Tim Farron MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 18 Dec 2025 · Farming Profitability · Hansard source

  More

  If farm profitability is so important to the Government, I find it utterly peculiar that the review was released only today as a written statement at the last minute. It is an insult to this House and indeed the excellent Baroness Batters herself. England is now the only country in the United Kingdom, and indeed in Europe, that does not provide financial support to its farmers. England’s farmers, therefore, have been uniquely abandoned by this Government, by their Conservative predecessor and by those whose madcap ideology took us out of Europe without any kind of a plan. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether food security will be counted as a public good, as the Liberal Democrats propose, and funded through environmental land management schemes? When will the SFI be reopened, and how much money will be in it? Will she ensure that this time the money does not mostly go to the wealthiest, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) just referred to, and when will she stop making English farmers the worst supported in the whole of Europe?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

  More

  Westmorland and Furness is an extremely well-run council and an extremely unusual one as well. It is England’s most rural council. It is the council that accepts the highest number of visitors—non-resident population—as we support everybody else’s constituents, who make up the 15 million who come to our district every year. The council has some of the poorest wards in the country. It is the host of Barrow, which is the centre of the UK’s defence industry, and it has the highest percentage of people in social care. This formula will leave us unusually crippled. We think it will mean a 13% cut to our budgets over the next three years. Given that we are so unusual, will the Minister unusually agree to meet me, her hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Michelle Scrogham) and local council leaders, so we can work out an unusual solution to this wonderful but unusual council’s problems?

• 16 Dec 2025 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend’s communities are not dissimilar to mine; they are very rural and very mountainous, and upland farming is critical to his communities, as it is to mine. Does he think the Labour Government have failed to understand that wealth is not concentrated in the hands of famers in the way that they think? It is entirely possible to be an upland farmer in my hon. Friend’s patch or in mine and to be earning the minimum wage or, indeed, less—the University of Cumbria shows that the average upland farmer earns less on average than the minimum wage—and yet to be in a position, after inheritance tax is due, to be paying £20,000 a year or more while earning only £16,000. That is not right, is it?

• 15 Dec 2025 · NHS: Winter Preparedness · Hansard source

  More

  Across Cumbria and Morecambe Bay, the teams working in A&E, on hospital wards and in our ambulance crews are doing a stunning job dealing with the winter pressures in a community where, in my constituency, the average age is 10 years above the national average. Their jobs are made more difficult by the fact that 25% or more of the beds in our local hospitals are occupied by people who do not meet the criteria to reside. On top of that, the local trust in Morecambe Bay is planning to make bed cuts for financial reasons alone. We hear about additional investment in the NHS, but it does not feel like we are having that in Morecambe Bay and Cumbria. Will the Secretary of State personally investigate that, so that we are not cutting beds at a time when we need them more than ever?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  The maintenance of our nuclear deterrent, and the development of our wider defence capabilities in the United Kingdom, rests heavily on the town of Barrow, next to my own constituency, in my district of Westmorland and Furness. Does the Secretary of State recognise that investment into the town from the council is crucial to maintaining our peace and security, and will he have a word with his colleagues in the Cabinet? The local council is set to have a 13% cut to its budget, which will put at risk much of the investment in the town of Barrow that is meant to underpin the defence of our realm.

• 9 Dec 2025 · Creative Education · Hansard source

  More

  I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and sorry to intervene so early in the debate. I want to make a point about outdoor education, which is also about enrichment and helping young people to be resilient and to have better outcomes. Is he aware that among state schools in wealthier postcodes, 52% of young people get an outdoor education residential opportunity while at school, while in the poorer areas, only 18% have this opportunity? Does he think that the Government need to be aware of this and fund access to outdoor education experiences for children, wherever they are from?

• 9 Dec 2025 · Financial Inclusion Strategy · Hansard source

  More

  Access to banking is surely a key part of financial inclusion. The high street banks save £2 billion a year from having abandoned our high streets and town centres. Our post offices pick up the tab and we are glad that they do, but they are not funded by the banks anywhere near enough to be able to maintain their presence. In Westmorland, we have lost Hawkshead, Staveley and Grasmere post offices, and we are set to lose Shap and Tebay largely because the banks do not fund the post offices for doing their jobs properly. What is the Chancellor going to do to make them do that?

