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Transport (North-West)

I did not come to the Chamber intending to speak, but the previous contribution has brought me to my feet. I am a great supporter of the high-speed rail lines that my friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) mentioned. In November 2007, I happened to be in Taiwan with my friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Janet Anderson), who is sitting beside me, and we travelled on the high-speed rail link from the south of the island to the north. As you know, Mr. Hood, Taiwan is a small island; it is about 200 miles from north to south. We were able to travel that distance in next to no time. As a consequence, all commercial flying within the island of Taiwan has stopped. If we had a high-speed rail line from London up to the north-west and a second one to the north-east, that would dramatically reduce the incidence of domestic flying in the UK, which would be a good thing. The Government were dragging their feet over this whole issue until the present Secretary of State took office. He has made some encouraging noises, but I want more than that. Rather than just uttering warm words and embracing the concept because it sounds green and like something that the environmentalists would embrace, let us just do it. That brings me to my main point. The regional funding allocations are simply inadequate. I was going to intervene on my friend the Member for Chorley and say, "Would you like to tell us all how much this list will cost?" Of course it costs a lot of money, but transport has been the Cinderella and this is the moment when we should be spending money on transport schemes—as the economy enters a recession, which we hope will not be a deep recession. When Ministers are telling us that we should be spending money to keep people in employment, doing the things that need to be done, why hesitate now? My friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) talked about the Northwest Regional Development Agency. I have its principles and issues paper, which it released just a month or two ago, looking forward to the new regional strategy. On transport, it states that""the quality of many local rail services and infrastructure is poor, so significant further development in the region's light and heavy rail infrastructure would appear essential"—" not desirable but essential. The RDA should put its money where its mouth is. That is the point made by my friend the Member for Manchester, Central. Of course that takes money. The Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) talked about the cost of walk-on fares from London to Manchester, Newcastle or wherever. It is scandalous how much people have to pay. We can fly the Atlantic more cheaply than we can walk on to a train in London and go to a destination in the north-west. However, we have to follow through the logic, which means more subsidy. We live, as I constantly remind people, in a big nasty capitalist world, where people are out to make profits. If they cannot make those profits, they withdraw the services. If we think that those services are desirable in their own right and fulfil a social function, somebody has to pay, which means subsidies. I do not balk at that. It is a good thing that people move from the road on to the railways. We should be spending more money on the railways. In my own constituency, I have been banging on about this for as long as I can remember—we should reopen the old line from Colne to Skipton that was ripped up in 1970. The cost of reinstating that line on a single track would be about £35 million. That is de minimis when we hear about billions and trillions of pounds and about bail-outs. The Todmorden curve, which would allow people to travel from east Lancashire painlessly into Manchester, would cost about £5 million. Those are trivial sums. Through the years, I have read so many strategy reports and assessment reports—reports written by any number of organisations. I am fed up reading those reports; I want to see action on the ground. I am encouraged that the new Minister responsible for the railways, Lord Adonis, has agreed to meet me and a small delegation of people who want to see that railway reopened. Let me finish on this point. In Lancashire, there are bids from seven organisations that want to see rail reopenings in the county. County councils and others are going through hoops unnecessarily to prioritise those schemes. What we should be doing is putting additional money into transport as a way of kick-starting the economy and rebuilding the infrastructure that needs to be replaced.