Rail Investment and Integrated Rail Plan

Naz Shah Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

I wish I could show the House an image of Bradford’s transport system. A train comes into Forster Square and must reverse back out, and the same happens less than just half a mile away on the other side of town, where a train coming into Bradford Interchange also must reverse back out. The reality is that Bradford transport is literally a one-way, dead-end cul-de-sac.

The people of Bradford were continually reassured that they would get NPR in Bradford. I wrote to the Chancellor a week before this announcement with cross-party Members and the Bradford business community, highlighting the importance of the Government sticking to their promise. I highlighted the great work that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) has done in raising the need for a proper transport network.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the scandalous way that the proud Yorkshire city of Bradford—a place close to my heart, having worked there for more than a decade—has been let down yet again. Would she also agree that for the towns and villages in my constituency of Batley and Spen, we need more detail on the stopping patterns at intermediate stations? Faster trains between cities on existing lines do nothing to free up the capacity that we desperately need.

[Naz Shah]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I agree with the valid points she makes.

Campaigners say that it was quicker to travel to places from Bradford on a steam train than it is on today’s network. The Edwardians could get on a train from Bradford to Wakefield and it would take 30 minutes. Today, it is 48 minutes. Bradford is Britain’s seventh biggest city, with the youngest population, and it is the worst connected major city in the UK. We were promised a through line and were betrayed by this Government. Only a few weeks ago, at the annual Bradford chamber of commerce dinner, the new president Victoria Wainwright said, “This isn’t the end of the line for business in Bradford; it’s never the end of the line for Bradford”, because despite the failure, neglect, and contempt that this Government have shown towards Bradford and its people, Bradford is still reaching new heights.

Bradford is the only city outside London that has two FTSE 100 companies—Bradford & Bingley and Provident Financial. We are proud to have in Bradford the headquarters of Morrisons, one of the country’s largest supermarkets. Najam Kidwai, who is from Bradford, today listed a company on NASDAQ that is five times over-subscribed with more than $1 billion in share orders. We have curries that Lahore and New Delhi struggle to compete with and milkshakes that have been tried and tested by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. We have the Bradford literature festival, which is the most diverse festival in Europe, and we are bidding to be the city of culture, because, among other things, Bradford has one of the largest collections of David Hockney’s work, is a UNESCO city of film and has a world heritage site.

I end by asking hon. Members to imagine the potential that Bradford could unlock if the Government supported it and it got its fair share—I would be happy to work on a non-partisan basis with the Government on that. With the transport investment alone, we would have unlocked a £30 billion economic boost to the region within a decade; brought more than 6.5 million people to the city; created 27,000 jobs; generated a 10% uplift in land value; and unlocked 1.3 million additional accessible jobs within 90 minutes of Bradford.

When I was growing up, I knew my mother had been down to town because she used to walk through Rackhams and try on all the nice perfumes—a bit like people do in Selfridges these days. That is what Bradford used to have, and it deserves to be back at its best, not just for Bradford, but for the whole of the north.

The litmus test of levelling up is levelling up for Bradford. I am grateful to my friends, the hon. Members for Keighley (Robbie Moore) and for Shipley (Philip Davies), who have supported NPR, but the Government have failed. It is time for the Government to remove the iron gate in front of Bradford. They need to support us, invest and allow Bradford to unlock its full potential.

Rail Investment and Integrated Rail Plan

Naz Shah Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My colleagues and I were extremely disappointed with the decision to scrap Northern Powerhouse Rail between Leeds and Manchester. Although the IRP, or, as I like to call it, the bus replacement service, has some things to like —we will be constructive about them where they meet our aims for Yorkshire—the impact of the loss of high-speed rail will have ripple effects through every community in our region.

A lot of people do not fully realise that high-speed rail infrastructure, on dedicated lines, is not solely about getting to London or the midlands more quickly. It is about releasing capacity so that local lines can run effective local services and we can ensure the future of our network, the growth of our region and the environment around us. Northern Powerhouse Rail promised three things: faster services on a dedicated line, new trains and new stations. It promised an all-electric dedicated line between Bradford and Manchester. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) has already made the point about the short-sightedness of not connecting the people of the UK’s youngest city with the opportunities that that would have brought. Instead, the Government have written in the IRP:

“We will also upgrade and electrify”—

I just want to say that many people here do not understand what “upgrade” means. It does not mean getting something new. If I put a new stereo in my car, it is not a new car; it is just a car with a new stereo in it—

“the line between Leeds and Bradford giving a non-stop journey time which could be as low as 12 minutes.”

