Road Maintenance
Melanie Onn Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
At my constituency surgery on Friday, my constituent Helen came to see me because she has had a terrible fall on a badly maintained pavement, and she has really been struggling to find out who is responsible for maintaining the pavement. Does anything in the funding brought forward by this Government enable quick and easy repairs to pavements, so that people like Helen do not have terrible accidents?
Heidi Alexander
Local authorities are free to use the money as they see fit, as long as they are using it in a way that represents value for money for the taxpayer. The money can be used for work on roads, pavements or structures. On the issue of responsibility raised by my hon. Friend’s constituent, that will be for the local highways authority.
North Sea Vessel Collision
Melanie Onn Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Mike Kane
I join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to maritime workers. Just as they kept us fed, fuelled and supplied all the way through covid, they keep our nation fed, fuelled and supplied every day of every week. I cannot commend them highly enough.
I also join with him in paying tribute to the emergency services. This is difficult, hard work and they are doing an exceptional job in the circumstances. As I have said, the MCA is standing by with marine and aerial counter-pollution measures in place. Once we get the fire on the Solong out, we will begin to assess the situation and deploy them. It is vital that we keep shipping lanes in the Humber estuary open as best we can as this continues, which is why we have placed a 1,000-metre exclusion zone around both ships. Outside that, maritime vessels can operate normally—as normally as is possible in this circumstance.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his communication with me through this unfolding situation and everybody who has been involved in it. The situation is evolving minute by minute, and I pay tribute to the local RNLI, coastguard and emergency services for their rapid rescue response, and to the local community, who have been heavily involved in readying themselves for any potential ecological or environmental fallout from this incident.
As the Minister may be aware, Ernst Russ, which owns the Solong, has now put out a statement saying that it has been “misreported” that the hazardous chemical was on board the Solong, and that
“There are four empty containers that have previously contained the hazardous chemical,”
which it will continue to monitor. I wonder whether the Minister has had any success in tracking down the manifest for the Solong so that we can reassure my constituents and put their minds at ease as to exactly what was on that vessel. I would also like to know when the Minister is expecting the initial report from the marine accident investigation branch so that we can understand what on earth happened in this most extraordinary of events.
Mike Kane
I thank my hon. Friend for keeping in contact with me throughout the night and this morning. Just before the election, we both visited the command and control centre in her constituency to see the excellent facilities in place. I pay tribute to the Humberside local resilience forum, which is made up of the police, the fire and rescue team, local authorities, the Red Cross, the NHS, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the clinical commissioning group, the Royal Navy, police and crime commissioners, the ambulance service, Border Force, environmental agencies, the Ministry of Defence, ABP Humber Ports, the Met Office and the UK Health Security Agency. Those teams are all working at pace to assess any risks to local people that may occur.
There have been many press reports on the manifest, but the facts are the facts. There were 220,000 barrels of A1 jet fuel on the Immaculate, and the MCA is working at pace to establish the cargo on the Solong, which sailed from Grangemouth. Hopefully, as soon as we have that information from the manifest, we will make it available to the House.
Rail Services: Open Access Operators
Melanie Onn Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered open access operators for rail services.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I am sure you will witness a stimulating debate.
I start by drawing attention to the progress made on the east coast main line, where today three privately owned open access inter-city operators compete with the Government-run LNER. This successful and mature model is now 25 years old and sees open access operators connect towns and cities across the north that were traditionally not served, or that endured poor inter-city connections. Open access is a great success. The statistics reflect that on many fronts, and I will come on to the detail.
One group of towns that open access has not yet reached consists of Grimsby, Cleethorpes and the intermediate stations. I am determined that the Brigg and Immingham constituency and the wider northern Lincolnshire area enjoy more direct and fast trains connecting with London and other key cities. I have been campaigning for such a service since 2011 and remain committed to delivering this key and long overdue connection. I hope Members will indulge me if I focus on this constituency matter for a few minutes before moving on to the wider arguments.
From a Grimsby point of view, it matters not whether the service leaves the main line at Newark and runs via Lincoln, or whether it leaves at Doncaster and takes the route through Scunthorpe. Either route will also serve Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Barnetby and Habrough. Habrough is just two miles from the country’s largest port, Immingham. For that reason alone, it surely deserves a direct service to the capital.
Some years ago, Grand Central submitted an application to run services via Doncaster, which was turned down by the regulator. I have been raising this issue with successive Ministers for many years, and I have been given no end of reasons why it cannot happen. First, there was the question of capacity on the main line. That is not a problem if the existing services to Lincoln are extended to Cleethorpes, however, because they already have a path from King’s Cross through to Newark. LNER ran a trial of their Azuma units through to Cleethorpes and found no serious issues, other than at Market Rasen, which requires a new footbridge and some work on the platform. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) may have something to say on that during the debate.
