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Woodhead Rail Route

It is nice to be back in Westminster Hall under your chairmanship, Mr. Bercow, after only a short interval. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith) on securing the debate. She has demonstrated passionately how strongly she feels about the issue. Obviously, my hon. Friends the Members for High Peak (Tom Levitt), for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham), for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer), and for Halifax (Mrs. Riordan) have demonstrated that passion, as did the hon. Members for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) and for Cheadle (Mark Hunter). Not least because of my role as Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber, I know that maintaining adequate rail capacity on trans-Pennine routes now and in future is vital to the economy of northern England. I should like to reassure hon. Members that National Grid's plans will not jeopardise the possibility that the Woodhead tunnel route will reopen to rail traffic at some future date. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough outlined, National Grid owns the two Victorian tunnels and the more modern tunnel that was purchased from the British Rail Property Board in the early 1990s following the closure of the route in 1981. The company holds permitted development rights for placing cables in the newer tunnel. The cost to National Grid of replacing cables in the Victorian tunnels and of not using the more modern tunnels would be substantially higher than putting cables in the more modern tunnels and moving them back into the Victorian tunnels in future, as my hon. Friend mentioned. Replacing cables in the Victorian tunnels would require the transmission of electricity between the efficient power stations to the east of the Pennines and Manchester and the north-west to be suspended while the work was carried out. Less efficient power stations elsewhere would have to provide electricity, and that would be considerably more expensive—tens of millions of pounds according to National Grid. Those outage charges would not be incurred if new cables were laid while the older ones were still transmitting; consequently, the charges would not be incurred if the process was reversed and new cables were put back into the Victorian tunnels while the cables in the more modern tunnels were still transmitting electricity. Reversing the process remains a possibility if growth in demand requires a fourth rail route across the Pennines. My hon. Friend made a powerful speech, but I am sure that she realises that no Government or rail industry strategy or planning document has identified a need for additional rail capacity across the Pennines that would require the reopening of the Woodhead route. The Government's strategy for the railways is set out in the White Paper, ““Delivering a Sustainable Railway””, which identified the need for additional passenger capacity, and proposed that it should be met by longer trains to accompany reduced journey time on the Manchester-Leeds route via Huddersfield. On the south trans-Pennine route between Sheffield and Manchester, the East Midlands Trains franchise will deliver longer trains on the route between Liverpool and Nottingham via Sheffield.