Jo Platt
Main Page: Jo Platt (Labour (Co-op) - Leigh and Atherton)Department Debates - View all Jo Platt's debates with the Department for Transport
West Coast Main Line
Jo Platt Excerpts(2 days ago)
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Connor Naismith
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the primary purpose of HS2, on which I will expand later, was to deliver much-needed capacity on the line. Unfortunately, the Government inherited from the previous Conservative Government a worst-of-all-worlds situation in which we are not delivering on the capacity benefits that HS2 was due to provide while also leaving residents on safeguarded land with a lack of certainty and, in many respects, failing services. That is simply intolerable, so my hon. Friend is right to highlight it.
Jo Platt (Leigh and Atherton) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate; I too travel on the west coast main line. Does he agree that there is a common public misconception that HS2 was just about faster train journeys to London, when in reality it was about capacity issues? Does he also agree that the project should have started in the north, where the need is the greatest, so scrapping phases 2a and 2b to Manchester has robbed our region of the chance to improve local services, to support freight and to deliver the levelling up we were promised?
Connor Naismith
My hon. Friend is correct. It is fair to say that “High Capacity 2” would not have had the same ring to it as High Speed 2, which is potentially why we have ended up with the situation we are in, but she is absolutely right that capacity was the main benefit. The cancellation of the project north of Birmingham exacerbates the sense that we can deliver major infrastructure projects in London and the south-east, but it is always the north that loses out when it comes to decisions about cost savings.
Outside of London, the west coast main line is probably the most important rail line in the UK. Covid provided a brief respite for capacity challenges, but passenger numbers are already back at 98% of pre-covid levels and are growing at 13% annually.