Rail and Road Connectivity: Northern Lincolnshire

Debate between Melanie Onn and Richard Tice

Thursday 5th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[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.