That this House has considered open access operators for rail services.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I am sure you will witness a stimulating debate.
I start by drawing attention to the progress made on the east coast main line, where today three privately owned open access inter-city operators compete with the Government-run LNER. This successful and mature model is now 25 years old and sees open access operators connect towns and cities across the north that were traditionally not served, or that endured poor inter-city connections. Open access is a great success. The statistics reflect that on many fronts, and I will come on to the detail.
One group of towns that open access has not yet reached consists of Grimsby, Cleethorpes and the intermediate stations. I am determined that the Brigg and Immingham constituency and the wider northern Lincolnshire area enjoy more direct and fast trains connecting with London and other key cities. I have been campaigning for such a service since 2011 and remain committed to delivering this key and long overdue connection. I hope Members will indulge me if I focus on this constituency matter for a few minutes before moving on to the wider arguments.
From a Grimsby point of view, it matters not whether the service leaves the main line at Newark and runs via Lincoln, or whether it leaves at Doncaster and takes the route through Scunthorpe. Either route will also serve Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Barnetby and Habrough. Habrough is just two miles from the country’s largest port, Immingham. For that reason alone, it surely deserves a direct service to the capital.
Some years ago, Grand Central submitted an application to run services via Doncaster, which was turned down by the regulator. I have been raising this issue with successive Ministers for many years, and I have been given no end of reasons why it cannot happen. First, there was the question of capacity on the main line. That is not a problem if the existing services to Lincoln are extended to Cleethorpes, however, because they already have a path from King’s Cross through to Newark. LNER ran a trial of their Azuma units through to Cleethorpes and found no serious issues, other than at Market Rasen, which requires a new footbridge and some work on the platform. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) may have something to say on that during the debate.
It now appears that the problems at Market Rasen are being put forward as the reason why services cannot go ahead. If the reported costs of between £15 million and £20 million for the work at Market Rasen are to be believed, Network Rail needs to improve its procurement process and find new contractors. Quite simply, those figures are ridiculous, and it sounds more like a tactic to convince Ministers not to go ahead. I trust that the Minister will address that point in his response.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) on securing this debate, and I am very pleased to support him in it. He has been a long-standing campaigner on this issue. On the point about platform improvements at Market Rasen, is he aware of other areas in the country that are getting modular platform extensions, which are proving to be much cheaper than the price he mentioned?
My Member of Parliament makes an excellent point. There are indeed other examples, up and down the country, where modest improvements have been made at minimal cost. It needs the Secretary of State to realise the economic benefits to the area, and she will surely see that this is an easy win to deliver on the Government’s growth agenda.
The establishment of Great British Railways represents the biggest change in the way we run the railways since privatisation 30 years ago. We must keep and improve what clearly works, and we must not weaken or undermine key roles, such as that of the rail regulator, so that we can make GBR fit for purpose, alongside open access, and deliver the best services for passengers across the country.
My hon. Friend is speaking very well about the usefulness and benefit of having a good rail system. He will be aware of the new timetable that the national rail operators are proposing. For my constituency, Berwick-upon-Tweed is the most important station, although it is in England. It will be losing services to London, and the journey time will be increased to allow greater capacity for links to Edinburgh and Newcastle. Does he agree that we need to ensure that small towns across the UK do not lose rail connectivity for the benefit of larger hubs?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is one of the key arguments in favour of introducing more open access operators, which have widened the number of destinations served.
If we drill into the latest passenger and financial figures, we see that there is a key lesson for those who are designing and planning GBR. We can all agree that we need better trains serving more places, with more reliability and competitive fares. But there is a huge caveat. This hinges on Ministers choosing to copy the east coast operating model, which, as I mentioned, has proven such a success; there are evidence-based statistics to show that. The Chancellor and the new Transport Secretary must take note of that model if they want to avoid a future of soaring subsidies and flatlining passenger numbers. It should now be encouraged and rolled out across Britain’s railway network, including, of course, northern Lincolnshire. Office of Rail and Road statistics show that where inter-city trains do not compete for passengers, services are expensive, require big subsidies, have struggled to get their finances and passengers back since covid, and endure poor passenger satisfaction. Importantly, the east coast main line has seen the fastest post-pandemic recovery on the network, enjoys the highest passenger satisfaction as LNER’s subsidy continues to fall, and could soon be subsidy-free.
