Chris Burn: From crisis to opportunity for North's electric dream

Spending on transport in London and Yorkshire was already running in opposite directions before Transport Secretary Chris Grayling’s series of exasperating announcements in the past few days. But while his pronouncements have made the position even more stark than previously, the blatant unfairness of what is currently being proposed now provides the possibility for cross-party action to get the Government to change course.

First came the news last Thursday that the electrification of the Midland Main Line route between Sheffield and London, a £500m scheme promised by the Government back in 2013, was to be scrapped along with similar projects in Wales and the Lake District.

That decision was announced by the Department for Transport in a press release entitled “New improvements for rail passengers in Wales, the Midlands and the North” on the basis that using hybrid trains capable of running on electric and diesel would be better than “disruptive electrification works” taking place.

The following day, Mr Grayling told the Financial Times that it was now unlikely that parallel plans to electrify the trans-Pennine route between Leeds and Manchester – described by his predecessor Patrick McLoughlin as being “at the heart of our plan to build a Northern Powerhouse” – would go ahead in the way that was originally outlined. Mr Grayling said on the sections of the route dating back to Victorian times that it would be “very difficult” to put up electric cables.

The Transport Secretary provoked further ire with his confirmation on Monday that he remained a supporter of Crossrail 2, London’s proposed £30bn north-south rail line running on newly-built electrified lines that are apparently no longer required in the north of England but somehow remain vital in the capital.

It is becoming increasingly clear that despite the Government’s protestations to the contrary, the North is being left ever further behind when it comes to transport spending.

Analysis by think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research earlier this year found that spending on transport infrastructure per person is just £190 per year in Yorkshire and the Humber – less than 10 per cent of the amount spent in London, where the figure is £1,943 per head. Grimly, the IPPR’s figures suggest Yorkshire and Humber has the lowest average spend on transport infrastructure per person in the entire country.

That is the crisis – but here is the opportunity. The result of June’s
General Election has put the Government on the back foot in all sorts of policy areas. Planned policies on fox hunting and grammar schools have been
shelved, ten Democratic Unionist Party MPs have managed to secure £1bn in extra funding for Northern Ireland to prop up the Conservatives, while emboldened Channel 4 bosses appear to be winning their argument for the television station to stay in London rather than being moved out of the capital as the Government was pushing for before the election.

This all suggests that a determined cross-party campaign by Northern MPs on the issue of rail electrification could have a real impact in reshaping Government policy. In Yorkshire alone, there are 19 Conservative MPs who could have a vital role to play – their numbers are almost double that of the DUP who have been able to secure huge concessions from a Government whose positions it largely sympathises with.

There has been expected – and justified – condemnation of the Government’s stance from opposition politicians labelling the recent decisions as a “betrayal”. But perhaps the most important intervention so far has come from Chris Green, Tory MP for Bolton West.

In an open letter to Mr Grayling, he said: “Electrification was put at the heart of the Northern Powerhouse after commuters here in the North have suffered for years of travelling on packed carriages on slow trains. To be told that electrification in parts of the North now does not need to happen is difficult to take, particularly after Monday’s announcement that London’s £30bn Crossrail 2 scheme will go ahead.

“We cannot rebalance our economy and the North cannot prosper without proper investment in our infrastructure. I urge you to ensure these essential modernisation works on our railways go ahead.”

Many other Conservative MPs in the north must feel precisely the same way and they must now make their voices count. The lights do not have to go out on Yorkshire’s electric dreams just yet.

Chris Burn is a Yorkshire Post feature writer