Britain’s Railways

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Angela Crawley appears still not to be here, so we will go to Yvette Cooper.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

The current system has been failing my constituency for far too long, so I urge the Secretary of State to make sure that this plan improves things and is a step forward. The five towns are less than 20 miles from the centre of Leeds. If we were that close to the centre of London, we would have many trains an hour into the city, yet Normanton has only one train an hour into Leeds; Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley are all underserved; and we need more trains to Sheffield, York and Hull. I have met Transport Ministers repeatedly on this, so will the Transport Secretary now guarantee that this new plan will mean more local trains for the five towns?

[Grant Shapps]

I certainly welcome the right hon. Lady’s partial welcome, at least, for the White Paper. I completely agree with her about the necessity to join up northern towns. As the northern powerhouse Minister in Cabinet, I spend a huge amount of my time looking at the way that the railway service that I now get to run, Northern, operates through the operator of last resort. The service at the moment is just not good enough. She is right to say that if it was in the south the connectivity would be vastly better. That is why this Government are obsessed—obsessed, I say—with levelling up, and why I hope that her discussions with the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), are very fruitful. Great British Railways will, I think, be of great assistance to her constituents.