HS2: Revised Timetable and Budget

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

For Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, HS2 means a huge amount of pain for little to no gain. I am extremely concerned, as are many of the people I have heard from, that phase 2 will actually reduce capacity on some existing services. Will the Minister use this pause to look again at whether more of the investment should be spent on upgrading the existing network to ensure that we better connect places such as Stoke-on-Trent and Stafford?

[Huw Merriman]

To make it absolutely clear, we remain committed to the delivery of HS2 from London Euston up to Manchester. The extra time that can be afforded—that was a great conversation I had with the council leaders and Mayors—will be used to assess and improve the design, if necessary, but we will not be taken off the track of London Euston to Manchester. I look forward to more contributions from my hon. Friend, who knows I am committed to delivering transport in his area, and I do see HS2 as part of that solution.

Restoring Your Railway Fund

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

It is an absolute pleasure to follow my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) on securing this important debate on a topic that he knows we very much share an interest in.

The restoring your railway fund is one of the best policies of this Conservative Government, and it should be a model for future public policy. The involvement of local Members of Parliament as sponsors, and other key local stakeholders, has been an excellent way of developing high-quality bids that democratically garner local support. Infrastructure projects can often be imposed and attract controversy, so this grassroots-up approach is far more desirable and more likely to deliver economic and social benefits.

As the Minister will know, the fund has provoked interest across the country, especially in north Staffordshire, which I will focus on. Poor transport connectivity in Stoke-on-Trent and wider north Staffordshire is a major barrier to employment, skills and general quality of life. A third of households in Stoke-on-Trent have no access to a car, yet people depend on car transport because, for many, public transport is non-existent, which severely holds back opportunities. The strategic road network through the city is operating at around 110% capacity and parts of the local road network are far worse, resulting in terrible journey reliability. Local bus operators now say that they are often unable to run reliable services due to the levels of congestion, and we have major air quality problems.

As I have said in this Chamber before, it is important to recognise that north Staffordshire is one of the few parts of the country that were not only hit by the Beeching axe but by further reductions in rail services under the last Labour Government. Services to Barlaston and Wedgwood ceased as part of the west coast main line modernisation in 2004. Such was the short-sightedness of the last Labour Government that Etruria station was permanently closed in 2005, with the platforms completely removed in 2008, to shave but a few minutes off high-speed Pendolino services. Thankfully, times have changed and we now recognise the benefits of encouraging more people back on to our railways, but much needs to be done to restore much of our local connectivity.

The Conservative Government have been extremely supportive of improving local transport for Stoke-on-Trent. As we heard, we have secured £40 million through the transforming cities fund for local bus and rail improvements and £31 million through the bus service improvement plan, as well as funding towards our restoring your railways projects. The first of these to reopen—Meir station, which was closed in 1966—is now progressing to an advanced stage, having secured a further £1.7 million to develop the full business case and detailed delivery study. I was pleased to meet representatives from DfT, Network Rail and the city council just before Christmas, and it was great to hear how well our plans are progressing.

Reopening a station in Meir could have a transformative impact on the local community. Both wards in Meir are identified by the all-party parliamentary group for ‘left behind’ neighbourhoods as being in the top 225 most left-behind neighbourhoods in the entire country. A key problem in Meir is poor transport. More than 40% of households in Meir North do not have a car; public transport is non-existent in parts of the area, and Meir suffers from significant road congestion and air pollution. The lack of effective public transport in Meir is a major barrier to employment and skills opportunities and severely restricts quality of life. Reopening the station in Meir would make a huge difference to a part of the country where levelling up matters most, by opening up a wealth of skilled employment opportunities and massively enhancing access to local colleges and universities. If we secure the full backing of the Government, work could start on site in 2024, and our plans would be relatively easy and cheap to deliver.

Alongside that, I have been working closely with my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North and for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon), as well as my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), to reopen the Stoke to Leek line. The project is not as advanced as the Meir project, but we were delighted to receive funding from Government that enabled us to submit our excellent strategic outline business case in November. The project would see not only the restoration of rail services to Leek for the first time since 1965, but the reopening of a number of stations throughout Stoke-on-Trent and the Moorlands, including one at Fenton Manor in my constituency. It would significantly help to level up opportunities and massively enhance access to work and skills, as well as tourism. The extremely poor local transport connectivity would be transformed, addressing significant road congestion and air pollution.

Currently, the fastest train journey from Stoke-on-Trent to London Euston takes around an hour and 24 minutes, which is quicker than travelling the 12 miles from Leek to Stoke station by public transport at peak times. That journey time would be improved with further HS2 services connecting us into London, but the benefits will be severely limited if we do not address our chronically poor local transport. Train services from Stoke to Leek would only take between 23 minutes and 25 minutes—around a third of the current peak-time journey times on public transport.

