Transport Connectivity: North-west England

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison.

In my constituency, we have had a large amount of housing growth in the last few years, and we expect to have much more. My constituents are not nimbys; they absolutely recognise that it is a huge problem that young people cannot afford to leave home in our area. It is also a huge problem that there is an absolute shortage of care workers in my area alongside an older population, and that we do not have sufficient nurses and teachers. We need key worker housing, but we also need the infrastructure to go with it.

Transport is primarily about roads in my local area, which consists of a series of small towns and villages that people drive between as much as they can. I live in my constituency, so I despair of the potholes in exactly the same way that my constituents do. Our roads are dark and dangerous, and far too many of our young people are dying on them completely needlessly. The A500 is a complete mess. The A34 is the major road to Manchester and lots of people commute on it, but it is single-lane, unlit and frequently flooded. It is completely dangerous; indeed, it is a disaster. I could carry on ad infinitum—I could list so many roads—but the only other one that I will mention specifically is the Middlewich bypass, which would unlock major employment opportunities. We need the Government to fund work on it.

When I talk to young people in my area or to older people who cannot drive, the major mode of transport they talk about is buses. For example, I had the pleasure of talking to Shipton explorer scouts about their experience of trying to use buses in our local area. They told me about buses being so full that the drivers simply drive past them on the way to school and will not pick them up. There are not enough services and, as I say, they simply do not stop.

If someone tries to take a bus from Alsager to Royal Stoke university hospital or Leighton hospital, for example, it will take them nearly an hour, despite the distance being only 9 miles. If someone tries to take what might be one of the most important journeys they are ever going to make, for example from Holmes Chapel to one of our local hospices, it will also take them a really long time. Similarly, there is no direct bus from Congleton, a town of 30,000 people, to Macclesfield district general hospital, which is our nearest major general hospital. Bus services are fundamental services. We want to invest in the NHS, and it is vital that we do so, but there is no point in us creating additional appointments if people simply cannot get to them.

And don’t get me started on trains in my constituency. They are unbelievably unreliable. There have been no Sunday services for literally years: Congleton’s last train from Manchester is at about 9 o’clock on a Saturday night. I reiterate: this is a town with 30,000 people. Sandbach, a town of 20,000 people, has no accessible route across the platform, so people with disabilities, with buggies or with luggage—it is a route to Manchester airport—simply cannot get there and have to go backwards to Crewe to make the journey to Manchester. It is absolutely crackers.

I could talk about that in more detail, but I really want to talk about the fact that the decisions about transport investment have historically been incredibly short-sighted. I reiterate the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper): we would have had £66 billion more in the last decade alone if we had had the same per person investment as London. I do not want to take money away from London. I want us to have a thriving capital, but I want my constituents to be able to get there. I also want them not to have to get there—to have opportunities in my constituency and in the wider north-west in the first place, and to be able to access them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)]

It is lovely to see you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) for securing the debate, and congratulate all hon. Members, who have put very forceful cases for transport in the north-west. Their combined contributions have demonstrated that there are many shared problems in the region.

I do not have time to mention every hon. Member who has contributed, so I will limit myself to commenting on the contribution of the hon. Member for Leigh and Atherton, who highlighted that her constituency, like I suspect many others in the area, is a post-industrial commuter belt that is struggling to cope with the consequential increase in traffic. Because of the over-reliance on cars, the society suffers from high transport-related social exclusion. There are a number of issues, but I will try to mash them together into three headlines.

Let us start with the positive news, which is the welcome devolution of transport policy. It was implemented by Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, but it was of course a Conservative policy that was brought in in 2017, so while we welcome it, we should share the plaudits. I welcome the success of the Bee network, but we have to recognise that it was expensive—there was £1 billion of Government support.

That raises a big issue, because as well as that £1 billion, Bee is supported by considerably north of £130 million a year from central funds, by my calculations. Its parent, as it were—Transport for London—receives in excess of £1 billion a year. There is therefore a fundamental question here for the Minister. The Bus Services (No. 2) Bill is going through the House of Lords, and I have with me the consultation on Great British Railways and “A railway fit for Britain’s future”. If this is the model for the future, can the Minister shed some light on where the increased funding will come from? It is a good development—it was Conservative policy—but where it is expanded beyond the large mayoral combined authorities to other combined authorities, there will inevitably be an associated cost.

The second related issue is the potential conflict when regional policy butts up against national policy, when a strong regional mayor rightly wants control over a combined transport policy, whether that is buses, rail or road. We potentially have a directing mind under Great British Railways—intended to be one of its key benefits—coming up against Andy Burnham, for example. The consultation paper refers to that, but has no detail on how those potential conflicts will be resolved and who will be the final arbiter. Perhaps the Minister will take the opportunity to respond on that.

Many hon. Members called for the reintroduction of the northern HS2 extension, focusing not on speed, but on capacity. We have to recognise that, again, it comes back to money. The cancellation of the northern part of HS2 redirected £19.8 billion to other transport projects for the region. This is not a comprehensive list, but it gives a flavour: £2 billion for the new station at Bradford and a new connection to Manchester; £3 billion for upgraded and electrified lines from Manchester to Sheffield, Sheffield to Leeds, Sheffield to Hull and Hull to Leeds; about £4 billion of additional transport funding for the six city regions; £2.5 billion of additional funding for outside the city regions; and £3.3 billion for road improvements, albeit largely filling potholes.

[Mrs Russell]

I understand that in that announcement there was £180 million for Cheshire East council, but council leaders were told it would be weighted towards the back end of the seven years. They feel strongly that it was made-up money that was always predicated on borrowing, and that there was never any real intention to give that money to the north-west.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Their concerns were wrong. I had a minor position in the Treasury at the time, and I can assure the hon. Lady that that was genuine redirection of funds, albeit over a period, as one would expect, with the release of funds associated with the development of HS2 in the northern sector.

To conclude the list, we had £3.3 billion for road improvements and an additional £11.5 billion for Northern Powerhouse Rail from Manchester to Liverpool. The question that is easy to miss in opposition but impossible to avoid in government is this: where do the Government want money to be spent? That money could be used for those widespread improvements or be rediverted to a northern branch of a version of HS2, but it is impossible to spend the same money twice. If the Minister wants to do both, where is the money going to come from?

Finally, many hon. Members referred to the seeming disconnect between investment decisions in London and the south-east and elsewhere in the country, the north-west in particular. The hon. Member for Leigh and Atherton used a good phrase:

“Growth goes where the growth already is.”

The previous Government at least took the first step in tackling an injustice in the Green Book analysis. That was undertaken to unlock some of the levelling-up investment that the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) referred to. I am concerned that the new Government—certainly the new Treasury—are reverting to type. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer had her growth panic a few weeks ago—