That sounds good at first glance, but without the dedicated line, there are knock-on effects that are not printed on the tin.

There are currently two lines that run from Leeds to Bradford. One takes 20 minutes, stopping twice, and the other takes 24 minutes, stopping four times. Both those lines are at maximum frequency. There is no way, on the current line, to meet the 12-minute target to Bradford without sacrificing local services and local stops. I have constituents living between those stops who do not feel that the cancellation of NPR affects them, but when residents who commute to Leeds or Bradford by rail find that their service will be cut to meet the Leeds-Bradford target, what will they do? The answer is probably to increase car use. We have been promised new trains, but new trains are not a replacement for new services. More than that, they will work only on electrified lines, which do not extend beyond Bradford westbound through Huddersfield or northbound to Preston.

[Naz Shah]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the commute from Bradford to Leeds, or from Bradford to Manchester, puts more cars on the road and does not help us to meet our COP26 obligations?

[Alex Sobel]

Absolutely. Only NPR will get people on those routes on to the train.

Most concerning is the broken promise of new stations in Leeds and in Bradford. Faster and more regular services require more platform space, and Leeds is already at capacity. Without extra capacity, will my constituents who use the Harrogate line have their services cut? I would like the rail Minister to answer that question. On the electrification of the Harrogate line, the recent Network Rail transport decarbonisation network strategy includes a recommendation for electrification between Leeds and Harrogate. Will that come forward?

On Northern Powerhouse Rail, we have been sold a pup, but I also want to address the problem of getting to a train station in the first place. Otley in my constituency was cut from the train line by Beeching. Our Mayor, Tracy Brabin, has an ambitious and achievable plan for a mass transit system to reach Otley, linking it to Leeds and Bradford, where we thought it would join NPR. The Government committed to that scheme in their manifesto in 2019. The Prime Minister said in this Chamber:

“We will remedy the scandal that Leeds is the largest city in western Europe without light rail or a metro.”—[Official Report, 19 December 2019; Vol. 669, c. 47.

However, trams are built not on the hopes and dreams of a whimsical Prime Minister, but on cold, hard cash.

The Prime Minister has failed to show us the money. All the Government have committed to is £200 million, of which they have said £100 million should be used to work out how to get HS2 trains from Sheffield to Leeds—something that the DFT, not the West Yorkshire metro Mayor, should be doing—and that falls well short of the £3 billion required for us to build the tram scheme. The people of West Yorkshire have been short-changed for far too long. What the Prime Minister has offered is not levelling up, but pushing us down a hill. He is indeed northern infrastructure’s grand old duke of York, marching us up to the top of the hill and right back down again.

[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

I always welcome the opportunity to discuss improvements to our rail system on behalf of my constituents in Keighley and Ilkley.

First, I welcome the work of this Conservative Government and previous Conservative Governments to make positive changes to rail connections and rail improvements in the north and, indeed, throughout the whole country. The Opposition gloss over the fact that in 13 years a Labour Government did absolutely nothing to improve opportunities for my constituents in Keighley to travel by rail. It is worth noting that in the Blair and Brown years, the Labour Government electrified only 63 miles. In 13 years, that is 4.8 miles a year.

Earlier, the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), asked what the Conservatives have done for my constituents. Let me tell her: constituents travelling from Ilkley or Ben Rhydding, or from Steeton or Keighley, either to Bradford or to Leeds, do so on an electrified line that was put in under the Major Conservative Government in 1994. Since 2010, the Conservatives have electrified 1,500 miles of line, and here we are again, under the Johnson Conservative Government, seeing another huge boost in the shape of the £96 billion package to improve rail infrastructure across the north and throughout the rest of the country, benefiting most of my colleagues.

