Rail in North ‘not good enough’

Minister says towns would have ‘vastly better’ service if they were in the South

PARTS OF Yorkshire would have better rail links if they were in the south of England, the Transport Secretary said yesterday.

In a stark admission in the House of Commons as he outlined his wide-reaching rail reforms, Grant Shapps agreed with senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper that her “five towns” constituency in West Yorkshire would be better served in the south.

The Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford MP said: “The current system has been failing my constituency for far too long. Five Towns is less than 20 miles from the centre of Leeds. If we were that close to the centre of London we’d have many trains an hour going into Leeds.”

In response, Mr Shapps said: “As the Northern Powerhouse Minister in Cabinet, I spend a huge amount of my time looking at the way the railway service that I now get to run, Northern, operates through the operator of last resort.

“The service at the moment is just not good enough. She is right to say that if it was in the South the connectivity would be vastly better. That is why this Government

are obsessed with levelling up.”

A new body, Great British Railways, will own and manage rail infrastructure, issue contracts to private firms to run trains, set most fares and timetables and sell tickets.

It will absorb Network Rail in a bid to end what the Department for Transport branded a “blamegame system” between train and track operations when disruption occurs.

But trains will still be privately operated in a model similar to that used at Transport for London.

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post, Ms Cooper said: “I’ve raised this issue over a long period of time and I’ve not heard him say that before. But it’s not good enough to just admit it – what are you going to do about it? If they’re finally recognising the unfair deal we’re getting, what are they going to do to ensure we get our fair share of investment and our fair share of services?”

The reforms, set out in a White Paper by Mr Shapps and former British Airways chief executive Keith Williams, follow the chaotic introduction of new timetables across Yorkshire and the North in May 2018.

The Yorkshire Post later led a Power Up The North campaign to get more investment in the region.

The Government’s rail plans were initially due to be published in the autumn of 2019 but were delayed by the General Election and the pandemic.

In the plans, the Government said: “Restoring lost rail links and accelerating the delivery of critical upgrades to the network will help level up places across the country, spark new economic growth and improve public transport connectivity and prosperity across our nations and regions.”

But Barnsley MP Dan Jarvis, Mayor of the Sheffield City Region, said: “You cannot level up the North with fine words and half-measures. If the Government are going to actually deliver the transformative agenda they keep on talking about, they need to put their money where their mouth is. We’ve yet to see any sign of that.”

What are they going to do to ensure we get our fair share of investment? Yvette Cooper, Labour MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford.