Great British Railways: Headquarters

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Julian Sturdy]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention, based on which I consider that he might have had sight of my speech, because I will come on to that point. He is absolutely right: we have to link the past with the future. York has an amazing rail heritage and the railway museum is at the heart of that. I will touch on that further. York has an amazing opportunity going forward and I want to touch on some of the sites—the York central site—that really can deliver for York, but also for our future rail centre.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way and for securing the debate. Does he agree that it is about not just the past, but the future? Indeed, York has the engineers, the operators and the skillset needed for advancing digital rail in the future—the very skills that are needed by Great British Railways.

[Julian Sturdy]

I thank the hon. Member—I was going to call her my hon. Friend—and neighbour. I think she might have seen my speech as well, because I was going to touch on skills. She is absolutely right that the skills in York have been developed not only through the Network Rail centre, but through our colleges and universities, which are at the forefront of the future. That is why York, for me, is undoubtedly the first choice for the location of the headquarters of Great British Railways.

York has always been an important staging post for those travelling between London and Scotland, which is reflected in its prominence on the east coast mainline. It also has another role as the interchange between the east coast mainline and the trans-Pennine line, connecting northern industrial heartlands, such as Merseyside, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire with the east coast, the east of England and the north-east of England. If, as I believe to be the case, the Government are truly committed to levelling up and spreading prosperity to areas outside London and south-east, then they should look no further than York.

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[Julian Sturdy]

Automation, yes. I thank my hon. Friend for putting me right on that. The University of Leeds is currently developing the new state-of-the-art Institute for High Speed Rail and Systems Integration. That work was enabled by collaboration between key sectors in the fields of railway engineering, signalling and software development, many of which are based in York or have major offices there. I hope I have persuaded you, Mr Efford, of York’s credentials as a railway city and perhaps the UK’s pre-eminent railway city.

There is another reason that York would be a sensible, if not the best, choice for locating a major public body in the form of the Great British Railways. As the Minister will know, York is currently home to one of the country’s largest brownfield sites, which is also a regeneration project. It covers some 45 hectares of disused track and railway depots, adjacent to York station and right in the heart of the city. York Central promises to be of a similar scale and ambition to the highly successful redevelopment of King’s Cross. The project promises to provide more than 2,500 new homes and, crucially, 112,000 square metres of high-quality commercial office space. Work has already started on clearing the site, following a successful bid for £77 million of Government funding for the enabling infrastructure.

As the Prime Minister would say, this is an oven-ready proposition for Great British Railways, providing a unique chance to build the new headquarters on a city-centre brownfield site in which Network Rail is a major partner and landowner. Surely there is a certain appeal about this: the new Great British Railways being based on a regenerated railway site. That the site happens to be located next to the National Railway Museum, one of the north’s major and main interchange stations, and the offices of several major players in the national rail industry makes it an option that is impossible for the Government to ignore.

[Rachael Maskell]

The hon. Member makes a very powerful case for York. The location of Great British Railways would also be next to the rail operating centre, which is the flagship of digital signalling and contains advanced skills. Is that not why this particular location is so important for the future of our railways?

[Julian Sturdy]

Absolutely. The location is perfect, with the brownfield regeneration site that interlinks with the Network Rail headquarters and all the skills around there, as we have touched on. Those new skills are so important to the future of our railways. That is what we, as well as the region, can deliver in York. The location is ideal, but this is also about the skills that the whole region can deliver. That is so important and it is what makes the case for York so strong.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford, especially in a debate on a subject that I know you will follow with great interest in the future.

I have learned a great deal today. Before I respond to the various points that my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) made, I thought that I should respond to a couple of other points. I have had a history lesson. I did not know that the Treasury was moved to York by Edward I. Obviously, this Government have moved part of the Treasury to Darlington, so it must have been a good idea then that we are repeating now.