Reopening the line would make a huge difference to communities along the route, opening up major new employment opportunities and helping to deliver the economic growth our area needs, as well as taking vehicles off our roads. I strongly encourage the Minister and the Department to back the Stoke to Leek line moving to the next stage—a full business case and detailed delivery study.

The restoring your railway fund projects to reopen Meir Station and the Stoke to Leek line are taking place alongside the work being done by the West Midlands Rail Executive to look at reopening Trentham station, and the vision of Stoke-on-Trent City Council—led by the excellent Councillor Abi Brown—for a properly integrated light rail network for the Potteries, creating a properly integrated public transport network. I urge the Government to give us their full backing to ensure we can properly level up opportunities in Stoke-on-Trent and wider North Staffordshire.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Huw Merriman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) on securing this important debate on the restoring your railway fund. Like me, he has a passionate interest in the future of our railways, and I pay tribute to him as my predecessor.

My hon. Friend and other hon. Members will know that the £500 million restoring your railway fund was announced in January 2020, with the aim of delivering on our manifesto commitment of levelling up and beginning a process of reopening lines and stations in England and Wales that had previously been closed. This investment is being used to explore and deliver on how we reconnect communities, regenerate local economies and improve access to jobs, homes and education opportunities.

We have already seen that in action, as many hon. Members have mentioned—not least those who represent Devon. I was delighted to travel to Devon last November to help celebrate the first anniversary of the restoration of the Dartmoor line between Exeter and Okehampton. That was the very first reopening under the restoring your railway manifesto commitment. It was delivered on time and on budget, and I am pleased to say that the restored service has been hugely popular. Over 250,000 new journeys have been recorded on the Dartmoor line in its first year. I was heartened to meet members of the local community and to hear how the reinstated line has improved their lives and is boosting local businesses, college numbers and tourism.

Another restoring your railway scheme, which I plan to visit in the next month or so, is the Northumberland line. It received £34 million of funding in January 2021, which has enabled track to be upgraded for passenger services. Once open, the Northumberland line will reintroduce direct passenger trains between south-east Northumberland and the centre of Newcastle, improving access to jobs, leisure and learning, with services likely to start in 2024. The area has been identified as being in the top 10% of most deprived areas nationally, and it has the lowest rates of regional car ownership, with poor public transport options into Newcastle.

[Jack Brereton]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Huw Merriman]

I will give way briefly, but I want to take time to respond to every hon. Member.

[Jack Brereton]

I thank the Minister for giving way. On the point about levelling up communities, will he ensure that projects such as Meir station, which has so much potential to level up communities, are considered favourably and that that ability to level up areas is considered in the assessment process, to ensure that levelling-up factors determine which projects get the go-ahead and move forward to full development?

[Huw Merriman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point and for his work on the Transport Committee. I will indeed look at the issue in that regard. It is important that the business case has a good cost-benefit ratio, but it is not just the direct return on money that matters; following the reform of the Green Book rules, one also needs to consider—this is great news—what projects do for regeneration and decarbonisation, and these projects deliver on both fronts.

As hon. Members will appreciate, the restoring your railway fund is heavily over-subscribed. My Department received nearly 200 bids—200 excellent bids—to the ideas fund element of the programme alone. We also reviewed proposals whose business cases were already in their advanced stages, such as the Northumberland line and the Bristol to Portishead line, along with existing proposals to introduce a number of new stations under the new stations fund element.

On the points raised by the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), I gently remind him that eight schemes under the restoring your railway fund are being delivered; 13 are progressing past the strategic outline business case towards their full business case; and 23 projects have been taken through the ideas fund stage. So I did not recognise the part of his speech where he said that not much appeared to have been delivered. And one of my hon. Friends said, the beauty of this fund is that one gains the buy-in of the local community, local Members of Parliament lead things, and schemes are decided from the grassroots up, not from the top down, which I dare say would be more the line of thinking of the hon. Member for Slough.

Avanti West Coast Contract Renewal

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

First, I am always pleased to note that the vast majority of commuters in Birmingham, Coventry and the west midlands have the benefit of Mayor Andy Street pushing their transport services forward, and we are delighted to work with him to ensure quality. As for Avanti, we have engaged directly with Mayor Street, because we want to see improvements and we want the service to change. We will have a plan to do so in December.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

In addition to the severe disruption and overcrowding of services through Stoke-on-Trent, commitments to improve stations have not been fulfilled. Will my hon. Friend look at what more can be done to ensure that those contractual obligations to improve stations such as Stoke-on-Trent are fulfilled by Avanti?

[Kevin Foster]

Certainly we are keen that Avanti should honour all its contractual obligations. The one on which we are most focused is ensuring that it improves the operation of the railway but, similarly, we would want to consider the other commitments that it made—the progress that has been made on them and how it is honouring them—as part of the longer-term decision.

