Martin Vickers

I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn), on securing this debate. It is an important one and, as she knows, an issue that I have been campaigning on. Indeed, when she was previously in this House we held numerous meetings with Ministers and the like about it. The new Brigg and Immingham constituency has 11 railways stations, the largest port in the country and an international airport, yet we are still struggling to get the A180 resurfaced and a direct train service to London. This afternoon I was looking at when I first raised this matter in the House—it was in 2011, on a debate about High Speed 2, ironically. My understanding is that the previous Secretary of State had approved the start of the direct service from Grimsby and had instructed LNER to incorporate it in its negotiations with Network Rail about the forthcoming winter timetable. As the hon. Lady said, it would be nice if the Minister could confirm that that is the case. The A180 is an issue that has been rumbling on—no pun intended—for at least the 14 years that I have been a Member of the House. In 2018, I held a public meeting in Stallingborough village hall, and Highways England—as it was called at that time—said that resurfacing would commence and be completed during the 2020-21 financial year, which was subsequently confirmed in a letter from the Minister. The situation at the moment as I understand it is that a programme exists to spend £9 million in the current financial year to deal with particularly dangerous stretches, but I am told now that complete resurfacing from Barnetby Top to Grimsby, which is essential, is now in the £300 million-plus category, and will need authorising as a major capital project. Very briefly, there are a couple of other points worth mentioning. The train service that runs through Brigg, the Sheffield-Gainsborough-Brigg-Cleethorpes train service, was until fairly recently a one day a week service, with three services on a Saturday. That has now changed to a five day a week service, but it gives only 90 minutes in either Grimsby—if people want, as they should, to stop there to do their shopping in Freshney Place—or Cleethorpes. It gives them a mere 90 minutes to explore the beach and all that Cleethorpes can offer. Let us get something sorted. A regular service on that stretch of line would be greatly appreciated. My final comment is on the Cleethorpes to Barton service, which is a bit of a Cinderella service. There are so many cancellations and the timings are not good for commuters who want to use it. It needs to be fully restructured, so I urge the Minister to look at that.