North Cotswold Line

[Mark Pritchard in the Chair]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered North Cotswold line transformation.

It is a great honour to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Pritchard. I am delighted that the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), will respond. I will start by declaring an interest, which is that I am an unpaid vice-president of the Cotswold Line Promotion Group, a fantastic voluntary organisation that has worked relentlessly for decades to improve the North Cotswold line. I am grateful that I have secured the debate so early in the Parliament, and in time for the 2020 Budget, because we have a Worcestershire Chancellor, who truly understands the value of infrastructure improvements in unleashing our country’s potential and increasing its productivity. I believe that the case for investing in the North Cotswold line will be one of the easiest and most convincing ones he will see.

The North Cotswold line, for those who have not had the pleasure of travelling along it, runs from Oxford to Hereford and crosses many constituencies, one of which is Witney—my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) has recently, and conveniently, been appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Transport Secretary. The line also runs through the constituencies of The Cotswolds and Mid Worcestershire, and I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) will seek to catch your eye later in the debate, Mr Pritchard, although, sadly, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) would have to sit here silently, as he currently serves in the Whips Office. It then runs through the constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), through my own constituency, and on to North Herefordshire—my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) is a keen supporter. It then goes through the constituency of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman).The North Cotswold line plan is to improve services to Kidderminster—I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) is here—and I know it will have knock-on benefits for colleagues in the Oxford area as well. All those colleagues are supporting this debate, even if they are not all speaking in it.

I also wanted to hold this debate now because it coincides with the arrival in the Department for Transport of the strategic outline business case for the North Cotswold line, which has been written by the North Cotswold Line Taskforce. I put on record my thanks to Lord Faulkner of Worcester, for chairing the taskforce, and to all the taskforce members: Worcestershire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire County Councils, Herefordshire Council, the Worcestershire, GFirst, Marches, Oxfordshire, Coventry and Warwickshire local enterprise partnerships, the West Midlands Rail Executive and the Cotswold Line Promotion Group. They have all done excellent work since the taskforce was set up two years ago.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. She has read out a list of a number of those supporting the plan, but I notice that the Greater Birmingham and Solihull local enterprise partnership was not involved. Is she as surprised as I am not to see it there, given that its southern part covers those north Worcestershire constituencies that the line to Droitwich Spa and Kidderminster goes through, where this will make a difference? It is a bit remiss of the LEP not to be on that list.

The honest answer is that I do not know the background and whether that LEP was approached, or whether my hon. Friend will now be able to tell it about this exciting proposal, which benefits the Wyre Forest and allows services to Kidderminster.

The history of this 86-mile line between Oxford and Hereford represents sharp decline and, now, slow recovery. The lovely, fully doubled line of the early part of the 20th century was reduced to mainly single track in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s—perhaps not coincidentally, a time when the whole railway network was in public hands. By the 1980s, there were only two trains a day between Paddington and Hereford.

Thanks to the campaigning of my predecessor, the late Lord Spicer, as well as Sir Peter Luff—the former MP for Mid Worcestershire—and many others, two sections of the track were redoubled between 2008 and 2011. By 2015, a broad hourly service had been achieved. The partial redoubling has also brought some improvements to journey times. Since the December timetable changes, one train per day in each direction completes the London to Worcester journey in less than two hours.

Having looked at a range of options, the North Cotswold Line Taskforce has given unanimous backing for what it calls option 5, a redoubling of four miles of track from Wolvercote Junction, Oxford, to Hanborough station, and the redoubling of five miles of track from Evesham to Pershore. In addition, option 5 includes second platforms at Pershore and Hanborough.

The combination of those elements in option 5 would allow two trains an hour from Worcester to London, additional services beyond Worcester to Malvern, Hereford and Kidderminster, a regular Worcester to London service in less than two hours, and faster services from Malvern and Herefordshire to London, as well as improved performance and reliability.

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that those improvements on the North Cotswold line would also unlock additional opportunities in the nearby area? For example, it would be possible to link the line through to the Cowley branch line, and having the additional capacity at Hanborough might make it possible for that station to operate almost as a parkway, which would relieve some of the pressure on Oxford station. It would be a win-win not only along the route, but in many nearby areas.

I thank the hon. Lady for her support and, through her, thank Oxfordshire County Council for the support it has given this taskforce. I believe that option 5 allows a significant improvement to services around the Oxford area. I will come on to some of the environmental benefits of the scheme. She may well want to call a similar debate at some point in the future on the proposals she is making.

I do not know the details of the proposals the hon. Lady is making, but I do know that the benefit to cost ratio of this scheme is well over 4:1. That is with a cost estimate of just under £200 million for the whole option 5 scheme, including an optimism bias in the cost estimates. The five counties supporting the taskforce, including Oxfordshire, are home to more than 2.5 million people, and their economic gross value added is greater than that of the West Midlands Combined Authority and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Moreover, they are only asking for half the budget from the Department for Transport.

