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International Rail Services: Ashford

It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Helena Dollimore) for securing this debate, which is of huge importance to Kent, Sussex and the country as a whole, and I agree with everything that she has said today.

For years, the departure gate at Ashford International has sat abandoned. Coastal communities such as mine, of Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh, have been left wondering why such huge potential has been left gathering dust. As my hon. Friend said, businesses want it open. Businesses in my constituency have told me that tourists from Europe used to come, and that footfall in Folkestone and Hythe has massively reduced since then and not recovered. However, we are a coastal destination, crowned the best place to live in the south-east of England. We host an internationally renowned art festival, the Triennial, which ran for three months this summer. We have miles of beautiful coastline. We are a destination that people want to visit—if only we could create the avenues for them to do so.

The station in the 1990s saw 30 international trips a day, dropping to 12 by 2019, and now sees zero. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) said, the UK did have a 40% stake in Eurostar, which was sold in 2015. The UK thereby lost its seat on the Eurostar board and the ability to influence decisions such as where trains stop. Surprise, surprise: following that, the numbers decreased. It was 12 trips by 2019, so it was not a case of covid being the problem.

At the moment, hundreds of millions of pounds a year could be brought back into the local economy by bringing Ashford International and Ebbsfleet back into service. Journeys that once took under two hours from my constituency of Folkestone and Hythe now take at least double that. Kent’s connection to our European neighbours has been dealt a hammer blow from which we have not recovered.

Ashford International has the potential no longer to be a relic of decline. It can become a symbol of national renewal—a tangible example of new and improved relationships with Europe, driving greater productivity and connectivity for the south-east. Earlier this year, the Labour Government rightly announced their desire to pioneer a new era of European rail connectivity, with the determination to put Britain at the heart of a better-connected continent. That includes the Government’s exciting plans to establish a direct rail link between London and Berlin, and between the UK and Switzerland. Reopening Ashford is the first step towards that vision of a Britain with world-leading infrastructure and improved connections to our largest trading partner.

The report from the Good Growth Foundation clearly explains the enormous economic benefits that reopening international rail services at Ashford would bring to the wider area. The case for doing so is quite clearly, as this debate has shown, unanswerable. The issue is how we get there, which is the matter to which I will now turn.

International trains need to be maintained, and the only place they can currently be maintained is the Temple Mills depot in London. Currently, Eurostar is the only operator allowed to use that depot, but this month the Office of Rail and Road will decide whether to require Eurostar to allow other providers to use it. As others have said, just this week the Italian state-owned Ferrovie dello Stato confirmed its intent to invest £1 billion in our international rail services and to reopen Ashford International if it gets the green light to rival Eurostar. We also know that Virgin Trains is interested in running international rail services to compete with Eurostar. While the decision on Temple Mills is yet to be made, an independent report commissioned by the ORR this year found that the depot would be able to accommodate additional trains for alternative providers, so we have both the space and the providers who want to use Temple Mills.

The next challenge is who will be the provider with a fleet of trains compatible with the systems used on HS1 and the channel tunnel. Just yesterday, FS announced its intention to use its fleet of Frecciarossa 1000 trains if given the green light to operate there. Those trains are compliant with the signalling systems used on HS1 and the channel tunnel, which trainspotters here may note is called the TVM-430 system. Similarly, FS already holds the necessary accreditations for operating on the European continent. Its appetite to serve Ashford is matched by its ability to deliver.

The debate about Ashford International also raises the wider issue of how we can maximise the benefits of high-speed international rail beyond passenger travel. With the channel tunnel operating well below capacity, I am convinced that there must be an increased role for freight alongside increased passenger services. Residents of Folkestone, Hythe, Dover, Ashford and beyond will be acutely aware of the frustrations caused by Operation Brock—a traffic management scheme that too often converts the M20 motorway into a slow-moving, heavy-goods-vehicle lorry park—which increases delays and journey times.

Logistics UK has estimated that Brock costs the UK up to “£250 million a day”. A single freight train on HS1 could replace 70 of those HGVs, greatly reducing air pollution and the amount of traffic on the M20. Let us imagine the tangible effect scaling that up could have on the experiences of road users in east Kent. I will continue to press to shift international freight from road to rail, which is another no-brainer that industry and Government should grasp.

As a country, we must prove to ourselves that we are once more able to deliver large-scale infrastructure projects efficiently and effectively. Recently, rail projects in particular have come to symbolise a state that struggles to deliver bold, radical infrastructure. However, what we are calling for today is neither bold nor radical; the infrastructure already exists and the providers are willing and able to start running international rail services from Ashford.

Local public opinion is clear that Ashford International must be international, and there is strong political support from local MPs and Government. I pay tribute to Lord Hendy, the Minister for Rail, for his steadfast support for restoring international rail services to Ashford and his constant engagement with me and fellow Labour MPs in Kent and Sussex.

Finally, I urge the Office of Rail and Road to make the right decision for the people of Kent and the country, so that we can start to maximise the benefits of this incredible infrastructure, which is just waiting for the political will to bring it back to life.

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