• 9 Dec 2025 · Network Rail Timetable Changes: Rural Communities · Hansard source

  More

  I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. The horror was even closer to happening than that: nobody was hurt and the train remained upright between the tracks, but it was about eight minutes off being hit by the northbound train going in the opposite direction, which would undoubtedly have led to catastrophic loss of life. I do not want to pre-empt the ongoing investigation by the rail accident investigation branch, but we cannot help wondering whether the failure of this Government and the previous Government to fund the upgrades necessary to ensure the resilience both of the line and of the embankment between Warrington and Lockerbie could have played a part in that terrifying near miss. There is much to welcome—the Liberal Democrats welcome the expansion of contactless fares into more rural and suburban areas of the London commuter belt, as well as the improvements on some rural midland lines—but we are urging the Government to establish a nationwide tap-in, tap-out ticketing system, which would be simple, modern and fair. It is time to end the regional lottery that passengers face across our network. We also continue to campaign to reverse the cuts to the restoring your railway scheme, which was scrapped by the Chancellor in last year’s Budget. That scheme would have delivered genuine social, economic and environmental benefits to rural areas that are too frequently cut off from public transport. We want to see smaller rural stations reopened and a UK-wide Network Rail railcard introduced, making rail travel more affordable, tackling regional inequalities and simplifying the system for passengers.

• 9 Dec 2025 · Network Rail Timetable Changes: Rural Communities · Hansard source

  More

  And to ensure safe and reliable onward travel, Mr Stuart. The reality is that when someone’s train comes in, if they cannot get to their next destination they are utterly snookered. That is particularly the case in rural areas where stations are unstaffed. At night, that often creates not only inconvenience, but a lack of safety, particularly at this time of year, particularly with late-night services curtailed and particularly for those who are travelling on their own. I will finish by simply saying that railways should work for all, urban and rural alike.

• 9 Dec 2025 · Network Rail Timetable Changes: Rural Communities · Hansard source

  More

  It is a joy to continue serving under your guidance this afternoon, Mr Stuart—I am thoroughly enjoying it, and I hope you are as well. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for securing a very important debate, which I think would have been even better attended if it had not clashed with the Railways Bill. This issue matters hugely to so many of us, but I am sure it also matters to many Members who are in the main Chamber. He made a really strong case for rural rail services in his beautiful constituency, as did the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd), who made a really good speech that highlighted the issues affecting her lovely part of the world. The major timetable update that we expect on 14 December is a source of significant worry for many of us in rural communities. Although there are some exciting developments that I am sure the Minister will list, we fear that the changes will be overwhelmingly urban and intercity focused, just like those introduced in May. They offer far too little to the rural communities that the Liberal Democrats now represent so comprehensively from Wick to Penzance, with Oxenholme pretty much halfway. Rural rail routes suffer from limited frequency, infrastructure constraints and, ultimately, a lack of investment in tracks, stations and rolling stock. On the Lakes line, the Furness line and the Cumbrian coastal line, we see hourly services if we are lucky, whereas it is closer to every two hours on the Settle to Carlisle line. This has a negative impact on commuters, on school and college students, and on our vital visitor economy, which serves 20 million people, provides jobs for 60,000 and is worth £4.5 billion to the economy every year. Connecting to local buses, which hon. Members have mentioned, becomes precarious when even small timetable changes can blow apart entire journey plans. In Grange-over-Sands, buses and trains coincide at exactly the same time on each hour, and predictable lateness on both roads and rail mean that there can be no certainty of interconnectivity. People seeking to get home to Cartmel, Flookburgh, Allithwaite and Lindale live with the daily anxiety of not knowing whether they will make their connection. On the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle line, villages in Yorkshire and Cumbria miss out because passenger services to rural communities have been downgraded. The 13.37 service from Carlisle to Leeds, which passes through my constituency, has been converted into a semi-fast service, so it misses out most of the intermediate stations. By working with local campaigners, we have thankfully secured additional stops at Garsdale and Ribblehead, but Armathwaite, Lazonby, Langwathby, Dent and Haughton are still bypassed, leaving those communities with a four-hour gap in southbound services in the afternoon. The Government would never tolerate this sort of thing in an urban community. An additional example of rural and northern communities being overlooked is the network closures in January during the Clifton bridge work—something that will impact pretty much everybody on the west side of the country. Passengers changing at Oxenholme between the Lakes line and TransPennine Express services to Manchester airport face waits of almost an hour in both directions, but that is not the half of it, because Avanti has chosen not to serve Oxenholme at all. This is hardly a surprise to many of us, because whenever there is a problem with the track in Scotland or Cumbria, Avanti almost always chooses to cancel all services north of Preston anyway. We are used to Avanti treating Cumbria, north Lancashire and Scotland as if we do not exist, but as predictable as this is, it is not acceptable. If Avanti’s normal London timings had been maintained as far as Oxenholme, the connection with the Lakes line could have continued. Alternatively, TransPennine Express, which is still operating, could have taken over those timings, but it sadly declined. Even if its trains could not continue beyond Preston, a simple Preston to Oxenholme shuttle would have kept a reliable interchange in place and still provided four trains per hour to Manchester. With years of west coast main line upgrade work still to come, the lack of planning for rural connectivity cannot be allowed to continue, and the upgrades do not promise enough for the main line in the rural far north-west of England. I think it would be fair to conclude that we saw that most acutely with the derailment on the southbound track at Shap on 3 November. It was not a laughing matter, and we were very grateful that no one was seriously injured, but that derailment has surely got to be a wake-up call for Network Rail.