As I mentioned, there are clear environmental benefits. As train travel increases, it will take cars off the road. Currently, my West Worcestershire constituents travel miles along the congested motorway network just to get to Warwick Parkway and Birmingham International stations so that they can use the Chiltern line and the west coast main line. The strategic outline business case goes into detail on the benefits to the road system, and estimates that 5 million miles of highway driving would be avoided. Indeed, the delivery of the Worcestershire Parkway station—it is due to open any day, and I invite my hon. Friend the Minister to come and officiate at its opening—will strengthen the case for more travellers across south Worcestershire to use the North Cotswold line.

There will be huge tourism benefits, as the line goes through some of the loveliest countryside in the world. It passes the cathedral city of Oxford and goes on to the cathedral cities of Worcester and Hereford. It goes through the heart of the beautiful Cotswolds, near Blenheim Palace and, of course, through the glorious Malvern hills. There will also be huge housing benefits. The scheme will increase the affordability of housing for those working in Oxford, by giving them the opportunity to commute by rail from less expensive areas. In short, it will unleash the potential of the midlands engine and link it to the Oxford-Cambridge arc corridor, connecting it all more reliably, more frequently and more quickly to London, the Crossrail network and Heathrow.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) for securing the debate, and I am grateful to the Minister for being here to answer our requests.

I have been heavily involved in the Cotswold line redoubling campaign, as it goes through my constituency—Moreton-in-Marsh and Kingham are both very busy stations along the line; the latter is just outside my constituency boundary but is used by many of my constituents—and I have worked closely with my fellow MPs, as my hon. Friend said. I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) in his place. Part of the ask of this feasibility study will be to get the redoubling done in his constituency. I will say more about that in a minute, but I am sure that it will benefit his constituents hugely, and all of our constituents, because it will make the whole journey time quicker. It is delightful to see him here.

We have all worked closely with the Cotswold Line Promotion Group, which has been a staunch advocate for this line for tens of years. I pay tribute, as did my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire, to Lord Faulkner for heading up that group. We have had upgrades on this line, as my hon. Friend said; it was redoubled in the early 1990s, as was the line from Kemble to Swindon. That had huge benefits, because it now takes just 12 minutes to travel from Kemble to Swindon, and reduces journey times from Cheltenham to Swindon to London.

The redoubling of the Cotswold line will increase the number of services along the line for the entire journey. Timetable changes in December 2019 were a milestone, because trains on that line now deliver an hourly service throughout the day. The trains are less crowded, with more capacity and, above all, faster journey times. The new timetable has been welcomed locally, but further investment is required to take it on to the next stage—for rail services to meet the long-term needs of the region which, as my hon. Friend said, is growing both economically and in population terms.

I did not originally intend to speak in this debate. One notable thing about this place is that quite often Members of Parliament stand up to speak because although everything has already been said, not everyone has already said it; so I will try to avoid repeating the incredibly excellent points made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin)—my own MP—who initiated the debate, which is a really important one for the local economy, and by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). Both have interests in this matter, because the track runs through their constituencies, and they are working extraordinarily hard to champion this scheme. However, the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire about it affecting other constituencies is incredibly important. Although Wyre Forest is in the northern part of Worcestershire, it will benefit very significantly from the opportunity created by the doubling of the track.

I want to make just a couple of points. I raised in an intervention on my hon. Friend the interest of the Greater Birmingham and Solihull local enterprise partnership. I did not want to catch her unawares with that, but it struck me that the more people we get behind this scheme, the better it is in terms of making the business case for what is not actually a very big ask from the group involved. Because the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP also covers the northern part of Worcestershire—Wyre Forest, Redditch and Bromsgrove—it takes in two of the stations that will benefit, Droitwich Spa and Kidderminster, which will benefit from being able to feed into this line through Worcester. Therefore there is an economic interest for that LEP and I will certainly make representations to it in order that it throws its weight behind the scheme.

My other point is on the benefit to local economies. If people look at the economies along this track and to the north, going towards the Black Country, they will see that we suffer from a number of different things, one of which is lower than average regional wages, particularly in Wyre Forest; that is something I have been particularly aware of. One thing that we are trying to do in the whole of Worcestershire, through the Worcestershire LEP, is to attract more businesses into the area and therefore bring up training, productivity, wages and general wealth and wellbeing for the county. It is well known that the best way to do that is to create infrastructure links. People will not be attracted to come to a county if they cannot get their workers in and the training in and their products in and out, and rail is certainly an incredibly important part of that. And if we free up the road networks by having more people travelling by rail, that benefits the economy as well as the environment. It is incredibly important that we all throw our weight behind this scheme, for so many different reasons, and it is incredibly important that we are having this debate now.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, but I think we should not forget that the schemes that we are talking about here are in addition to HS2. This Government are spending £48 billion on the railways on precisely these sorts of schemes. Even if we release the money for HS2, money is still available for these sorts of schemes.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am not suggesting that we should scrap HS2 to pay for this scheme. He is absolutely right: we need to do an awful lot of different things. I was just trying to give a slightly different viewpoint on the whole HS2 argument. Actually, I think interregional connectivity is the most important point.