Great British Railways

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

It is worth saying that there are a range of fares available on our railways, particularly in London and the south-east, where people use pay as you go and contactless bank cards. We have said that we will not take the normal approach—which also existed during the coalition—of using the RPI figure to set fares next year, and a fair rise has been delayed. We look forward to introducing plans that strike a balance between a railway that is affordable for not only the taxpayer but customers and communities.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

The pandemic and the reckless strike actions we have seen have caused significant disruption to our rail services. Does my hon. Friend agree that the focus should now be on restoring services and maximising investment in improving stations—for example, by reopening the stations at Meir and Trentham in my constituency?

[Kevin Foster]

I am always pleased at the Dispatch Box to hear colleagues argue passionately for the reinstatement and further expansion of parts of our rail network. It has also been good to engage with Members on both sides of the House on the Restoring Your Railways project, and our goal is to get services restored. A lot of passengers are coming back on to the railways, and we are keen to see that, but people must have the confidence to come back, and that is where industrial action is so damaging. We are looking to restore many services, but we also have to take account of the fact that patterns of demand have changed, particularly in relation to commuting between 7 am and 9 am and between 5 pm and 7 pm, given the changes in the wider economy.

Industrial Action on the Railway

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am afraid that reading the RMT brief is what leads Labour Members to believe a bunch of untruths. Let me start with the first one: a £4 billion cut, the hon. Lady says. I think I have already explained that, but that is the passengers not coming on the railway. That is why there is a cut in revenue to the railways. What a terrible way this is to address that—going on strike, closing down the railway and putting more passengers off. It makes no sense. She talks about pension reform, but there has been considerable progress made, and it is the Pensions Regulator that needs there to be reform, otherwise the system would fall over. There has been considerable progress made in some of these areas, but again it is worth pointing out to the House that the rail pension age for earlier retirees is 62, and the pension can be about £40,000 a year. Those are rightly generous terms, but they must come in return for reforms to the rail system, otherwise it will fall over. It is not the Government cutting money; it is passengers not travelling.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

Meir station was announced at the weekend, and it is fantastic that we are moving to the next stage of the restoring your railway fund. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, just when we are trying to attract more people back on to the railways and investing in things such as Meir station and the restoring your railway programme, it is not the right time to be striking, and that these totally reckless actions by the unions must be condemned?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Here is the thing: I know the Opposition would love to paint us as being anti-railway, as if we want to close it down or we do not care about it, but the opposite is true. There has not been a Government for decades—perhaps ever—who have invested so much in the railway. If we think about the £96 billion for the integrated rail review in the north and the midlands, the £35 billion of ongoing improvements, maintenance and upgrades, and the fantastic announcement on Meir station as part of the restoring your railway bid, reversing the Beeching cuts, there has never been a more pro-rail Government. We just need a union that is prepared to work to enable it to continue to thrive.

Rail Strikes

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

This strike is a great threat to the ordinary working people who depend on rail services for work and especially to those now undertaking exams. The reason that this action is so unjustified and reckless is that we have already seen the rail sector on life support following the huge challenges faced during the pandemic. Services have become increasingly dependent on taxpayer subsidies, and that trend started before covid. Between 2015-16 and 2019-20, the National Audit Office identified that the amount of Government funding for operating and maintaining the rail network doubled.

Now more than ever, it is important that we get people back using the railways so that services remain sustainable. At a time when rail operators are trying to encourage and convince people back on to the trains, we see the country being held to ransom by the unions and the Labour party. These reckless actions will harm ordinary families already struggling with the cost of living.

Wage levels in the sector are already far higher than in most others. The average rail worker now earns £44,000 a year, compared with an average salary of just over £27,000 in Stoke-on-Trent South. Many working practices in the sector are also stuck in the dark ages. The driver rulebook has changed little since the 1960s.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jack Brereton]

No, I will not.

If anything is to come from the unions’ outrageous actions, I hope that they will influence the Government to finally overhaul those archaic working practices. Unfortunately, I feel that the culture in parts of the rail industry works against the necessary reforms and improvements, particularly in Network Rail, as we have experienced in Stoke-on-Trent in trying to deliver our transforming cities fund to improve local rail services.

The Government are focused on reinvesting in our railways, particularly on making them more accessible to communities across the country. For Stoke-on-Trent, which lost much of its local connectivity under the Beeching axe, improving local rail services through schemes such as the restoring your railway programme and the TCF is absolutely vital for levelling up, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) said.

Locally in north Staffordshire, I hope that the Government support our levelling-up bids for reopening Meir station and the Stoke-Leek line, which we are working on as part of the restoring your railway programme. But these reckless actions by the trade unions and the Labour party undermine all that and threaten to undermine the levelling up of this country and the investment that we are putting into the railways.