But that is where it stops for me. As I have said previously in the House, I feel very strongly about and am deeply disappointed by the recent rail announcements in respect of improvements for the Bradford district. In my view, the announcements completely short-change the Bradford district. The rail Minister has made several announcements about reducing the travel time between Leeds and Bradford, but the crucial thing for unlocking economic potential for Keighley and the wider Bradford district is better linkage from Bradford across to Manchester, thereby opening up better east-west links.

[Naz Shah]

Does the hon. Member agree that although the Secretary of State came to the House and tried to sell us the idea that the Government will reduce the time of a journey from Leeds to Bradford from 20-something minutes to 12 minutes—or whatever it is—that journey could be done in seven minutes? The journey from Bradford to Manchester, which is currently quicker in a car so increases car usage, could be done in less than 20 minutes. The Government are wrapping up something that is actually a very hollow promise, are they not?

[Robbie Moore]

I was pleased to sign a joint letter to the rail Minister with the hon. Lady, the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) to urge the Government to look into getting better transport connectivity between Leeds and Manchester, with a stop in Bradford, because that is the only mechanism to drive real economic prosperity and economic opportunities for my constituents in Keighley.

My constituency is only 43 miles away from Manchester. I want to make the strong case for a resident who lives in Keighley to have the opportunity to get quickly to Manchester so that they can commute there to work on a daily basis, if needs be. Likewise, that would open up economic opportunity between Manchester and Keighley. In my view, that can be done only by having a proper stop in the Bradford district to improve connectivity.

In the short time I have remaining, I wish to make the case, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) has, for opening up the Skipton to Colne line. Better connectivity to east Lancashire would dramatically increase the economic opportunities for many of my constituents in Keighley and would make sure we can really drive economic prosperity in Keighley.

Transport

Naz Shah Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from the urgent question on 24 November 2021.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

Following the Minister’s words about Bradford, the whole city of Bradford and my constituents are angry. Some 530,000 people have been failed. Although I welcome the question of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) to focus on Bradford, the truth is that the Government have stripped it of £30 billion of growth in the next 10 years. It is the fourth-youngest city in the country. I also hear on the grapevine that the Government have held on to the IPOSs for Leeds because there might be a U-turn. My question is simple: when will he U-turn on the NPR?

Transport for the North

Naz Shah Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

The £100 million announced in the integrated rail plan is specifically to look at how we can get HS2 trains most effectively from East Midlands Parkway to Leeds. We have not ruled out the construction of the full eastern leg at this stage; we are looking at whether it is the best long-term solution.

On Bradford, my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Keighley (Robbie Moore) continue to remind me of its importance. I am just over the border from the Bradford district, so we are keen to see what we can do to support it. I spoke to the leader of Bradford Council the day after the publication of the integrated rail plan. We are keen to continue working with Bradford and local stakeholders to deliver benefits to that area.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

Following the Minister’s words about Bradford, the whole city of Bradford and my constituents are angry. Some 530,000 people have been failed. Although I welcome the question of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) to focus on Bradford, the truth is that the Government have stripped it of £30 billion of growth in the next 10 years. It is the fourth-youngest city in the country. I also hear on the grapevine that the Government have held on to the IPOSs for Leeds because there might be a U-turn. My question is simple: when will he U-turn on the NPR?

International Travel

Naz Shah Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on shoehorning two things into his question: first, 45 minutes since anyone has mentioned coming home, he got it into aviation, and secondly, he mentioned night flights, which were not entirely part of my announcement today. I know that Southend airport is very important to his local economy. I will not comment on the night flights position specifically, but I was relieved to see that flights will be able to continue there after the operator experienced difficulties recently.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab) [V]]

I, too, welcome the statement from the Secretary of State. However, I would like to understand what he is doing to fix the issue with the quarantine hotels. My 34-weeks pregnant constituent who returned to the UK was quarantined in Greenwich at the O2 InterContinental hotel. On days one and two she ended up in hospital, on day six she was denied travel to hospital for a scan, and by day eight she had lost her baby and spent four days in ICU because she nearly lost her life. Will he meet me to discuss getting quarantining right for families, and especially the tragic case of my constituent?

[Grant Shapps]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s welcome for the package. I am very, very sorry to hear about the situation that she outlines. Of course everybody in a quarantine hotel should have access to medical assistance. I am not aware of the details but I am happy to help to arrange for the correct Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care to meet her to discuss her constituent’s case.