• 9 Dec 2025 · Network Rail Timetable Changes: Rural Communities · Hansard source

  More

  Well, even the best timetabling is meaningless, Mr Stuart, if you cannot make it to the platform to catch your train. The Government have effectively scrapped the mid-tier section of the Access for All scheme, which is meant to end the barriers to access for people with disabilities and mobility issues. If the mid-tier scheme is scrapped, only mainline train stations will ever be made access-friendly for disabled people, which is outrageous. I have an example in my constituency: the platform at Staveley station on the Lakes line, which passengers have to stagger up 41 steep steps to reach. I ask the Minister to reopen the mid-tier scheme, to support not just Staveley but all rural stations. Rural communities deserve a railway system that recognises them as equal partners in our national network, not an afterthought. The solutions are not beyond us. With the right priorities, the Government could transform the experience of passengers right across the country. We call for a nationwide tap-in, tap-out system to extend the planned best price guarantee across all digital and physical sales channels, to ensure that passengers are offered the most cost-effective ticket available. We call for electrification as standard for new line. We call for ambitious targets to expand battery and hydrogen technology, where appropriate, including for freight. The Government should also grab the low-hanging fruit and invest in passing loops, such as the one proposed for the Lakes line. That would be a relatively inexpensive way to double capacity on so many of our rural lines—

• 9 Dec 2025 · Water Scarcity · Hansard source

  More

  I agree with my hon. Friend. We made those points during the passage of the Water (Special Measures) Bill, now the 2025 Act, and we will of course try them again in the near future. Water scarcity and limited water storage capacity put acute pressure on farming and food production. There must be more support for farmers to manage water well and for the development of local resource options to secure and store water. Flooding and drought both threaten our agriculture sector and therefore threaten Britain’s food security. In the last few days we have been commemorating with great sadness and dark memories the 10th anniversary of Storm Desmond in Cumbria and elsewhere in the country. We see water levels rising today and recognise that it is so important that we invest in protecting our communities—in particular those who provide the food for our tables: our farmers. Water companies must be held to account. That means requiring them to reduce leakages, deliver on efficiency targets, expand uptake of water meters and embrace water-saving technologies. In my constituency, we do indeed have an awful lot of lakes, and they need topping up, so it rains rather a lot. We are the most beautiful part of England, I would argue, but we are also the wettest. Yet despite the fact that we get three and a half times more rainfall per year than even Manchester, we end up facing droughts and potential water rationing over the summer months. That can only be the consequence of appalling levels of investment in our water network as we see good water leaking out of the system. The wettest place in England last summer had a hosepipe ban—that is barmy and outrageous. At the same time, we recognise that augmenting supply may become unavoidable. Options must include new reservoirs, especially in regions that suffer from lower rainfall, as well as greater water recycling, desalination where ecologically feasible and transfers of water between regions. It is vital that we support farmers and land managers as they struggle with extreme weather. The Liberal Democrats stand alone as the only party in England calling for food security and resilience of food supply to be counted as public goods and therefore supported through the environmental land management schemes, which we would boost with an additional £1 billion per year. The lack of water through periods of drought is a fundamental threat to our food security, so we would ensure that farmers are actively supported to ensure that they remain able to put food on our tables no matter the weather. Before I close, we ask the Minister: will there be a comprehensive cross-departmental UK adaptation strategy that embeds climate resilience, including water resilience, across all Government policies and agencies? Will that be set out in the water White Paper that we are expecting very soon following the Independent Water Commission report just before summer? Will the White Paper introduce resilience standards for water and support homeowners in installing adaptation measures against flooding and overheating? Will the White Paper restore agricultural permitted development rights, as set out by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings), to allow farmers to build on-farm reservoirs with the support of the local community? Will the White Paper bring in a new clean water authority to replace the failed Ofwat and merge it into an authority with other regulators too?