I have also heard a great deal about the merits of Derby from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham). She says that it is in the centre of the country, but if you were to take England and put a pin in the middle, you would find that the best place to put Great British Railways would be the village of Hellidon in my constituency. I am not convinced that there will be a great campaign for such a development, but I thank my hon. Friends for their contributions so far. I know my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer is a tireless advocate for his city. He is to be commended for promoting an understanding of what a wonderful place it is.

I completely understand that York is a city famed for its rich railway heritage. The first direct train ran between York and London in 1840. By the 1850s, there were 13 trains a day between the two cities, carrying 341,000 passengers a year. As the centre of the railway network along the east coast, York played a major role in the management and development of Britain’s railway network. For more than 120 years, York was the base for the construction and servicing of steam locomotives and rolling stock.

Fast forward to today and some of the remaining buildings used during the construction and servicing of the locomotives and rolling stock have become part of the wonderful National Railway Museum, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight).

Today, York is home to Network Rail, LNER, Northern, Grand Central, the Siemens train servicing and cleaning depot, and many varied rail consultancy businesses, contractors and specialists, from signalling and electrification experts, to civil engineers and railway operatives, as the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) has told me a number of times and I am sure, based on this debate, will continue to do so for quite some time to come.

Since 1877, York railway station has helped to transform the city, connecting York to the rest of the United Kingdom and the wider world. At one time, the biggest railway station in the world, it remains today an important transport hub for the north and the United Kingdom as a whole. During the autumn of 2019, there were approximately 20,000 daily passengers on London to York services, and there were more than 10 million passenger journeys from York station over the course of that year. From the very earliest days of the railways, through to the modern day, York has played an important part in the history and future of the railway in this country, and it will continue to do so. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) and for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for their contributions today to emphasise the importance of this great city.

Of course, there are other towns and cities across the country that have played an important part in our proud railway heritage and that right hon. and hon. Members are proud to represent. It is good to see one of them, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire, here today.

The Government’s aim is to have a world-class railway, working seamlessly as part of the wider transport network and delivering opportunities across the nations and regions of Great Britain. The Williams-Shapps plan for rail, published in May this year, sets out the path to a truly passenger focused railway, underpinned by new contracts that prioritise punctual and reliable services; the rapid delivery of a ticketing revolution, with new flexible and convenient tickets; and long-term proposals to build a modern, greener, more accessible network that delivers the Government’s priorities to level up and decarbonise our transport system.

Central to the Williams-Shapps plan for rail is the establishment of a new rail body, Great British Railways, which will provide a single familiar brand and strong unified leadership across the rail network, as was described by my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer. It will be responsible for delivering better value and flexible fares and the punctual and reliable services that passengers deserve, and it will bring the ownership of the infrastructure, fares, timetables and the planning of the network under one roof. It will bring today’s fragmented railways under a single point of operational accountability and ensure that its focus is to deliver for passengers and freight customers.

Great British Railways will be a new organisation with a commercial mindset and a strong customer focus, and it will have to have a different culture from the current infrastructure owner Network Rail and use very different incentives from the beginning. As we have heard, it will also have to have a new headquarters. Indeed, Great British Railways will have responsibility for the whole railway system, with a national headquarters as well as regional divisions. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer that the national headquarters will be based outside London, bringing the railway closer to the people and places it serves, and ensuring that the skilled jobs and economic benefits are focused way beyond this great capital city, in line with the Government’s commitment to levelling up.

The competition to find the national headquarters will recognise towns and cities with a rich railway history and that are strongly linked to the network, ensuring that the headquarters will take pride of place at the heart of a new era for British railways. The Great British Railways transition team is in the process of designing the selection process for the national headquarters, and the Secretary of State is setting up a panel of experts to assess the various locations. We are, therefore, right at the beginning of the process and I hope that Westminster Hall will continue to see celebrations of great cities and towns and their railway heritage as the bids develop.

[Rachael Maskell]

The Minister clearly understands and appreciates the value of York and all that it will bring. Does he agree that the partners, including the business community, City of York Council and North Yorkshire County Council, will have an important role to play in signing off the bid?