Transport Infrastructure (North Wales)

Debate between Martin Caton and Mark Tami

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Martin Caton (in the Chair)]

As can be seen from the attendance, there is quite a bit of interest in this debate. Six Back-Bench Members have already indicated that they would like to speak, so if Members can curtail their remarks as far as possible, we will get everyone in.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Caton. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I am pleased to have secured this debate on an important issue. I will mainly concentrate on north-east Wales, particularly its economic importance, the history of the area and why the transport links that we have now and that we hope to have in future are so important.

The area, whether people want to call it the Deeside hub or Mersey-Dee, covers Flintshire, Wrexham, Denbighshire, Cheshire west, Chester and Wirral, with a population of about 1 million and gross value added of some £17 billion a year. Some 83% of the area’s journeys start and finish in the area. More than 17,000 people commute across the border to England, and some 10,000 go the other way. There are also students who go to Chester, and students going the other way to Glyndwr university.

I am pleased to say that the area contains many modern and very successful manufacturers, with Airbus, Toyota, Shotton paper, Tata Steel Colors, ConvaTec and many more on the Deeside industrial park. On the other side of the border, we have Vauxhall at Ellesmere Port, Bank of America and, again, many more. Indeed, north Wales accounts for more than 30% of the manufacturing output of Wales as a whole. I know that colleagues both in England and in Wales are surprised at the size and skill levels of some of those factories and at the number of jobs involved. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) will no doubt talk about the Technium in St Asaph, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) will talk about Wylfa in Anglesey.

Airbus employs more than 6,500 people, 60% of whom live in Wales, coming from as far afield as Anglesey. The other 40% live in England, coming from as far afield as Derby, or so I am advised—that seems a fairly long commute to me, but apparently it is the case. There is substantial spend in the local economy, but those people need to get to and from their place of work. The supply chain is beginning to site in the local area, which, again, is creating more jobs. The big danger is that we take all that for granted, as if it will be there for ever and a day.

I have told this story before, but I will tell it again because I think it is worth telling. When I entered Parliament in 2001, before giving my maiden speech—I am sure other colleagues did the same—I looked at what my predecessor did. My predecessor, who is now Lord Jones, talked about the two great powerhouses of the area, which were Courtaulds Textiles and British Steel. One of those companies has gone altogether, and the other is still important but employs only a fraction of the numbers it did back then. It still holds the record for the most job losses on a single day at a single plant, when more than 8,000 people lost their job. We cannot assume that, just because companies are big and employ a lot of people, they will be there for ever and a day.

Many other areas that suffered in the 1980s have still not recovered, but because of the efforts of Flintshire county council and others, including my predecessor Lord Jones, new investment was attracted to the area, and we have managed to build on that. Importantly, we want to attract companies that will stay, not just companies that come because they want grant assistance and that will then up stumps and move somewhere else. We want long-term investment not only in buildings but in the work force. Even in good times, we have seen that successful companies can still fail. I remember when we thought that the optical fibre market was doing extremely well, but it crashed overnight and the high-tech factory closed. We lost quality jobs in a relative boom period.

We are getting by okay at the moment, so why do we need to improve and update our transport network? To be honest, we are barely getting by. If we get the level of growth in the local area for which we hope, we will need to improve things, because our transport system is creaking at the seams in places. The Mersey Dee Alliance carried out research, which is included in both the Haywood and the north-east Wales integrated transport taskforce reports to the Assembly, showing that we can expect to get between 40,000 and 50,000 jobs in the next 20 years. That figure comprises Mersey waters enterprise zone, with 20,000 jobs; Deeside enterprise zone, with 5,000 to 7,000 jobs; 4,500 jobs at Ellesmere Port; Ince resource recovery park, with 3,200 jobs; the university of Chester’s Thornton site, with 2,000 to 4,000 jobs; central Chester business district, with more than 1,000 jobs; the Northgate project, Chester, with 1,600 jobs; Wrexham industrial estate and western gateway, with 2,500 jobs; 7,500 jobs in Denbighshire; Vauxhall Motors, with 700 jobs; and Bank of America, with 1,000 jobs. So we hope that a substantial number of jobs will come to the area during the next 20 years, which is positive stuff, but we need a modern transport system that works to ensure that that happens.

We are already over-dependent on car usage. In Flintshire, more than 80% of people use their car to travel to work, which is a very high figure—Flintshire had the highest car usage in the country, but I do not know whether it still does—and I am sure the figure is not much different in other parts of Wales. I do not think that is just because people like using their car; it is because there is a problem getting anywhere using any other system of transport.

The north-east Wales integrated transport taskforce report of June 2013 clearly highlights some of the problems that we are facing. I will illustrate them by referring to a few journeys to the Deeside industrial park. From Flint by car it would take an estimated 16usb minutes, and by public transport 43 minutes, which is not too bad. Rhyl is 39 minutes by car, or one hour and 25 minutes via a bus and a train with one change. Denbigh is 44 minutes by car, or two hours and 17 minutes by public transport—a bus and a train, two changes. Wrexham is 32 minutes by car, or one hour and 25 minutes by public transport—it is a bus and two changes, even from Wrexham. Frodsham is 24 minutes by car, or one hour and 14 minutes by bus and train, again involving two changes.