On Wednesday, 11th December, Rebecca Smith MP, Member of Parliament for South West Devon, delivered a speech on Devon rail services in Parliament “looking for parity with the rest of the country”. This follows on from her maiden speech which committed to fighting for better rail infrastructure in the region.
Framing her speech, Rebecca observed:
“It is important to remember that, as I talked about in my maiden speech, the Southwest is not just a tourist attraction. People live there and there is an enormous opportunity for even further growth. We are an incredibly vibrant economy: the blue and green economies are growing, and we are keen to grow, but without an adequate rail service into the south-west, that is massively hindered.”
Rebecca was the only Plymouth MP present at the cross-party debate and was keen to highlight some of the specific challenges and opportunities facing the rail network in her corner of Devon. The South West Devon MP set out the importance of completing the resilience works at Dawlish, funding a business plan for a Tavistock-Plymouth line, improving platform lengths and pressuring CrossCountry services to stop at Ivybridge.
A recent letter from the Rail Minister promised £30 million for capital investments to mitigate the impact of disruption caused by works at Old Oak Common for HS2. However, it has not been declared what this money will be spent on in the Southwest. Rebecca brought into question the benefits of HS2 to the region in her speech and put forward local projects in and around South West Devon that she believes would make a real difference to her constituents and represent money well spent.
Looking to the Government’s broader rail strategy, the overarching question, Rebecca argued, is “what difference will public ownership of the railway make for the Southwest?”. Renationalisation is not a silver bullet; any plans to bring the Southwest’s rail operators into public ownership will need to carefully consider the challenges and opportunities identified by Rebecca in her speech.
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