2025: Week 2 - Railway debate and Local Government Reorganisation

This week I managed to secure a Westminster Hall debate about the state of the railways in the South West. 

A Westminster Hall debate isn’t a place where decisions are made, but a way whereby MPs can explore an issue, and the relevant Government Minister has to sit and listen, and answer the issues that we bring up. 

I described many of the issues that we are facing with the railway services. I started with the importance of getting the fifth phase of the Dawlish Resilience programme funded – that’s the work to fully pin and secure the cliffs between Dawlish and Teignmouth.  It was the collapse of the cliffs that closed the line for the longest time.  In the eight weeks it took to sort that out the South West economy is estimated to have lost £1.2Bn. 

The fifth and final phase is the largest and most expensive piece of work, but without it we run the risk of further collapses closing off the vital train services. 

In addition to that I spoke of the local branch services and the lack of carriages on many scheduled trains.   

Speaking about the mainline services to London, I brought up the lack of good connectivity for WiFi and Mobile phones, and also the interruptions for the construction of the new station - Old Oak Common - just outside of Paddington, designed as an HS2 terminus for London. 

HS2 will now go on to Euston and we are left with a ridiculous presumption that all trains from Wales, the West and the South West would stop at this new station before progressing the final three miles to Paddington.  This stop would add between 5 and 15 minutes to every trip, both ways, but give little or no benefit to South West train users. 

The debate continued with MPs from all parties speaking and creating a picture of the state of the trains largely agreed by all.  The Minister’s response acknowledged the issues that were raised and noted that more carriages would be made available for local services soon, and that he would look into possible solutions to improve the mobile and WiFi connections on the inter-city trains. 

Whilst the Minister didn’t (and couldn’t) promise the funding for the Dawlish Line, we made the point that it is critical to the South West and the Newton Abbot constituency. 

Later in the week there was an urgent question on the changes to local councils.  One big question is whether the current Devon County administration will be allowed to cancel the elections due for May 2025.  The minister assured us that we would know by the end of the month… 

The new arrangements will merge the local district council and Devon County council into one or more unitary councils.  This runs the risk of being more remote and less locally accountable.  I am sure that our Town and Parish councils will need to play a big role in this new world.  However this isn’t covered in the Government’s white paper at all…