Save Hull ferry route to keep to levelling up promises, Yorkshire peers urge ministers

The service was axed by P&O Ferries last month and although Transport Minister Baroness Vere of Norbiton said the move was “very regrettable” she said it was a commercial matter.

But the Yorkshire-raised leader of the Liberal Democrats in the Lords, Lord Newby, said the route was “not a luxury, but is crucial for the flow of tourism from France and elsewhere in Europe, which the North wishes to see reinstated as soon as possible as restrictions are eased”.

While unaffiliated peer Baroness Wheatcroft said the decision was more than just “regrettable”, and added: “In Hull [it' is] more than very regrettable. Hull has the highest unemployment rate alongside Blackpool in the country.”

And she said: “As part of the levelling up agenda Hull is clearly in need of help.”

Yorkshire Conservative Baroness McIntosh of Pickering said ministers should do all they could to reinstate the service, and spare capacity left by low passenger numbers should be used “to increase the freight capacity from the North and ease the bottleneck at Dover”.

Baroness Vere said that although the local impact was “very regrettable” she was satisfied that the UK’s “national freight resilience has not been compromised”, with other routes available.

She said there were currently 19 routes from the east coast of England across the North Sea “so there are plenty of freight routes already in existence”.

And she said passenger use of the ferry service had been declining since 2014 and the ships were “ageing and economically obsolete”.

With passenger traffic currently “severely constrained” it wouldn’t be in the public interest to maintain “empty capacity at public expense”, she added, and that there continued to be services for both passengers and freight from Hull to north-west Europe through Rotterdam.

However Liberal Democrat Lord Wallace of Saltaire said tourism and food exports were fundamental to Yorkshire’s economy.

He suggested the Government’s commitment to the “levelling-up agenda” required ministers to keep such links going.

Pride of York sailed for the last time from Hull on December 9 and P&O has since said in a brief statement on Twitter that they had made the "difficult decision to discontinue our Hull-Zeebrugge service from 1 Jan 2021", adding: "We hope to welcome you on board our Hull-Rotterdam or Dover-Calais ships in future so you can continue to enjoy safe, relaxing ferry trips to mainland Europe."