Future of Rail

Navendu Mishra Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Charles, and to take part in this debate. I congratulate my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), on securing the debate.

We hear a lot from the Government about the decarbonisation agenda, and it is important to highlight that we can cut congestion on the road, as well as noise and air pollution, by investing in good quality public transport across the country. My constituency of Stockport is in Greater Manchester, and unfortunately the rail capacity through Stockport is currently insufficient to operate any extra services. The rail network around Stockport and south Manchester is among the most congested in the country. The Government have to address that issue to ensure that decades of under-investment is reversed and that people in my constituency and across Greater Manchester get good quality public transport options.

I associate myself with the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for York Central made about transport workers and transport unions. They do a really good job in difficult circumstances. The pandemic has not been easy for any of us, but people in that sector do a very important job with long hours and low pay, and we are grateful to them.

Two businesses based in my constituency provide services to the rail industry: Sella Controls, in Manor ward, which I visited last year, and Lundy Projects, a few minutes’ walk from my constituency office, which I visited only a few days ago. Rail electrification has to go far beyond the Government’s current ambition. Lundy Projects is a specialist company that focuses on signalling and electrification. I want to see more skilled, well-paid, unionised jobs in my constituency, and the Government should come forward with investment.

In Manchester, Mayor Andy Burnham is doing a very good job with the Bee Network, which integrates walking, cycling, trams and buses into integrated systems similar to those in London. It is a long time coming, because people in my constituency in Greater Manchester have suffered from a disintegrated public transport system at very high cost, so bus franchising is a good move. I will not go into that too much because we are here to talk about trains. We all love trains, so I will stick to trains rather than going on about buses.

I will come to a conclusion in just over a minute, but I thank two groups in my constituency: the Friends of Heaton Chapel Station, who visited me last week in the Palace of Westminster and who I was pleased to give a tour to, and the Friends of Davenport Station. The platforms at both stations lack tactile safety tiles, which is a serious issue. Unfortunately, we recently had a fatality on the railway network. The Government must come up with a timetable to ensure that all train stations have that provision, so that people with disabilities or visual impairments are not injured.

There are four stations in my constituency, but the main Stockport station on the mainline to Birmingham, London and Manchester, is not in a good shape. Platforms often flood, the roof leaks and the lift is often broken, which makes staff members’ lives difficult as well as creating discomfort and inconvenience for passengers. We need a significant capital investment in the station, so I hope the Minister will address those issues at Stockport train station.

Finally, the Greek Street bridge has come to the end of its life and needs to be replaced. We need a new bridge that will safeguard the future of the Metrolink tram system coming into Stockport, which provides better integration with Manchester and wider areas. I could go on, but I will leave it there, Sir Charles. I hope the Minister will address these issues.