Rail Investment and Integrated Rail Plan

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

Last month’s announcement that the Prime Minister would be dropping Northern Powerhouse Rail is one of the biggest broken promises to date from a Government. I stand in solidarity with my colleagues in the north and its people who are rightly outraged by this betrayal, but I watch with particular interest because my constituents in Bedford and Kempston are going through the planning stages of the East West Rail project. More must be done to ensure the public are properly consulted on rail plans, with more honesty from the outset on the pros and cons. Let us be open about the benefits, the costs and the negative impacts so that people can make informed choices, and let us have clear, fair and transparent compensation plans for the people who are impacted.

I have people in my community whose homes are under threat of compulsory purchase, but rail building plans are years away. We await the decision on whether East West Rail and the Department for Transport will accept plans for a four-track option to avoid the demolition of homes. In the meantime, people are trapped in their homes and there is no point in making home improvements or even selling if they need to. The East West Rail plans effectively have a charge on their homes, but despite that, support and advice from EWR is poor. There is no clarity about reasonable compensation, should the worst happen, and they are completely at the mercy of whatever the Government decide. It is not fair or right to treat people like this.

[Tahir Ali]

Does my hon. Friend agree that HS2 was supposed to be about connecting the entire country and achieving a fairer and more balanced country as a result? This disintegrated rail plan delivers the opposite by leaving much of the north with inferior rail infrastructure, and this IRP promises continued infrastructure inequality.

[Mohammad Yasin]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. I have lost half a minute, so I will carry on.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

A minute has been added.

[Mohammad Yasin]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I listened carefully to the electrification plans in the integrated rail plan, and it is the third time we have been promised the electrification of the midland main line. As the electrification in other areas has been scaled back, who knows whether the plan will be followed up?

It is impossible to trust a word this Government say. They have so far refused to answer when I try to pin them down on the electrification of East West Rail. No new infrastructure plan should include the use of diesel trains if we are serious about reaching our net-zero targets. East West Rail must be electrified from day one to avoid the need for diesel locomotives and the future costs of retrofitting. Although it is important to investigate new ways to decarbonise transport, we know that existing technology such as rail electrification works now.

These rail plans that change as they go along make a mockery of the so-called integrated rail plan. It is not integrated if it rolls back previous plans. The scrapping of a major northern rail route should be the final straw for this Government, with their dead, buried and bogus levelling-up agenda.