The Minister will know personally about the benefits of open access competition, because Grand Central connects Wakefield with London, in competition with LNER. Those services provide valuable choice and competition for his constituents, who can choose between operators when they travel. The services also help to deliver inward investment, growth and regeneration, as direct rail services are invaluable when investors look at locations outside London.
We all agree that better choice and more services—in particular, direct services—are an objective that we all want. Unfortunately, in Keighley, we do not have any open access provision at the moment. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we achieved a direct link between Skipton and London or Ilkley and London, with more opportunities through open access, it would not only be better for the commuter, but deliver better economic growth in my constituency and lead to cheaper rail prices for commuters in my constituency?
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and highlights yet another group of provincial towns that would see benefits for their local economy and for leisure.
I hope that open access rail policy features among the Chancellor’s new tests on how to deliver growth across the country. As a Yorkshire MP, the Minister will know of the clear benefits so far across the county—whether it be in Hull, Bradford, York, Doncaster or Selby—where open access has established and grown large rail markets. The new evidence shows that rail competition delivers not just growth on a significant scale, but a critical competitive discipline whereby all passengers enjoy choice and more routes. In 2016, the Competition and Markets Authority produced a 200-page report on passenger train competition and reached that very conclusion. I would not normally urge the Government to look to Europe for good practice, but Italy and Austria are two countries where the benefits of open access can be clearly seen.
Replicating the east coast model could help to prevent any risk of GBR sliding into financial and sector decline, which should be a huge concern for the Treasury. Crucially, open access is also a key component for British train building. Just before Christmas, the Prime Minister welcomed a significant £500 million investment in new train build at Hitachi’s Newton Aycliffe plant, but it is important to consider that that private sector order was for new trains to serve existing and new open access routes. An option on a follow-up order worth a further £500 million depends, I understand, on more open access routes being awarded by the regulator.
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time, and I am pleased that he has mentioned the Italian rail system. Obviously, Italy is very similar to Grimsby, and we would certainly benefit from the kind of rail system that operates in Italy, which is very smooth and good value for customers. Italy has good stock as well.
If we are to achieve a direct rail service from Cleethorpes to King’s Cross, for which the hon. Gentleman has campaigned for many years, open access operators need quick decision making in order to be able to place their stock orders with manufacturers to make sure that they can get services up and running for passengers quickly. Does he agree that the Minister should look very closely at these things and make decisions as quickly as he can?
I agree that Italy and Grimsby are very similar. I will come to the hon. Lady’s point about the speed of the regulator’s decision making, which is absolutely crucial.
In addition to my desire and ambition for direct services to my constituency, it is vital that the significance of open access is fully acknowledged, and that nothing is done to weaken or undermine it. Why would the Government not want more unsubsidised, direct and fast rail connections across the country? Why would they not want to secure hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in forward orders for new trains to be built in Britain? Why would they not want GBR to face robust and innovative competition on key routes, which would inevitably see standards rise, and fares and subsidies decline?
Passengers in York, Hull, Wakefield, Bradford, Doncaster, Sunderland, Newcastle and Edinburgh all now enjoy up to three competing high-speed train services to London, where open access services compete with Government-run LNER. A plan to introduce a new and fast open access service to connect Sheffield and Worksop with King’s Cross is awaiting the green light, as is one to connect Rochdale with London Euston, and one to connect Cardiff with Edinburgh. Hopefully, the plans will be swiftly approved so that passengers can enjoy more direct fast trains and real fare competition, and they will all help those cities’ respective leaders to make their case for inward investment. Sheffield has not enjoyed a direct service to King’s Cross since 1968, and a new service would rival the existing East Midlands service between the city and London St Pancras.
