Northern Rail

Our MP, Simon Fell is pleased that Northern Rail is being renationalised. I know he's a conservative and this is Labour Party policy. But the Tories came to power on borrowed votes from traditional Labour voters who wanted to get Brexit done. So it makes sense for them to borrow our policies as well.

UPDATE: 29/01/2020

Government announces that Northern Rail will be taken back into public ownership on March 1st.

Simon Fell responds

Grant Shapps statement is worth reading in full. The Conservative manifesto promised:

The railways need accountability, not nationalisation. So we will end the complicated franchising model and create a simpler, more effective rail system, including giving metro mayors control over services in their areas.

This was the closest we got to strategic thinking about our rail infrastructure in the manifesto. Shapps is now suggesting that the Williams Review, "A root and branch review of Britain’s railway, independently chaired by Keith Williams," will inform strategy. The Review was established in September 2018 and was supposed to result in a white paper in autumn 2019. But after a flurry of activity last spring there is nothing on the government website since Sir Keith Williams addressed a Northern Powerhouse Partnership Conference in July 2019. 

We really do need a strategic response to the crisis on our railways and not the piecemeal approach outlined in the Conservative manifesto.  A lot will depend on the outcome of today's meeting between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor where the future of HS2 will be discussed. 

And here in Cumbria we need our new intake of Conservative MPs to speak up. There is a real danger that, even if the government does deliver on its promise to invest in the north, it will concentrate on the metropolitan areas and we will be forgotten.