan, will the Government look at all the disposition of resources throughout the UK? The structural foundation of society goes beyond railways, roads, bridges and sewers. We need a real northern powerhouse to have the capacity for the north of England to prosper in the arts, culture and heritage. Is not the creation of the northern powerhouse a chance to look at all government expenditure and at the potential for a significant regional transfer of resources, starting with the substantial grant-making quangos? Should that not be part of the northern powerhouse plan?