It now appears that the problems at Market Rasen are being put forward as the reason why services cannot go ahead. If the reported costs of between £15 million and £20 million for the work at Market Rasen are to be believed, Network Rail needs to improve its procurement process and find new contractors. Quite simply, those figures are ridiculous, and it sounds more like a tactic to convince Ministers not to go ahead. I trust that the Minister will address that point in his response.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) on securing this debate, and I am very pleased to support him in it. He has been a long-standing campaigner on this issue. On the point about platform improvements at Market Rasen, is he aware of other areas in the country that are getting modular platform extensions, which are proving to be much cheaper than the price he mentioned?
Martin Vickers
My Member of Parliament makes an excellent point. There are indeed other examples, up and down the country, where modest improvements have been made at minimal cost. It needs the Secretary of State to realise the economic benefits to the area, and she will surely see that this is an easy win to deliver on the Government’s growth agenda.
The establishment of Great British Railways represents the biggest change in the way we run the railways since privatisation 30 years ago. We must keep and improve what clearly works, and we must not weaken or undermine key roles, such as that of the rail regulator, so that we can make GBR fit for purpose, alongside open access, and deliver the best services for passengers across the country.
Martin Vickers
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and highlights yet another group of provincial towns that would see benefits for their local economy and for leisure.
I hope that open access rail policy features among the Chancellor’s new tests on how to deliver growth across the country. As a Yorkshire MP, the Minister will know of the clear benefits so far across the county—whether it be in Hull, Bradford, York, Doncaster or Selby—where open access has established and grown large rail markets. The new evidence shows that rail competition delivers not just growth on a significant scale, but a critical competitive discipline whereby all passengers enjoy choice and more routes. In 2016, the Competition and Markets Authority produced a 200-page report on passenger train competition and reached that very conclusion. I would not normally urge the Government to look to Europe for good practice, but Italy and Austria are two countries where the benefits of open access can be clearly seen.
Replicating the east coast model could help to prevent any risk of GBR sliding into financial and sector decline, which should be a huge concern for the Treasury. Crucially, open access is also a key component for British train building. Just before Christmas, the Prime Minister welcomed a significant £500 million investment in new train build at Hitachi’s Newton Aycliffe plant, but it is important to consider that that private sector order was for new trains to serve existing and new open access routes. An option on a follow-up order worth a further £500 million depends, I understand, on more open access routes being awarded by the regulator.
Melanie Onn
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time, and I am pleased that he has mentioned the Italian rail system. Obviously, Italy is very similar to Grimsby, and we would certainly benefit from the kind of rail system that operates in Italy, which is very smooth and good value for customers. Italy has good stock as well.
If we are to achieve a direct rail service from Cleethorpes to King’s Cross, for which the hon. Gentleman has campaigned for many years, open access operators need quick decision making in order to be able to place their stock orders with manufacturers to make sure that they can get services up and running for passengers quickly. Does he agree that the Minister should look very closely at these things and make decisions as quickly as he can?
Martin Vickers
I agree that Italy and Grimsby are very similar. I will come to the hon. Lady’s point about the speed of the regulator’s decision making, which is absolutely crucial.
In addition to my desire and ambition for direct services to my constituency, it is vital that the significance of open access is fully acknowledged, and that nothing is done to weaken or undermine it. Why would the Government not want more unsubsidised, direct and fast rail connections across the country? Why would they not want to secure hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in forward orders for new trains to be built in Britain? Why would they not want GBR to face robust and innovative competition on key routes, which would inevitably see standards rise, and fares and subsidies decline?
Passengers in York, Hull, Wakefield, Bradford, Doncaster, Sunderland, Newcastle and Edinburgh all now enjoy up to three competing high-speed train services to London, where open access services compete with Government-run LNER. A plan to introduce a new and fast open access service to connect Sheffield and Worksop with King’s Cross is awaiting the green light, as is one to connect Rochdale with London Euston, and one to connect Cardiff with Edinburgh. Hopefully, the plans will be swiftly approved so that passengers can enjoy more direct fast trains and real fare competition, and they will all help those cities’ respective leaders to make their case for inward investment. Sheffield has not enjoyed a direct service to King’s Cross since 1968, and a new service would rival the existing East Midlands service between the city and London St Pancras.
