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Woodhead Rail Route

I think that this is my first opportunity to speak under your chairmanship, Mr. Bercow, and it is not unwelcome. The debate is about the future of the very important Woodhead rail route, which crosses the Pennines from Sheffield to Manchester. The campaign to have the rail route reopened has attracted much interest. The case for reopening it, which is well encapsulated by the slogan ““Crossrail for the north””, is supported not only by campaign groups such as the Campaign for Better Transport and Friends of the Peak Park but by the Northern Way group, the city councils of Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds, and IPPR North. That body said:"““The main rail links within the north—particularly on the trans-Pennine corridor and between Liverpool and Manchester and Leeds and Sheffield—are not fit for purpose. Failure to invest in these links is likely to lead to increased congestion on rail and road links…and additional domestic air travel””." Apart from the environmental case that I have outlined, what is the case for reopening the rail route? Rail passenger numbers are growing faster in the north than in the rest of the country, and there is increasing demand for rail freight. With a population of 14.5 million, the north is equivalent to a medium-sized European country, such as Sweden. It has a large internal market and its economy is worth in excess of £200 billion. The north has undergone a revival in the past nine years—I would say, of course, that that is thanks to the Labour Government. Its economy is stronger now than at any time in the past 40 years, and employment is at a post-war high. Research recently published by the Northern Way shows that potential demand to move containers to and from the north's ports and across the Pennines is in excess of what the railway network can currently accommodate. In an earlier debate today, it was mentioned that Immingham alone carries 20 per cent. of the in-and-out freight traffic of the United Kingdom; 64 million tonnes of freight go through that port alone. If we add Grimsby and Hull to that, we see just how important the Humber estuary is to the north's economy. Based on the work that the Northern Way has carried out to date, it is likely that a new higher-speed rail route across the Pennines will need to be built in the next 15 to 20 years or so. Successful delivery of the Northern Way's goal of closing the £30 billion productivity gap in relation to the north's economy will result in faster rates of passenger growth than the Government assumed in the recent White Paper, ““Delivering a Sustainable Railway””. The view of the groups that I named earlier, as well as of the many MPs who have signed early-day motion 459, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer), is that the Woodhead rail route offers the most cost-efficient option for building trans-Pennine capacity in the long term. It also offers the most environmentally sustainable option. Indeed, the view is that only the 1953 Woodhead tunnel route offers the prospect of a broadly non-contentious means of enhancing cross-Pennine capacity sustainably. The alternative would be a brand new route, which would entail large-scale tunnelling, the cost and environmental consequences of which could militate against its adoption as the preferred policy. That is why there is such opposition to any use of the 1953 tunnel by National Grid for recabling work, unless there is a commitment from National Grid to maintain all three tunnels and to return the cabling to the Victorian tunnels as and when the rail route is required to be brought back into use. There is an economic case and an environmental case for a Crossrail for the north. The economic case is strong. The existing Hope Valley line is exactly that—much of the time, those who use it do so more in the hope than the expectation of getting to their destination—and there never was a more inappropriately named rail service than the Manchester airport ““express”” from Cleethorpes to Manchester. I shall give some examples. The journey from Sheffield to Manchester airport on that line, a distance of 30 miles, takes a minimum of one hour and 20 minutes. Sheffield to Newcastle, a distance of 134 miles, takes two hours and 20 minutes—two hours minimum, actually. Doncaster to London—a route well known to my right hon. Friend the Minister—takes a minimum of one and three quarter hours; that is for a distance of 140 miles. The case is clear.