Cambridge South Station: Car Parking

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I clearly should have gone to the site in preparation for this Question. The station will be adjacent to the Cambridgeshire guided busway, which is the one that gives access to two nearby park-and-ride sites, so I think this has been quite carefully thought through by the combined authority, by the City of Cambridge Council and by the Greater Cambridge Partnership.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is all a bit of a shambles, really, is it not? It is perfectly obvious from what the Minister is saying that a great deal of buck-passing is going on between too many different authorities having their say and nobody being able to agree, which makes me think that he should be saying yes to the question from my noble friend Lord Balfe when he asks, “Will you pull things together, actually take an interest in this and get everybody around a table?”

I have a brief question following up on what my noble friend Lord Kirkhope said, which is that the Government go on a great deal—very correctly—about the importance of intermodal transfer at transport hubs. Is the Minister effectively saying that the private motor car is no longer a mode that should be taken into account in intermodal transfer policy?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Much though I respect the noble Lord, almost everything he has just said is wrong. There has been a remarkable consistency of view among all the partners about Cambridge South, from the combined authority, which used to have a Conservative mayor and currently has a Labour mayor, from the Greater Cambridge Partnership, from the City of Cambridge itself, and from the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, AstraZeneca and the other big employers represented on it. They all agreed that a station without a car park was what was both feasible and wanted. There has been no dissent from that. The only dissent recently has been in the media, and it does not respect the fact that providing a car park would be impossible. I also say to the noble Lord that this is an exception, and I think I just answered the question by saying that, in respect of existing stations, the Office of Rail and Road has a responsibility to ensure that there is always station car parking space respected, even when the proposal is to develop public land and replace it in such a fashion.