In debates and at Transport questions, we frequently hear tales of woe about Avanti and the services that it offers travellers on the west coast main line. That could change if we took the east coast main line as a model, and I urge Ministers to get on with it. New economic analysis from Arup shows what can be achieved. Hull Trains’ open access service, which connects Beverley, Hull, Selby and Doncaster with London, has delivered between £185 million and £380 million in extra local benefits since it was approved by Tony Blair’s Government in 2000, and those figures are expected to grow to between £325 million and £700 million by 2032. Prior to Hull Trains’ operations, there was just one direct daily train in each direction between London and Hull. Similarly, the Blair Government oversaw the approval of new and fast Grand Central services to the north-east and Yorkshire in the mid and late 2000s.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) on securing this important debate on open access operators.
Rail transport in the north has suffered long-term neglect, with new plans left to gather dust. From George Osborne’s northern powerhouse speech in 2014 onwards, they have essentially been an unfunded wish list passed from one Government to the other. But under our new Government we have Great British Railways on the table, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how we will incorporate open access operators into our plans, because the north-south divide is real.
Total Treasury spending on rail in Yorkshire and the Humber last year was £1.25 billion, compared with £9.3 billion for London and £3.1 billion for the south-east. The current funding structure for transforming regional transport also makes it very difficult for areas such as the one that I represent in Scarborough and Whitby, incorporated into the York and North Yorkshire combined authority, to address the desperate lack of connectivity that exists. The main funding scheme that the Government inherited is the city region sustainable transport funding settlement, but combined authorities like ours do not qualify as they are not a city region. That funding gap has left York and North Yorkshire struggling to even plan a transport strategy. I hope that the Government will address that in the spending review.
Open access operators could step in to help. Coastal communities such as Scarborough have suffered for too long from poor rail services, and that has had a major impact on our economies. I have been campaigning for a half-hourly service between Scarborough and York, which would be taken for granted in other areas, but it seems an impossibility. The line was opened in July 1845. It took just one year and three days to complete the 45-mile route, but TransPennine Express, which now runs services on the line, today appears to have little of that urgency about it.
The hon. Member is making a really important point about coastal communities. Rural communities find themselves in a similar situation, where they may have lost a direct service. Wrexham, Shropshire and Midlands Railway has an excellent plan to run a direct-to-London service through Wrexham, Shropshire and the Midlands but it is taking an inordinately long amount of time for it to get through the Office of Rail and Road. Does the hon. Member agree that we need not just keen operators but to process their applications quickly, to give the people the service they deserve?
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. She makes an important point about time. Time is of the essence as we strive to deliver better rail services. Perhaps we need a little of the spirit of the 19th century’s rail pioneers to fully connect coastal communities at last.
I thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers), for securing this important debate and for emphasising the national importance of open access. His point about Hull Trains and the opportunity it has given us is very powerful. I want to speak about our little local problem, to which he and the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) alluded.
Originally, there were two trains every day going up and down to London via Lincoln and Market Rasen, ending up in Grimsby. That was then cut to one train and we were given a solemn promise that that train would never be taken away, but decades ago it was taken away. I have been campaigning for decades to get that service up and running again. We are talking about a catchment area of a quarter of a million people with no direct train to London. I cannot think of any other country in Europe that would have such a situation for huge conurbations like Grimsby and Cleethorpes and a place like Market Rasen—which is a small station but serves a vast rural area, perhaps 20 miles in every direction, going all the way to Louth. Yet every time we have been to see Ministers with campaigns, over many years, we get fobbed off with every single excuse. I cannot count the number of times we went to see the Transport Minister in the last Government; now I am boring this Minister instead, but I will go on boring him and we will go on making this point.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham said, we were first fobbed off with the view that there was no capacity on the main line. Yet the Azuma train runs perfectly well to Lincoln and it would make no difference to capacity on the main line if that train carried on to Grimsby via Market Rasen, so that point does not hold. We made some progress eventually and I thought that we finally had a commitment that this train would happen. Indeed, we had a test run in June 2023. I was there—I saw it. Everything worked perfectly smoothly. The train arrived from Grimsby, there was no problem, we had our photograph taken, everybody was very happy, but we have still had no progress.
My right hon. Friend will remember from the last Parliament that I campaigned for a footbridge over Suggitts Lane in Cleethorpes. Thankfully, I was supported by the then Prime Minister—Boris Johnson—who on one famous occasion at Prime Minister’s questions said:
“Suggitt’s Lane is never far from my thoughts”. —[Official Report, 23 October 2019; Vol. 666, c. 963.]