In debates and at Transport questions, we frequently hear tales of woe about Avanti and the services that it offers travellers on the west coast main line. That could change if we took the east coast main line as a model, and I urge Ministers to get on with it. New economic analysis from Arup shows what can be achieved. Hull Trains’ open access service, which connects Beverley, Hull, Selby and Doncaster with London, has delivered between £185 million and £380 million in extra local benefits since it was approved by Tony Blair’s Government in 2000, and those figures are expected to grow to between £325 million and £700 million by 2032. Prior to Hull Trains’ operations, there was just one direct daily train in each direction between London and Hull. Similarly, the Blair Government oversaw the approval of new and fast Grand Central services to the north-east and Yorkshire in the mid and late 2000s.
On average, Hull Trains’ fares are 30% cheaper than those for traditional services. As I said when I met representatives of Hull Trains a couple of weeks ago, they could do for the south bank of the Humber what they have done for the north bank. Direct rail links have boosted inward investment and done more for levelling up and regeneration than a host of Whitehall schemes. There are also significant environmental benefits, as more people abandon the car and coach, and instead use the well-priced high-speed trains. The popular and fast Lumo open access service between London, Newcastle and Edinburgh continues to eat into the aviation market and delivers a crucial modal shift from air to rail.
I welcome the fact that many colleagues wish to speak in this debate, and I make the point that the Office of Rail and Road has recently approved new long-distance open access services up to Stirling on the west coast main line, and between London Paddington and south Wales on the Great Western line. The Go-op application to run new open access services between Weston-super-Mare, Taunton and Swindon has also been approved. We need to speed up track access applications for operators, as the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) said, because they can take up to five years. That is another example of where the Government could boost their growth agenda. The last thing that is needed is more barriers to open access. Let us speed up the process and get Britain moving.
A recent survey conducted by Virgin showed that around two thirds of all passengers welcomed competition between train operators on price and quality. That is encouraging, and it shows how an independent regulator can deliver good decisions in the national interest. A key question for the Minister will be: is more open access to be encouraged and approved, and will an independent regulator retain powers over this critical area after GBR is established? If decisions on open access are subsumed into GBR and taken off the regulator, many of us will be concerned that the hand of civil servants and other rail planners who have been proven wrong in the past in their opposition to open access will stifle and weaken this valuable part of the railway sector. If GBR is to be genuinely at arm’s length of Whitehall, as Ministers pledge, the future of the regulator and open access will be a key test.
I look forward to Ministers’ working with me and colleagues across the House to encourage and deliver new open access inter-city services to northern Lincolnshire and destinations across the country.
Rail and Road Connectivity: Northern Lincolnshire
Melanie Onn Excerpts(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
I am delighted to welcome the Minister to her place, and I am pleased to be able to raise these important issues on behalf of my constituents in Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes and also the wider region.
The Minister will be aware that road and rail connectivity to Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes has been a long-standing issue, which many before us have tried and failed to resolve, but I am hopeful that we will be able to move things on substantially for the greater wellbeing and economic benefit of northern Lincolnshire and the Humber generally.
The Minister knows that despite being out on the coast, northern Lincolnshire plays a critical part in the nation’s energy and fuel generation, being the country’s centre of offshore wind operational management and repairs. We produce omega-3 rich food for the country’s dinner plates and eco-fibres for our clothes. We host the world’s largest port by tonnage. We are the hub for new vehicle distribution around the UK. We are the star coastal beachy getaway—someone in the Chamber may want to challenge me on that at some point—for hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, delivering excellent hospitality. We deliver national training in offshore wind and high-skill engineering. As a thriving and proud footballing town, we draw crowds weekly from all over the country, keen to support their team down at Blundell Park.
My point, in highlighting all these activities, is to demonstrate the economic importance of the Humber, and the south bank in particular, not only to those locals who benefit from the work and the products, but to the whole country. We know that being easily able to access places is key to securing additional inward investment, growing economic prosperity for and on behalf of the people who live there. It dispels some of the sense of being separate or isolated from the rest of the country.
Currently, despite the fact that we have a busy dual carriageway linking us to the central spine of the country; regular-ish direct rail services across to Liverpool in 3 hours 26 minutes via Doncaster, Sheffield and Manchester and to Leicester in 2 hours 36 minutes via Lincoln and Nottingham—the Minister will be pleased to know that—and a brilliant little airport in Kirmington that has flights direct to Schiphol and Aberdeen, we are still considered hard to access. Add in some roadworks or rail replacement services, and somewhere with better, faster transport links tips the balance and ends up getting the investment.
