North of England: Transport

Lord Woolmer of Leeds Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woolmer of Leeds (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, who, as I expected, referred among other things to the requirements of Halifax and Calderdale in West Yorkshire. As he says, all infrastructure is important but I am going to concentrate on the rail network, for reasons of time. Without doubt, the northern transport strategy is a step forward. The future governance of that body and the appointment of a powerful, independent chair will be extremely important. Will the Minister confirm that that is expected later this year?

The connectivity between national, regional, sub-regional and local transport networks, including their plans, projects and delivery, is complex. In my part of the north, we are developing a West Yorkshire single-transport plan to build on the framework provided by the northern hub plans. Leeds and York are fulcrum parts of our railway system—east to west or west to east, north to south and cross country from the north-east through Yorkshire and the Midlands, and down to the west and the south-west. I see my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in his seat. That is an often underestimated but very important and heavily used route in this country. Those routes all pass through the York-Leeds axis. Leeds is the second-busiest rail station outside London. It has only slightly less passenger movement than King’s Cross. It is a very busy station, not just because it is Leeds but because it is a hub into the rest of the sub-region and the region.

In that part of the north, future transport and land use plans must be based on what will happen to the national system. I disagree with my noble friend Lord Beecham about HS2, which I regard as essential to the prosperity of the north. It requires a determination to make a change and to make a break from the past. We can finish up investing everything in London but the more you put in London, the more the population grows. In my experience, that means that there will be more investment. That is the lesson of London Underground and overground transport. In the north, we say, “We don’t want a strategic rail route going fast. We can’t afford it”. That is very negative thinking and shows no ambition or sense of changing not only the culture but the balance of the UK. I will come back to changing the balance a little later.

I am not thinking only of HS2 north to south, but of HS3 east to west. I agree with my noble friend Lord Prescott. It only makes sense if it eventually is to be Hull to Liverpool. In the shorter term, it makes sense for plans to be York-Leeds-Manchester but beyond that plans must be included for Hull to Liverpool. In connection with connectivity, it is ironic that, currently, HS2 plans to have a new railway station in Sheffield that is not alongside the existing station and in Leeds to have a new station that is separate from the existing one, which breaks connectivity between the national strategy and the regional network. On the face of it, that is madness. Politicians should be asking whether that makes sense in terms of what they are trying to achieve and is not just about what the technical people are saying. It is a political and strategic question. I appreciate that the situation in Leeds is being revisited and a lot of discussion is going on at the moment. I am not sure about the Sheffield situation. Bradford, in my view, has suffered greatly from having two separate railway stations with, unfortunately, a big difference in height levels; it is very difficult to envisage how you could bring them together, although I would like to think it could be achieved.

I turn to the electrification of rail routes, as did the noble Lord, Lord Shutt. Before Andrew Jones became a Parliamentary Under-Secretary, he chaired the north of England electrification taskforce, which produced a report in March this year and sought to establish priorities in the law for England for rail electrification. Among other huge gaps in the electrified rail network in the north are all three cross-Pennine routes, which are not electrified; nor are the Leeds-Huddersfield-Manchester, Sheffield-Manchester or Leeds-Bradford-Halifax-Manchester lines. None of those is electrified, so there is no continuous electrification from east to west. To talk of a northern powerhouse based on the conurbations—while Crossrail is being built, and perhaps Crossrail 2, with new stations here and new underground stations there—when you have not even electrified the rail lines between east and west in the north of the country seems to be an abysmal failure. The only area where there was any hope of early electrification is the Leeds-Huddersfield-Manchester route, part of the infamous trans-Pennine express route. I will turn in a moment to the tale that the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, told us about what has happened with that.

Mr Jones’s report told us in March this year that the existing rail electrification,

“already appears to be straining the current industry capacity”.

He told us that the north of England can currently expect a maximum of around 50 route kilometres of electrification per year. That is the expectation. On that basis, as the report says, it will be more than 40 years before the electrification of the rail system in the north will be complete. The report concludes that the electrification process needs more resources. We cannot achieve what the language of the northern powerhouse says without facing up to resources having to be put in to achieve it.

I turn to the electrification of the Leeds-Huddersfield-Manchester trans-Pennine route. Noble Lords should remember that this train does not even go to Hull, as my noble friend Lord Prescott said. It was announced in November 2011 by, I think, the Chancellor, probably in the Autumn Statement. The route would definitely be electrified by 2018-19. Mr Jones’s report on the strategy and priorities of electrification—do not forget that in March this year he became a Parliamentary Under-Secretary—says that he assumed that the trans-Pennine route would be electrified on time. That was in March. Soon after the election earlier this month, as the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, said, it was announced that it would not go ahead. The project has been postponed and we do not know when it is going ahead. There was no announcement that it had been put back by three or six months for such-and-such a reason—there was no commitment to timetable at all. That makes a nonsense of bringing together and planning the interaction between the transport planning. If, as we have done in West Yorkshire, you plan on the assumption that by 2018-19 there will be a service, with the impact that that will have on passenger use and so on, you build that into the preparation of interconnected transport routes. Then we are suddenly told that it is not necessarily going to happen for an unknown period of time. That is a disastrous situation.

Indeed, I understand that it is very unlikely to be completed before 2024. I would be grateful if the Minister can confirm that. It is relevant because bidding for the two rail franchises—the trans-Pennine route and the northern route—is currently in process. What the companies putting in for the franchise think will happen to electrification in their franchise period must be important. As I understand it, that franchise period is due to end in 2024. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that the expectation in the award of those franchises is that electrification across the Pennines will not be completed within the term of those franchises. If that is the case, it would mean that it would be at least 13 years before the Chancellor’s 2011 promise resulted in delivery.

It is good to have plans and it is good to hear a commitment from the Minister, but when one of the prime, straightforward elements of the rail system that would fit into that strategy falls at the first hurdle it gives a very bad impression of whether investment in the northern powerhouse will actually occur and whether it will be driven through by determined Ministers. I look forward to hearing, when the Minister replies, why the electrification of the trans-Pennine service has been put back; whether that will impact on the franchise; and when we can expect that that very first part of a key element of a transport network across the north will be completed.