I will not take up any more of the House’s time; as I said, this is a really important debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire for initiating the debate. The scheme is really important. It will make a big difference to a lot of constituencies that are not on the track but will benefit. My hon. Friend and everyone who represents a constituency along the track can 100% rely on my support for the scheme and my support in trying to get the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP to come in behind it as well.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I apologise for being somewhat late. I also refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) on securing today’s debate and on championing investment in our railways. Labour is also very supportive of that. We have been calling for it consistently as part of our endeavours to create a greener and more affordable transport network run in the interests of passengers.

Back in 2017, the North Cotswold Line Taskforce was established. It was made up of the five county authorities, which the hon. Lady mentioned, and five local enterprise partnerships that are served by the line. As part of the Department’s enhancements pipeline process, the taskforce brought forward its strategic outline business case just last month, calling for faster, more frequent rail services to serve and better connect the communities and economies we have heard about today.

I also want to make the point about the wider connectivity—referred to by, I think, one Government Member—to the Thames valley and my own constituency in Reading, and about other, wider benefits across Oxfordshire. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) mentioned branch lines in her constituency. We need to look at this scheme on a system-wide basis, seeing it as a potential benefit not only to residents in the north Cotswold area, but to the wider rail network. Indeed, I will talk later about the importance of looking at the network as a whole.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that supportive point. Of course, all the trains that go from Paddington to Worcestershire and Herefordshire will pass through Reading, which in recent years has become a magnificent station, thanks to the investment that we have put in. That will enable connectivity to Crossrail for those areas, which are poorly served at the moment. I therefore thank the hon. Gentleman very much for making that point.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for mentioning Crossrail, because it is important that we think about the integration between London stopping services and the wider countryside beyond London and beyond major towns and cities.

The taskforce made a convincing case for track doubling on parts of the line, as we have heard. Currently, the single-track line on parts of the route does have an impact on the quality of services. What is proposed would come at a cost, but, as we have heard, with a very high benefit to cost ratio. It is worth noting—certainly we have noted—the very high benefit to cost ratio, at 4.46:1. That is unusually high, so the hon. Lady and other colleagues have made a very good point on that, and I hope the Minister considers the relative strength of the case.

The enhancements would also allow an increase in the speed and frequency of services along the line, as we have heard. The taskforce’s business case pointed out that the benefits would be felt by not only passengers, but the local economy. I think it quantified that at about £33 million annually for the economy and the area, and there would also be the creation of about 750 new jobs, which is quite a substantial benefit. We need to consider what this scheme means in real terms to the area, as well as to the wider network and the country as a whole.

It is obviously now up to the Department to look at the scheme—I urge it to do so seriously—and to decide whether to include it in its pipeline of enhancements and to commence the development stage, which, as we have heard from hon. Members, is the next step. Moving the scheme on to that phase will require an additional £3 million initially.

This scheme exemplifies how investments in public transport can bring massive benefit to communities across the country, but that should not be the preserve of just some areas. There should be a system-wide examination of the benefits of this type of scheme for all the UK. Investment in rail should stretch across all nations and regions of the UK. We hope, as hon. Members have described, that that will support other local economies, in counties, groups of towns and cities around Britain, and deal with the problem of rising inequality.

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point about connectivity. We worked hard in Moreton-in-Marsh to try to get the local bus service to coincide with the arrival and departure of trains. We are also working hard on getting trains to coincide with bicycle hire, so that people can arrive at Moreton-in-Marsh from London, hire a bicycle with their family, have a day out in the beautiful Cotswolds and then take the train home again.

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point about connectivity to bicycle hire. Cycling can be supported by sensible policies that promote it and link it to rail travel and bus use. As I am standing in as shadow Minister for local transport, I refer him to the recent Labour manifesto on those matters. At least as a fellow cyclist, it is worth considering the need for greater investment in cycling.

I understand the Minister is interested in reversing some of the Beeching cuts. There is some merit in exploring that, but it must be matched by funding. Conservative Members and my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East have articulated the need for funding. I urge the Minister to look at the broader funding envelope for the Department and the relative weighting of spending on rail as opposed to road. He may want to shed some light on various aspects of that, particularly his plans to reopen branch lines in addition to dualing existing railway lines.

If the Government are serious about boosting rail connectivity, the Minister must look at the pot of money the Government have available for road enhancements, which is taken from hypothecated money from vehicle excise duty. There is an argument for spending some of that on public transport. We have already suggested that a proportion of it be spent on subsidising bus use, which has recently declined, but there might also be a good case for some of that funding to be hypothecated for rail, considering the obvious points that have been made, as rail can often provide an excellent alternative for rural residents who wish to make long journeys and avoid our congested motorway network. Sadly, at the moment, we are not following the right approach, and we need to look at that balance again.

I commend Conservative Members for highlighting the needs within the north Cotswold area. They have made an excellent point about their railway line. I urge the Minister to consider the weighting of Government spending. I hope he will address such points and the wider package of support for branch lines and other smaller rail routes. I urge him to reconsider, to make a commitment to boost investment in the railway significantly and to cut fares to make rail travel more attractive.