I hope that the Market Rasen situation will not be far from the Minister’s thoughts.
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. This is a serious issue. There is absolutely no reason why the great conurbation of Grimsby and Cleethorpes should not have a direct train to London, and there is no reason why the good people who live in the rural areas around Market Rasen should not have a direct train.
What has actually happened—one might argue that this is not really LNER’s fault—is that since we have had the Azuma train going directly from London to Lincoln, our indirect service has got worse. There are more delays and there is a reduced service. It really is hard work to get from that part of my constituency to London.
So, enough of excuses. We had a tremendous relationship with the Transport Minister in the last Government and we look forward to our relationship with this Minister in this Government. There is nothing party political about this matter. What we are doing—the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham and I—is begging the Minister to please intervene to knock some heads together to get this train going and stopping. That is all we ask.
It is an honour to speak in this debate under your chairmanship, Mrs Lewell-Buck.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) on securing this Backbench Business debate and I thank our colleagues on the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. Along with other colleagues here in Westminster Hall today, the hon. Gentleman has made such a good case for increasing open access services to his constituency and beyond.
In my contribution today, I will celebrate the successes of an open access agreement that benefits my constituents in Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend. So, I am showing off a bit, but I make no excuse for doing so. First, however, I reaffirm my support for the Government’s legislative action on public ownership since taking office. I supported the overhaul of our broken rail system in the voting Lobby and I still support it today.
Open access was left out of the scope of the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024. It is worth noting that in the year 2022-23, domestic open access passenger services accounted for only 0.6% of passenger journeys and 2.4% of passenger operator revenues. Throughout the legislative process, Ministers advised that they saw a continuing role for such arrangements where they add value and capacity to the network and, during a statement on railway performance in November, the previous Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh), cited FirstGroup’s Lumo as a successful example.
The Lumo service runs between Edinburgh and London via Newcastle. Of course, Members know that most trains running to and from King’s Cross on the east coast main line are operated by LNER. However, Arup estimates that at least £480 million of economic benefits have been realised since FirstGroup’s Lumo launched in 2021. Lumo has built capacity as a complementary service on a core route in the UK, running five services a day. It has given my constituents additional choice by increasing the number of trains to the capital, for instance adding a new option for travellers between Newcastle and London to leave before 6 am and arrive in London at about 8.30 am.
20 of 30 shown
On average, Hull Trains’ fares are 30% cheaper than those for traditional services. As I said when I met representatives of Hull Trains a couple of weeks ago, they could do for the south bank of the Humber what they have done for the north bank. Direct rail links have boosted inward investment and done more for levelling up and regeneration than a host of Whitehall schemes. There are also significant environmental benefits, as more people abandon the car and coach, and instead use the well-priced high-speed trains. The popular and fast Lumo open access service between London, Newcastle and Edinburgh continues to eat into the aviation market and delivers a crucial modal shift from air to rail.
I welcome the fact that many colleagues wish to speak in this debate, and I make the point that the Office of Rail and Road has recently approved new long-distance open access services up to Stirling on the west coast main line, and between London Paddington and south Wales on the Great Western line. The Go-op application to run new open access services between Weston-super-Mare, Taunton and Swindon has also been approved. We need to speed up track access applications for operators, as the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) said, because they can take up to five years. That is another example of where the Government could boost their growth agenda. The last thing that is needed is more barriers to open access. Let us speed up the process and get Britain moving.
A recent survey conducted by Virgin showed that around two thirds of all passengers welcomed competition between train operators on price and quality. That is encouraging, and it shows how an independent regulator can deliver good decisions in the national interest. A key question for the Minister will be: is more open access to be encouraged and approved, and will an independent regulator retain powers over this critical area after GBR is established? If decisions on open access are subsumed into GBR and taken off the regulator, many of us will be concerned that the hand of civil servants and other rail planners who have been proven wrong in the past in their opposition to open access will stifle and weaken this valuable part of the railway sector. If GBR is to be genuinely at arm’s length of Whitehall, as Ministers pledge, the future of the regulator and open access will be a key test.
