England-Wales Transport Links

Roger Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) on calling this important debate. It is a privilege to have a UK Minister with responsibility for transport, particularly in England, here to respond to points that we make about our connectivity across the border.

The issue is especially relevant to my constituents, as Brecon and Radnorshire covers almost a third of the Welsh border with England but is relatively poorly served by transport connections between the two countries. The A44 and A438 are key east-west routes connecting Leominster in the north of Herefordshire to Rhayader, and Hereford with Brecon. It is always a bit of a disadvantage for me to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), because he makes many of the points that I would like to make. However, I should like to reinforce those points.

These trunk roads are the busiest in my constituency and are managed by the Welsh Assembly Government through a partnership between Powys and Ceredigion county councils, but they still require an input and funding from the English Highways Agency, to maximise the benefits of any improvements that are to be made. That can be a problem, as I have highlighted before with my Assembly colleague, Kirsty Williams, because priorities in England are continually focused on the larger conurbations. Consequently, priorities do not match up and inputs and funding are inadequate to make changes that are essential for road safety and making general improvements to our economic development.

The A483 Pant to Llanymynech bypass scheme was considered by the West Midlands Regional Transport Board as part of the regional prioritisation in 2006, in which the region considered the relative priority of major schemes in the region. The board advised that this scheme was a low priority due to its low cost-benefit score and the modest contributions it was thought to make towards economic development and housing in the area. Following the decision of the West Midlands Regional Transport Board in 2006, the scheme was reviewed to assess whether its cost could be reduced while maintaining a substantial proportion of its benefits. However, due to the route’s not being deemed a priority, that study concluded that possible small-scale solutions along the route would still offer poor value for money. Consequently, the Highways Agency was instructed by the Minister to stop developing the scheme altogether and that it could be revisited in future only if the West Midlands Regional Transport Board decided that it was a priority. Finally, in May 2012, the Government announced a series of schemes that would be developed to enable potential construction in the next spending review. This scheme was not selected and no work is currently being undertaken by the Highways Agency.

The A40, which travels through my constituency and forms a section of the unsigned Euroroute E30, has been described by the Welsh Assembly Government as

“one of the lowest standard sections of the Trans European Road Network in the United Kingdom”,

because of prioritisation discrepancies between England and Wales.

We still require a reciprocal agreement between England and Wales on bus passes. At the moment, Welsh residents can travel only on buses that start or finish their journey in Wales—likewise, English passengers. For example, consider passengers on a bus journey from Hay-on-Wye to Hereford. Hay is intersected by the Herefordshire border, which is also the Wales-England border, but due to bus passes being issued by Powys county council in Wales, those passengers are not able to travel to Hereford without being charged a small fee for doing so.

For many the bus is a lifeline, not only in respect of health, but for those who need to travel for specialist treatment and for jobs, and suchlike, in Hereford and Shrewsbury. My colleague in the Welsh Assembly, Kirsty Williams, inquired into this matter in 2010, asking Ieuan Wyn Jones, then Minister with responsibility:

“Will the Minister make a statement on what discussions he has had recently with the UK Government and Scottish Government about the harmonisation of the concessionary bus pass schemes in England, Scotland and Wales across the United Kingdom?”

Ieuan Wyn Jones answered:

“I have had no recent discussions with UK and Scottish Government Ministers about the harmonisation of concessionary bus travel schemes across the UK.”

I ask the Minister, have there been any discussions on this important matter?

Turning briefly to rail matters, my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion stressed the need for better train services. I am delighted that Network Rail’s 10-year, £1 billion modernisation plan for Wales’s somewhat antiquated line is about to take place, and the £220 million electrification of the valleys line will bring a lot of benefit, but we need to make a start on the electrification of the London to Cardiff line, which will also reduce journey times to Swansea. I am pleased to see the inclusion of a scheme to re-signal the critical Marches route between Newport and Shrewsbury, which will provide train companies with the ability to run more frequent and faster trains between north and south Wales, serving a number of my constituents. I am by no means calling for a reversal of Dr Beeching’s axe of 1963, but the reshaping of the rail network in Wales will still leave large towns in my constituency, such as Brecon and Ystradgynlais, without any connection. People from those towns will have to travel 20 miles to reach a railway station.

I am sometimes told that the people living in Painscastle and Rhosgoch in my constituency take longer to get to New York than anyone living in any other part of the UK. Isolation and peripherality—if that is a word—are not only a perception for the people I represent, but a reality. Small changes, however, could make a real difference to their lives.