Integrated Rail Plan: North and Midlands

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The good news is that there will be much-improved frequency of trains from Leeds to Manchester—it looks like around three trains an hour will become seven or eight trains an hour under the plan. The hon. Gentleman will thereby get a lot of good things, including a reduction in the capacity restrictions that are the major cause of problems. That also answers the question asked by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) a few moments ago about why we need that link from Manchester out to West Yorkshire.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

I very much welcome what has been announced today. If we are truly to level up opportunities in Stoke-on-Trent, we must address the issues of capacity on the local network, and particularly release the full benefits of HS2 and the fantastic restoring your railway fund projects we have been working on. Will my right hon. Friend agree to look at the capacity enhancements that we want to see on the local network in and around Stoke-on-Trent?

[Grant Shapps]

Stoke-on-Trent is, as ever, brilliantly represented by my hon. Friend. He will get HS2 trains into the centre of Stoke, and we will work closely with him to ensure that that benefits his constituents in every possible way.

International Travel

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Monday 20th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that sensible question. There are already 50 countries using vaccines that we recognise through the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. From this point forward, we will both assist other countries on the regulatory requirements to come on to our list—our requirements to on-board them—and look at how we can potentially recognise vaccines that we do not yet recognise. The MHRA is looking at that process the whole time, and I am sure it will have more to say about that type of thing in due course.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

I welcome the decision to remove Pakistan from the red list on Wednesday. As the Secretary of State will know, I wrote to him about this issue. Many of my constituents have family links in Pakistan, and I know that he is well aware of how important those links are. It is shocking that Opposition Members have made this into some sort of political issue. I know that many of my constituents will see right through that. Will my right hon. Friend agree to work hard with the industry to restore those important links to Pakistan by restoring flights as soon as possible?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One feature of the coronavirus pandemic has been how this country and many others have been led by scientists and the evidence—chief medical officers and scientific officers—to do the right thing throughout. That has been the consensus on both sides of the House, more or less, so it is extremely disappointing to hear politics thrown in. No one—no one—wanted to see Pakistan added to the safe list of countries more than I did. That is why we set up inter-ministerial groups and why we brought it on board the moment the Joint Biosecurity Centre said it was safe to do so. The idea that we should have ignored all the science and done it some other way is, I am afraid, for the clouds.

HGV Driver Shortages

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

What I can guarantee is that we will do everything we possibly can to enable more HGV drivers to pass their tests and get on the road, and to have better conditions and the raft of other measures we have discussed, but the whole solution, unfortunately, is not in our hands. This is a global situation that has been described many times during this debate.

I must just correct an hon. Gentleman who claimed that we have the highest shortage. That is the not the case. For example, we have seen the figures from Poland, which has a shortage of 120,000, so it is a global problem. We will work day and night to do everything we can to secure supply, but not all the answers lie in the hands of the Government.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

Along with the many hauliers based in my constituency, I also have Don-Bur, which I recently visited. It makes HGV trailers and reported to me a huge increase in demand for its trailers because of the need for larger trailers. I very much welcome the announcement from my right hon. Friend on new larger-body trailers, but what more can be done to support this very important industry and, in particular, to get more people working in it?

[Grant Shapps]

I do hope the measures we are introducing will help. I also think the accreditation scheme we talked about, industry-led as it will be, will enable high quality companies, such as the ones in my hon. Friend’s constituency, to take advantage and help to train and secure better training for people who use trailers. I think the future is bright for the trailer firms in his patch.

International Travel Rules

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts]

There are two parts to the answer to that question. I believe the hon. Gentleman is referring to the broad range of transport, rather than simply international maritime or aviation—he refers to domestic travel as well. The Government are seeking to ask people to exercise their own judgment and responsibility, which is a situation we do have to get back to. However, we have made it clear that in some circumstances we would expect masks still to be warn, and some travel providers have also made that stipulation. If that is the case, it is right that people follow it. The reason for that is that there are very different circumstances between a crowded tube train and a rural train late at night that has only one person on it. There are different circumstances and we are seeking to make allowances for those.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

I want to touch further on points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone). Recently, I visited Blue Bay Travel, a business based in my constituency, and people there particularly highlighted the mismatch that is causing issues between the traffic light advice for some countries, which would allow people to come back into the UK, and Foreign Office travel advice, which prevents them from leaving in the first place. Will the Minister please look at what more can be done to better join up this advice, to make it easier for travel businesses and for those wishing to travel abroad?

[Robert Courts]

I am very happy to assure my hon. Friend that I, like the Department for Transport more broadly, will continue to talk to our colleagues across government to see what more can be done. I have to point out again that the two issues are dealing with different aspects—almost two sides of the same problem. We are dealing with the risk of importing the virus, or variants of it, into this country. The Foreign Office is seeking to give advice to British citizens when they travel abroad; although we will obviously continue to talk to each other, they are dealing with fundamentally different things.