I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on securing the debate. It is a very timely one for the south-west, as I shall explain in a moment.
It is no secret that I think that transport links in the south-west are underfunded, as addressing that has been one of my main priorities since entering this place last June. It comes on the back of the need for the south-west to stop accepting the poor deal for transport that we have been given for so long. My transport campaigns in south-west are about giving us a fair deal by reopening Plymouth airport, extending the M5 from Exeter to Plymouth, and funding our train line properly so that it is faster and more resilient in bad weather. As a region, we have been given—and, importantly, we have accepted—a poor deal for far too long.
Across nearly all areas of Government spending in the south-west, the far south-west, which I represent, has received below average spend. My Labour colleagues have talked about the gap in transport funding for some time. Based on the Treasury’s “Country and Regional Analysis” publication last year, we in the far south-west receive about £277 per head. In London, the figure is £973 per head, which means that London gets three and a half times what we get in the far south-west. I do not mind London getting another tube line, HS2 being built or a new runway at Heathrow so long as the far south-west gets its fair share—not more, just our fair share—but that is not happening at the moment.
That is why tomorrow is such an important day for the Government: we will see whether they will put their money where their mouth is. On 30 January, south-west Conservative MPs threatened to rebel on a vote against HS2, and the Transport Secretary wrote them a letter to quell their concerns. In it, he said that Dawlish—the part of the train line washed away by the storms in 2014—
“remains our number one national priority”.
I simply do not believe that Dawlish is the Government’s No. 1 national priority when it comes to rail. Looking at the blank faces around the Chamber, I see that no one else does either. The DFT also promised in its letter, which was sent only to Tory MPs and therefore, sadly, not to me or to my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), that work at Dawlish would begin “quickly”. We have heard that before—jam tomorrow.
What we are looking for tomorrow is a full statement and a plan that will adopt the Peninsula Rail Task Force recommendations, and that is lucky because the letter went on to say that
“the DfT will set out our strategy, following the PRTF report, by the end of February.”
That is tomorrow, so I invite the Minister to confirm that the DFT will publish a south-west rail strategy tomorrow, that it will adopt the recommendations of the Peninsula Rail Task Force and, importantly, that it will match Labour’s pledge of funding £2.5 billion for this rail action, which covers the first 10 years of spending set out by the Peninsula Rail Task Force. Failure to publish that strategy tomorrow will show the south-west that we have been let down yet again by this Government. We need action, words and funding to follow the agreed plan. That needs to be based on what can be delivered, not promises of jam tomorrow and vague promises of upgrades.
The far south-west has had too many promises since David Cameron came to the region in 2014 saying that money was no object in restoring our train line. The orange army did a great job in restoring Dawlish, but the investment has not flowed in since then, which means that our journeys are too slow and the service is not resilient enough. In the bad weather we are having at the moment, there is a risk that CrossCountry rail services will stop at Exeter and not continue to Penzance. That is because CrossCountry services cannot cope with the salt water of the waves washing over them at Dawlish, so they have to be cancelled. No other part of the country would accept that poor deal, and I say to the Minister that the south-west will no longer accept it. I ask him please to publish that strategy tomorrow—let us get on and fix our railway.
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