Ivanhoe Line: Restoration

Patrick Hurley Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Amanda Hack]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and her support during the campaign. The main thing is that large towns need the infrastructure to match. There are certainly other examples of investments in railways to connect towns that are exceeding their passenger targets, such as the Northumberland line.

[Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)]

What my hon. Friend is talking about reminds me of an issue that affects my constituents. The line between Liverpool and Preston crosses the line between Southport and Manchester. Up until the 1960s, the two lines were linked by two curves at the town of Burscough, just outside my constituency. For 60 years, there has been a campaign to get the curves reopened and to reinstall the commuter link between Southport and Ormskirk, and also between Southport and Preston, which would add huge amounts of GVA to the local area and create an economic powerhouse for the north-west. The cost of rebuilding and reopening the Burscough curves has been estimated at just £35 million. Does my hon. Friend agree that that would be £35 million pounds very well spent?

[Amanda Hack]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I do not know a huge amount about his line, but that certainly seems to be good value for money, and it adds to the point about towns that need infrastructure. What does that infrastructure do? It gives those people opportunity.

On that point, I ask the Minister what work has been done to assess the impact on growth and investment in large towns like mine, and those of my colleagues, that are not connected to the rail network. North West Leicestershire, alongside other parts of the east midlands, is outside the East Midlands combined authority and does not benefit from the city region allocation, which, for Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, is £2 billion. Although part of the Ivanhoe travels through the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), it ends in Burton, which is also outside the combined authority, yet the Ivanhoe line would give my constituents the opportunity to get to Derby via Burton and vice versa.

The money allocated to Leicestershire is limited to public transport and some long overdue road improvements. If Leicester and Leicestershire were allocated city region funding at the same rate as the combined authority, we would have £1 billion to invest in Leicester and Leicestershire. We cannot just accept that the mayoralty alone gets the increase, when we know that the east midlands lags behind in terms of funding.

Research has shown that, had the east midlands received the same funding as the UK average between 2019 and 2024, we would have had about £10 billion extra for transport. Will the Minister highlight how areas such as Leicester and Leicestershire, within the most poorly funded region for transport investment, will be supported to ensure that services can be provided?

Now I want to talk about the value of the train line for our communities—the exciting and most important bit. MPs can get really competitive when it comes to who has the prettiest constituency, but mine is at the heart of the national forest, and it really does not get much better than that. The National Forest Company transformed the post-industrial landscape into a thriving success story of environmentally led regeneration in the midlands. Reopening the Ivanhoe line has the potential to create a beautiful train line travelling through the greenery of the national forest. The National Forest Company reached out to me before the debate and shared its recent research. It found:

“The second highest contributor to CO2 emissions within the National Forest is resident travel, with car travel accounting for 14% of the residents’ consumption-based footprint—higher than the National Average”.

Transport Connectivity: North-west England

Patrick Hurley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) for securing the debate.

I will lay out my case in simple terms: north-west public transport is not up to scratch. Specifically, our railway journeys are nowhere near good enough. They are holding our region’s economy back, and we need change. Take my constituency, for instance: there is no direct public transport link from one side of the constituency to the other, despite it being overwhelmingly urban. Try to take public transport from Birkdale to Rufford—a journey of 10 miles—and a single ticket will cost £21, while the journey will take one hour and 11 minutes and involve changing trains three times. It is literally 10 miles away; it would almost be quicker to walk.

Even the rail services that we do have are incredibly unreliable. Just this morning, at 6.47 am, Merseyrail sent out a message on social media saying:

“Due to a train fault, some services on the Southport line face cancellations”.

The first reply said:

“Another day, another train fault”.

The second reply blamed the politicians.

The service to Manchester is even worse: in November, there were no services at all on Sundays for three weeks in a row, and more than a quarter of all journeys were either delayed or cancelled. When the trains do turn up, passengers are greeted with what the chief exec of Northern Rail has called

“some of the worst-performing rolling stock in the country.”

That cannot be allowed to continue.

The constituency’s connectivity has also been directly impacted by the well-known 1960s cuts to railway services. The closure of two simple railway curves in Burscough, just outside of constituency, means that the seven-mile journey from Ormskirk to Southport takes 85 minutes by train, and that the notional 20-mile journey to Preston involves passengers changing at Wigan, which is itself 20 miles out of the way. We are lucky, though, because unlike in other parts of the country, the railway curves at Burscough were never built over—they are still there, just overgrown and unloved. It would cost an estimated £30 million to reinstate them, which would once again connect the towns of Merseyside and west Lancashire, and strengthen travel-to-work routes, promoting the economic growth we all want so desperately.

It is not all bad. The Liverpool city region combined authority is maintaining the £2 bus fare cap, including in Southport, and we are moving forward with trials of bus franchising across the region. Despite problems, Merseyrail still received the second highest overall customer satisfaction levels nationally in the latest surveys. And although there is perhaps an element of empire-building, I welcome the fact that our line to Manchester is set to be brought into the Greater Manchester Bee network in 2028, which will finally allow a tap-in, tap-out ticketing system, integrating with Manchester’s.

Those positives point the way forward, as more devolution on transport and greater statutory powers for the coming Lancashire combined county authority ensure that the rest of the north-west is linked up, in the way my constituency already is.

Oral Answers to Questions

Patrick Hurley Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood]

I would be happy to get my officials to write to the hon. Gentleman to provide an update on discussions around those important schemes.

[Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)]

T6.   The key to improved rail performance in my constituency is the reinstatement of rail infrastructure, notably the Burscough curves, alongside improved services to Manchester, where my constituents are also continually let down by Northern Rail. Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the best ways to achieve the high growth that the country needs is to improve those transport connections? Will she meet me to discuss that further?

[Louise Haigh]

Our manifesto was clear that we are committed to improving rail connectivity in the north of England. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to address the specific issues on that line.