The current situation for an away fan driving to support their team at Blundell Park—let us say Bradford; there was a recent match that we were triumphant in—down the A180 on to Cleethorpe Road and then Grimsby Road is an inexplicably loud, juddering journey along a 50-year-old concrete road. The urban myth of the road is that an American firm were contracted to lay experimental surfacing and rolled it the wrong way, so the friction is higher and more pronounced as the cars drive the opposite way to how they do in the States, so it generates much more noise. But, whatever the history, the fact of the matter is that, today, despite some patchy resurfacing in short stretches, the noise for drivers is so loud that speaking at a normal volume to a passenger sat right next to them is impossible and hearing travel alerts on the radio is also impossible. I am convinced that it must be damaging to the hearing of people who regularly drive on that road for work, education or leisure purposes.
As for the trains, I absolutely defy anybody who says they have not experienced a delay at Doncaster. Usually they come later on, in the evening. For more regular travellers, perhaps that results in just a roll of the eyes and settling down in the waiting room for an hour or more to wait for the next connection, or, as the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) will know, heading outside to join a lengthy queue and eventually clamber into a shared taxi with other fed up and rather confused passengers. For those who do not use the trains often, the lack of information, the lack of updates and the paucity of any assistance with luggage or perhaps mobility struggles really puts them off using the railways, especially when they pay a premium for the privilege.
With most international business travellers flying into London airports, the route between Grimsby and Cleethorpes and London is an absolutely essential one. One of our refineries is owned by the Americans, the fabric company Lenzing is Austrian, Ørsted is Danish, RWE is German, Knauf is also German, and Sofina is Canadian. Companies from all over the world are basing themselves in Grimsby, Cleethorpes and the surrounding northern Lincolnshire area. Bringing senior executives to our richly experienced and active corner of the country is essential, but it is really embarrassing to send them on delayed trains or a two-coach, 50-year-old chugger with no modern amenities on it.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
The hon. Member is making an extraordinarily powerful and important point. Lincolnshire has a huge footprint from the north, which she represents, to the south— I would suggest that it is not a corner but a massive footprint. The Government want to create growth and to build 1.5 million new homes over this Parliament. The key to that is infrastructure, because if we do not have a good road network to enable people to get across Lincolnshire and if they cannot get to new homes, the house builders will not build them. In my constituency, we have been talking about a bypass in Boston for about 20 years—so long that no one can remember. I therefore support her and say to the Minister that actually the whole of Lincolnshire—north and south—needs extra investment in road and rail infrastructure to secure the growth that the Government are rightly so keen to ensure for the nation.
Melanie Onn
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He makes an important point. We cannot grow one area of—I will not say “corner” again—our patch, our kingdom of Lincolnshire without growing the other. The ability to travel across the county is incredibly important.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
I support the subject of the hon. Lady’s debate. She mentioned the United Kingdom; it is important that we look at the connectivity of the entire United Kingdom. In the constituency that I represent, there has already been an all-Ireland rail review, in which both the Northern Ireland Executive and the Irish Government have looked at the opportunity of improving rail links. One of those links was from Antrim town through to Lisburn, and connecting Belfast international airport via rail. The hon. Lady is worried about the state of her rail link to the airport in her constituency; I have Belfast international airport in mine, and no rail link. Could the Government work with the Northern Ireland Executive on the all-Ireland rail review to look at how that could progress?
Melanie Onn
I admire the hon. Gentleman’s ability to get South Antrim into a debate about northern Lincolnshire, and I support his opportunity to do that.
It is totally unsuitable to have such antiquated amenities. It is no surprise that instead of coming to Grimsby, Cleethorpes or Immingham, businesspeople will instead go direct from London to Hull from King’s Cross. As Humber-based businesses, they stay in accommodation there, perhaps with a trip over the Humber bridge for half a day. That is not enough for us to be able showcase our whole northern Lincolnshire offering.
In June, my predecessor—and my successor, actually—announced on social media that a direct train would be up and running by Christmas. I wonder if the Minister could enlighten us on the background of that assertion? I have been unable to find much more than a hope from the previous Transport Minister. I am concerned that, perhaps, false hope has been provided to residents in my constituency.
I am conscious of time, and I want to let the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) speak for a few minutes because I know that he is keen to contribute, but I will finish by saying that back in 2003, the then MP for Cleethorpes, Shona McIsaac, had a debate on exactly the same issue relating to the A180. At that time, a 10-year resurfacing programme was in place, promising action between 2002 and 2005. Here we are again. Please, will the Minister assist me in making some progress for my constituents?