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Northern Rail Hub

I congratulate the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) on securing the debate, which comes at an important time. Network Rail is looking in detail at the northern hub proposals. The Government have asked Network Rail to revisit the proposals before any final decisions are taken to ensure that the scheme will bring value for money. It is extremely important that we are able not only to talk about the importance of the northern hub, but to show the degree of cross-party support and the spread of geographical support for this major scheme. I emphasise the importance of the northern hub as a strategic investment in the north. The proposals came from big, strategic thinking. The three northern regional development agencies came together and thought about how the regional economies could be improved, which led to the setting up of the Northern Way and the development of the schemes for the northern hub. Today we are looking at the detail and reaching the final stages of approval. The northern hub is about individual projects and individual areas. It is about additional platforms and tracks, and it is hopefully about new trains. It will affect a wide variety of places—Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle and Hull, to name but a few—and it will improve access to Manchester airport. In my constituency, people will be able to get from Liverpool to Manchester in half an hour, and trains to Leeds will take 80 minutes. In addition, there will be more of them. Those are great improvements, which will be of great assistance in developing Liverpool's potential. The northern hub is about more than simply individual areas, however, important though it is for each area named. It involves investment of half a billion pounds, which will lead to a £4 billion boost for the northern economies, with the potential for the creation of 20,000 to 30,000 jobs. That massive investment of half a billion pounds will have a significant outcome. As hon. Members have mentioned, it lies beside the £14.8 billion investment in Crossrail, just under £5 billion of which comes directly from the Government. A recent study of the regional pattern of investment in transport showed that about three times as much was invested on a per-head basis in transport in the south and south-east as in the north.