I look forward to Ministers’ working with me and colleagues across the House to encourage and deliver new open access inter-city services to northern Lincolnshire and destinations across the country.
Scarborough is, of course, our first coastal seaside resort and is beautiful. We also have the North York Moors national park on our doorstep. The growth of staycations and holidays means there is real potential for visitors, as well as for the residents who are crying out for a better service. With the creation of Great British Railways, we have the chance to have one body responsible for the strategic direction of our railways, ensuring, as the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham said, that infrastructure and services work together and drive regional growth. I urge the Government to look at open access operators, because although they currently account for only 0.6% of total passenger journeys, they have massive potential to open up new routes, such as the Scarborough to London via York route. Look at the success of Hull Trains: in 1999 there was only one train a day between Hull and London, and now there are seven each weekday and six at weekends. As the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham said, new direct services are being approved and opened all the time.
I appreciate that there is a question whether open access services put extra pressure on network capacity and I look forward to the Minister’s response. However, unless we look at how we serve coastal communities such as mine, given the poor connections we will not move forward. If any operators are listening, I would love to see a direct service between Scarborough and London.
Now we have had this bolt from the blue: it is no longer the capacity point, but apparently we cannot have this train because the platform in Market Rasen is too short and there is no bridge. That is an absurd point. I go all over the country and I see trains stop at short platforms, and they announce, “Will you please go to the first four carriages because it’s a short platform?”
Then we got the excuse that if the Azuma train stopped at Market Rasen, it would somehow cover the pedestrian crossing, which is apparently unacceptable. Is somebody going to try to go across the railway line and climb underneath the train to get to it, stopped at the platform? It is ridiculous. I am not sure that it is even possible to climb underneath a train. Are people going to sprint down the track, leaving the platform altogether, to get round the back of the train? This is all just ludicrous. There is absolutely no reason why the train could not stop there, blocking the existing pedestrian access. Perhaps once in 100 years there might be some sort of injury; in fact I doubt whether there would ever be any injury. So, why are we stopping the whole service because, apparently, the existing pedestrian access could be blocked?
It is funny—the operators never give an explanation. They say, “Oh, we now have a problem with the disabled access and it must be in a certain part of the train.” But surely there are solutions. This is a sort of not-can-do attitude, which is driving the country crazy.
Whenever we write to bodies such as Network Rail, instead of their having the attitude of, “Let’s work together, let’s make this work,” once again we get fobbed off with ridiculous excuses and they never actually explain their actions. Then they say, “We have got to build a bridge.” All right, they build a bridge. Then they have come up with a ridiculous figure of £24 million. How could it cost £24 million to build a bridge? This is only a small country station with just one footbridge. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham campaigned for years for a bridge, did he not? And he got it for far less—£1 million, was it not?
Open access arrangements, if done properly, should drive up the number of journeys on our rail and not abstract value from existing services. According to FirstGroup, Lumo has helped to generate 6.2 million additional journeys, with 3.9 million of those taking place on Lumo services. Overall usage of the east coast main line rose by 18% in the 12 months to September last year compared with the year 2018-19, including an 11% growth in the usage of LNER services.
Modal shift will play a critical role in our journey to net zero. Decarbonising the grid, which this Labour Government have taken firm action on, is a sizeable part of that journey. Encouraging behavioural change in the transport sector represents some of the other hard yards that we must cover.
I support the Secretary of State’s ambition to ensure the benefits provided by open access operators outweigh the impact they have on taxpayers, and to ensure the ability to operate the network efficiently. I have sought today to advocate for a successful example of open access, which has benefited my constituents and the broader region.
On that broader region, I thank FirstGroup for the investment of £500 million into new British-built trains by Hitachi at Newton Aycliffe and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) on his part in securing that successful investment. I hope FirstGroup can gain approval from the regulator to serve more destinations, as that would lead to a £460 million follow-on order for new trains.
The most efficient use of our east coast main line is deeply important for me and all other north-east Members of Parliament. Growth and productivity in the north-east of England have been held back by our infrastructure. In closing, therefore, I seize this opportunity to lobby the Minister for the reopening of the Leamside line, which would be a game changer for the north-east, freeing up capacity for more LNER and Lumo trains to operate on our busy east coast main line.