Rail Investment and Integrated Rail Plan

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

At the risk of straying outside the bounds of the debate, I have already paid £4.1 billion to TfL to ensure the services can carry on running. I hope that, as a London MP, the hon. Lady will have a word with the Mayor of London and ask him where the plan he should have sent to us on 18 November is, because that is what is preventing a further settlement to a system we have of course always said we will support.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

rose—

[Grant Shapps]

I will make a little further progress.

“Ah,” some say, “But this was never the plan for Northern Powerhouse Rail.” That is basically their argument—“This is a good plan, but it’s not the plan that was in place”—but, again, that is wrong. In fact, we are using part of the existing route, which was always one of the options for Northern Powerhouse Rail so it is not something we have just created. But this is not, of course, just about that £23 billion for the east-west rail: Northern Powerhouse Rail will cut 20 minutes off journey times between Leeds and London, with a £3.5 billion package of work to upgrade the east coast main line, benefiting many other destinations including Darlington and Newcastle, and north to Scotland as well.

I have heard many comments about this plan in the last few weeks, it has to be said. The Leader of the Opposition cried “betrayal”, the shadow Chancellor said it was “shameful”, and the former shadow Transport Secretary the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) described £96 billion as “crumbs off the table”. We really do have to worry about a party that thinks that £96 billion equates to “crumbs”.

In reality, of course, the integrated rail plan is the biggest ever single Government investment in a rail network, five times more than the amount spent on Crossrail and 10 times more than was spent of the Olympics. I cannot help but detect the hand of politics in the Opposition’s reaction, but while they criticise and politicise, their constituents will start to see the benefits. They will ride on faster trains, sit in more comfortable carriages and not have to fight for a seat. Perhaps that is why the Labour Mayor of Manchester said the plans bring “significant benefits”, or the Labour Mayor of Doncaster welcomed the

“significant further investment in the East Coast Main Line”

or—

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I, too, welcome the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) to her post and wish her well. No doubt we will chat soon about the role.

Those of us with long experience of the UK Government’s trail of broken promises and inaction knew that this day was likely to come. The minute the High Speed 2 Bills in this place were split by phases, it was clear that the Government were preparing the ground for cancellation once the political cover of promised HS2 to the north was no longer required. The idea of a rail strategy coming from the Department for Transport is a bad joke. In recent months, my office, and indeed my house, has accumulated a colourful collection of glossy DFT booklets and reports—a substitute for genuine action and construction. What with the Williams-Shapps plan, the integrated rail plan, the net zero strategy, the Union connectivity review and the transport decarbonisation plan, to name but a few, the Department is at least keeping graphic designers in work, and will no doubt keep fact checkers busy for months and years to come.

If hon. Members want to see real ambition and forward thinking, they should look across the North sea to Denmark—do not worry; I will come to Scotland. Denmark has managed to construct an 8 km bridge and a 4 km tunnel linking it with Sweden—a real bridge and a real tunnel, by the way, not a back-of-a-fag-packet scheme with roundabouts under the Isle of Man, dreamed up by the Prime Minister while he organised secret Santas. [Interruption.] I will come to it; don’t you worry, Secretary of State. Denmark’s fixed link with Sweden includes a high-speed rail link between the countries. For the foreseeable future, there will be more high-speed rail over and under an inlet of the Baltic sea than over a single inch of the north of England.

Now the Danes are building a fixed link to Germany —the project is financed and run by the Danish Government—while also building high-speed rail links joining the rest of the country. In fact, on current plans, Denmark, which takes up a third of the area that England does, will have more high-speed track in use than England by the end of next year, and it will continue to pull miles and miles ahead.

The Danish authorities are showing more vision and commitment to the nation’s transport infrastructure than their counterparts in the DFT. In Denmark, connecting neighbours is not a wheeze dreamt up by the Prime Minister, with no basis in reality; it is part of a sustained, long-term strategy to truly level up. I cannot imagine the Danish transport authorities planning a bridge or tunnel over a munitions and radioactive waste dump. They live in the real world, where they are building real infrastructure and real connections. This is a small, independent, northern European country taking bold and radical steps to improve connectivity with its neighbours, to push towards decarbonisation, and to boost its economy and that of its neighbours.

Contrast that with the Union connectivity review, where, despite the Scottish Government wanting meaningful engagement on a raft of issues, the UK Government simply ploughed ahead and ignored them.

[Mike Amesbury]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gavin Newlands]

I will give way once, but I see that a number of Members want to speak in the debate, and this is a devolved issue.

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way during his powerful contribution. In May, a station in my patch, Northwich, collapsed. It still has not been rebuilt. People who are disabled or have mobility problems cannot travel in one of the directions, yet the Government have so far refused to build back better, fairer and in an inclusive way. Does he concur that that is the reality on the ground in many parts of the UK, including the north of England?

[Gavin Newlands]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I have not been to his part of the country yet, but I am sure that I will make plans to shortly. I have no doubt about what he says, and I am entirely unsurprised by it. I am sure—or at least I hope—that the Secretary of State was listening to what he said.