Ports and Port Connectivity

Polly Billington Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. As many people will have already heard, East Thanet is surrounded on three sides by sea. From Ramsgate, we can see France on a clear day, but our port stands idle and neglected, despite its noble history as the home of the Navy during the Napoleonic wars. More recently, people will remember the hovercraft and the Sally Line ferries taking them to France for day trips. That is emblematic of some of the problems that we have with our ports in our island nation.

Ports connect us and defend us; they are places where we trade, where we welcome visitors and where we choose who stays. Our nation’s wealth has been built on ports as gateways to the world. We are the country that we are as a result of our ports and the people who built and worked in them. Yet for too long, we have overlooked them and the communities that sustained them, even as they remain vital to our economy. Many regional ports, including Ramsgate, operate well below capacity. If we are serious about levelling up and ensuring that the whole nation benefits from growth, we must look to how we bring trade and investment to ports that have been left behind.

In Ramsgate, Vattenfall employs 300 people to operate and maintain the wind farm, and there are plans for a green skills hub. Opportunities are there to be developed, yet the port is effectively shut, even though Ostend wants it to open for trade; Dover is already at capacity and would benefit from the growth of Ramsgate; and the lower Thames crossing, which the Government are fully committed to, will enable traffic and freight to move from my part of south-east England to the rest of the country.

We need to restore our connection to Europe for both trade and passengers, creating jobs and increasing our connections to the world. Overall, we need to be honest about what kind of impact Brexit has had on the ports in our country. In 2023, UK port traffic had decreased by nearly 13% compared with 2019. However, the EU still remains a significant partner, accounting for 48% of our goods exports and 54% of our imports in 2024. There are opportunities there to strengthen our relationship with Europe through investment in our ports. Ports are not only about freight; they connect us to our neighbours and support a thriving visitor economy. Some 18.1 million international passengers pass through UK ports every year—around 5,000 people daily. Cruise tourism alone injects £170 million directly into coastal communities, with Southampton’s cruise economy supporting £1 billion in wider economic impact.

I want to recognise three things that this Government have done to support our ports. First, they have brought forward a consultation on a revised national policy statement for ports, recognising that the planning framework needs to support future port development better. Secondly, they have used the National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy to back industrial and energy investment that depends on port infrastructure. Thirdly, they have begun to recognise more clearly that ports will be central to cleaner shipping and freight and the energy transition. Part of that is to do with the excellent work of this Minister and the Minister for Industry.

However, there are limits to the effectiveness of those measures. Investment is still at risk of being concentrated in the largest schemes and strongest ports, leaving many coastal communities without access to green economy benefits. The National Wealth Fund is capped, and the scale of need across our port infrastructure is much greater. Ramsgate needs only £20 million to be able to reopen with the support of private investors, yet the National Wealth Fund will not look at a project with a value of less than £50 million.

The Government still need to do more to link their port strategy to the overall coastal economic regeneration strategy so that the benefits are felt not only in national growth figures, but in the communities that keep our ports going. I have suggestions for three further steps that the Government could take without additional spending.

First, part of that coastal economic strategy should require a coastal economic area to be established within 5 km of the coast everywhere across the country. That way we could strategically invest in those coastal communities according to the industrial strategy. Regardless of everything else that they have, they have one thing in common: they are near the sea. Therefore we can see exactly how helpful and useful those ports are in terms of international and national infrastructure.

Secondly, we should mandate a capacity audit of all UK ports. We need to have transparent, published data about which ports are operating at full capacity and which are underused. Only then can we start to allocate resources and planning permissions strategically.

Finally, we need to review the allocation of the National Wealth Fund and require the industrial strategy to include a ports chapter. Critical minerals, green energy and defence supply chains all depend on ports. The Government need to be explicit about how ports fit into each sectoral strategy, ensuring that investment decisions are properly joined up. As my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) pointed out, we need to streamline planning and regulatory processes for port development. Delays and inconsistency in the planning system hold back investment. A dedicated fast track for port infrastructure within existing frameworks would accelerate delivery.

Ramsgate is actually owned by Thanet district council. It is publicly owned and there is a strong case for the public ownership of nationally significant infrastructure, such as ports, especially for an island nation. Yet, because of the way that we invest in our ports, it is struggling to make the most of its growth potential.

Ports are not relics of our past; they are a foundation for our future. For too long, we have taken them for granted. I urge the Government to give ports the strategic attention that they deserve—not just with warm words, but with action that reaches every port community in this country, including and especially Ramsgate.

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

I am sorry, but to get everyone in I will have to move on to the Front Benchers at 4 pm. Could you please stick to a formal time limit of four minutes each?