Rail Investment

Debate between Paul Maynard and Guto Bebb

Thursday 17th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard]

The hon. Gentleman has anticipated my next point. I take entirely the point that the network of high-speed rail that has been mapped out links areas with a high concentration of service industries, which is key to saying that the predictions for demand are more robust than they were, for instance, in Spain, where Madrid and Seville were linked. Seville had a high level of heavy industry but no service industry, so no demand occurred.

I want to make a number of other points before concluding and allowing as many hon. Members as possible to participate in the debate. May I make a plea to the Minister on open-access rail? We have just seen the sad failure of the Wrexham and Shrewsbury service, which was a good example of open access, but it failed to make money. There are other examples around the country, such as Grand Central, which have shown that open access can work. I urge the Minister unambiguously to state her support for open access in the forthcoming White Paper, and indeed today, because many open access companies are uncertain about their future. In Blackpool, open access is perhaps our only chance of getting a link to London. I urge her, therefore, to make some positive noises on open access.

In conclusion, whenever we write reports, there is always the temptation to come up with a wish list, and I have fallen into the trap myself today by highlighting the northern hub. Wish lists are easy to make, but it is far harder to have a discussion and come to a view on how to prioritise policy making. How do we reconcile all the different competing local priorities that we each have in our constituencies with the apportioning of public money? That is not easy.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

As a north Wales MP, my question concerns the extent to which there should be a recognition of the economic impact of railway investment, and to what degree the investment should take regional variations into account. My understanding is that investment in railways does not, for example, take into account investment in Wales, so we cannot even compare investment in Wales with investment in other parts of the United Kingdom. Should we have a system that allows us to identify investment in Wales as a percentage of overall investment in the railways?

[Paul Maynard]

It is important that we have more local decision making. It is easy to say such things, and we all do—we all talk about localism now—but we have to realise that it is not a case of build it and they will come. We recently heard evidence about Stratford International rail station, which has no international rail services. Merely building transport infrastructure does not guarantee passengers or even economic growth. Those involved in local government often place too much hope in signature schemes, which they spend public money on promoting. They tell us that those schemes will be transformational, but, 10 years down the road, they are shown to be nothing of the sort.

We need more innovation. Yes, it is easy to say that, too, and we all do. Small local schemes—a passing place here, a passing place there, a slightly longer platform somewhere else—can be cost-effective ways of increasing capacity. However, priorities also need to be decided at the regional and sub-regional levels, as well as at a national level. We have an increasingly complex and dense map of economic decision-making organisations. We have travel-to-work areas, city regions, local enterprise partnerships, strategic transport partnerships and smaller, micro-local organisations. One of the best transport submissions that I have ever seen came from a body called Upper Calder Valley Renaissance. It was incredibly powerful and full of good ideas, with a real understanding of the local transport economy, but it covered a micro-area.

I make a plea to the Minister to somehow grasp that nettle. We have a profusion of expertise out there, which enables us to make good quality, evidence-based decisions at local level. I despair when I hear the Department for Transport arguing the toss over the siting of a vending machine on a platform at Crewe station, because that has nothing to do with the Department. However, the Department has a role to play in ensuring that rail investment decisions are based on the greatest economic benefit and that proposals are evidence based. We can then worry about the politics.