North of England: Transport

Lord Smith of Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Leigh (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by declaring my interests. As you can probably tell, I am from the north too, but my main interest is that I am still leader of Wigan Council, which is a shareholder of Manchester Airport. It is clear that there has been a cross-party welcome for the Minister’s statement, for which I thank him. There are clear economic benefits to the north if we can get the transport system correct. The report from the RSA City Growth Commission, chaired by the recently ennobled noble Lord, Lord O’Neill of Gatley, and practical examples across the continent from the Randstad and the Rhine-Ruhr region show that these things are not just theoretical: they do work. If you get the right transport investment, you can change economic strategy.

I particularly welcome the establishment of Transport for the North. It is a really good idea because it brings together the Government and local authorities. I would like to try to assure sceptical noble Lords that northern local authorities have got together in a good spirit of partnership across the north. The title of their organisation, One North, gives a clue that they have moved away from the parochial thinking which has perhaps mired us in the past, and that we are working together. It is important that Network Rail is now engaged on a proper basis with local authorities. The Minister mentioned the Northern Hub and the need to end the bottleneck in east Manchester to help trans-Pennine trains. Some years ago, we in Greater Manchester had a meeting with Network Rail and they did not have a clue what it meant. We actually had to persuade them that it was a problem.

The northern transport strategy has three parts. Other noble Lords have mentioned HS3—the east-west link—and the HS2 leg up to Leeds is an important part too, as well as the Crossrail corridor. If my noble friend was looking for some cultural links, the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, gave him a clue. There is already a rugby league connection across the M62 corridor up to Cumbria and now, after the magic weekend, I can assure my noble friend Lord Beecham that it includes Newcastle too. Northern Rail recognises this because they sponsored a rugby league cup, which my own home-town team, Leigh Centurions, hold because they were the last winners.

People are concerned about high-speed trains and perhaps the clue is in the name. High-speed trains are not going to stop everywhere. Speed is important in reducing journey times and improving reliability but the main argument for a high-speed network is about capacity on trains. I once had the misfortune to travel from Hull to Manchester on a train that passed through Leeds in the middle of the rush hour. I do not know how they could get so many people on that train in Leeds and Huddersfield; they were absolutely packed on. I checked with the Health and Safety Executive and there are not really any rules about how many people you can get on a train. It is a potential disaster when all those people are packed on. The real capacity issue is not about trains, it is about the network. The west coast main line is inappropriately named: it was built not as a main line but as a series of different ones. It has been modernised and changed but the money ran out when the last major change was done at Watford, so that bit has never been done. The busiest piece of the line has never been touched. We need to make sure we have the capacity to take advantage of the fact that people are more likely to use trains now.

As well as land links, we need international connectivity. Manchester Airport has been owned by the local authority since 1986, although we took on a private partner recently so we could make an effective deal to expand into Stansted. We already have more international links to destinations than Heathrow, although they are not as frequent. We have more links to the USA, Singapore and Hong Kong. Confidence in the future of the airport is shown, as the Minister said, in the decision to increase investment by £1 billion. At the moment we have just about adequate rail links, which were built without much support from the department. We got them built and they work but there are some problems. Certainly, if we are to take advantage of the impact of the northern transport strategy across the north, we need to improve capacity. That is why a station at Manchester Airport on the high-speed line is crucial. I certainly agree that we need to consider the impact of passenger duty on northern airports and to make sure that we are not uncompetitive with airports in Scotland.

A number of noble Lords have made the point that the big schemes are important but we need to get local connectivity and access to the improved routes. Because they will not stop in every place, we need to make sure that that happens. We need to get underneath the main strategy for the north. There needs to be different transport strategies in the different parts of the north that link in, and we need to make sure that the links are used. In Greater Manchester, we had a bit of an innovation some years ago when we decided on funding transport collectively. We managed to get together a pot of about £1.5 billion. Schemes were put forward for the best part of £20 billion but we allocated funds based on the impact on the economy. That was a different way of doing it.

My home town of Leigh is said to be the largest town in the country that does not have its own railway station. It was not closed by the infamous Lord Beeching but because a motorway was built. It was decided that it was too expensive to build a bridge over the motorway, so the line was closed.

We need to explore some of the technical difficulties. I am not an expert on railways, unlike many noble Lords here. However, I know that there were two obstacles to the Liverpool-Manchester railway being built. One was your Lordships’ House, which turned down the first proposal for that railway. However, it allowed the second route because the landowners did not object as it went across wasteland, Chat Moss, just to the west of Manchester. It was left to the engineer, George Stephenson, to determine how to cross Chat Moss. He had an amazing, innovative, cheap and effective solution. He floated the railway line across the peat bog on timber, brushwood and cotton bales. Of course, there were plenty of cotton bales in Lancashire, so he was okay with that. His solution has lasted for the best part of 200 years.

As a kid, I would cycle to Chat Moss where you can see the trains bouncing on the line because it moves up and down with the weight of the trains. Of course, the weight of the Rocket, which it was planned would take that line, was considerably less than modern trains. We need to make sure that the Stephenson solution continues to work. Our Victorian forebears built the links across the Pennines. They built the Summit Tunnel between 1838 and 1841. It is still going strong, but does it have the capacity to cope with modern vehicles in the number we will want?

I welcome the cross-party consensus that there has been today but there is a danger that it could break down if we do not get two things. First, we want to see progress. I get frustrated, as, I am sure, does the Minister, with the slow speed of the system. Our approval of railways is designed for the 19th century. It is not modern. We are still talking about how we get HS2 through Parliament and its ancient procedures.

In France a TGV link was proposed from Tours to Bordeaux at the same time as the idea of HS2 came up here. That link is now virtually finished and open, while we are miles behind. We have to become speedier than that. We want things to be done in a timely way; we do not want promises that are never kept. If it comes to it, the real key is to ensure that the investment is there. Noble Lords have talked about Crossrail and the ability of London to attract a large amount of money for its investments. Transport investment has been unfair and unbalanced. If we are going to rebalance our economy, we need to rebalance that transport investment so that the schemes the Minister proposes, which we all think are a good idea, are properly funded.