• 9 Dec 2025 · Water Scarcity · Hansard source

  More

  It is a joy to serve under your guidance this afternoon, Mr Stuart. I plan to be here for the next two debates, so we will have a lovely afternoon together as we have apparently just rejoined the EU on a tied vote. The tie means that we win on the away-goals rule, which is good to hear. All legislation should be settled like that in future. I give massive thanks and congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne), who not only secured the debate but led it superbly. All contributions from parties present have been excellent, focused on their communities and on trying to solve the issue. It was great to hear the affinity between the DUP and the Liberal Democrats; after all, we are both very fond of the colour orange. It is great to get a perspective from one of the devolved nations. The amount of water available at any time depends not only on natural supply—rainfall, rivers, aquifers—but on the capacity of the infrastructure maintained since privatisation by the water companies. Demands from households, industry and agriculture also play a significant part. In Cumbria, we have 20 million visitors a year. Those people are very welcome but that is a lot of drinking water, showers and flushed lavatories, and we need the infrastructure to provide that. On top of that, we provide fresh drinking water for millions of people in the north-west of England. Again, we are proud to do so but we are under pressure. The Environment Agency has projected national and regional deficits in water supply. Deficits will only worsen over the next 25 years as matters are scheduled. By 2050, the shortfall could reach nearly 5 million litres per day—equivalent to more than a third of the water that we currently rely on for public consumption. Outrageous water shortages have been experienced by South East Water customers, who have been referenced by hon. Friends and championed by our hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin). Those water shortages could become the experience of people across the country, not just in the south-east region, if we do not radically reform our water industry urgently to ensure that we stop the leaking of billions of pounds of billpayers’ money into the pockets of shareholders and senior executives, when that money should be reinvested in a water infrastructure fit for the British people.

• 9 Dec 2025 · Water Scarcity · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Member makes an excellent point. All this afternoon’s interventions have been good and on the money. Talking about money, this is money leaking out of the industry and not being invested in it. Bonuses and dividends should reward success; clearly, Yorkshire Water and others have failed in their basic task, which is to provide clean water for their communities. To focus on the scale of the problem, since privatisation the water companies have amassed £70 billion of debt. Adjusted for inflation, they have paid out £83 billion in dividends. That means that on average 30p out of every pound that people pay on their water bills is to service the debt of the water companies, which was racked up to pay dividends. That is a moral outrage. The main drivers of this impending crisis are clear: climate change; population growth; increased housing demand; business expansion; the demands, which have been mentioned, for huge additional energy and water usage given the growth in AI; pressures on the natural environment; and the growing need to prepare for drought. Those drivers are compounded by historical underinvestment in infrastructure and insufficient demand management. Successive Governments have comprehensively failed to take climate adaptation measures seriously, guaranteeing misery for communities affected by flooding, wildfires and heat stress. If we are to build new infrastructure, including new homes and data centres—and we must—we must also ensure that water infrastructure keeps pace. That means sustainable drainage, new supply capacity and integration of water resilience into planning from the start. For instance, we should ensure that data centres are built predominantly at coastal locations and that desalination plants are an integral part of their design and key to their gaining of planning consent. Otherwise, we simply will not have the capacity to both provide clean water for our people and be the AI superpower that we desire to be. The Liberal Democrats have long backed an infrastructure-first approach to development. We cannot allow water infrastructure to remain an afterthought. It is not right that water companies that have failed to invest in adequate sewerage, drainage and water supply infrastructure are able to get away with telling the local planning authority that there is no need for further investment and, at the same time, gain the financial benefit of the extra water bills from new households, while not laying out the extra investment needed to provide for them.

• 9 Dec 2025 · Water Scarcity · Hansard source

  More

  I have only a little left, but thank you, Mr Stuart. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who is a strong advocate for her communities and is echoing their anger at being overlooked for funding. It is worth recognising that, although it may be no fault of the Minister’s, DEFRA is one of the few Departments that got an actual cut in the Budget. Does that affect farming or flood investment? It is deeply concerning for all of us who live in habitually wet communities. I want to press the Minster on whether the White Paper that is coming will set out a single, powerful regulator that the water companies actually fear, rather than what we have at present: a whole range of weak regulators that the water companies play off against one another. Meanwhile, the companies continue to take people’s money and not provide adequate water infrastructure. Water scarcity is a real and growing challenge. The causes are in part natural, but in part they are political. We have a water industry that is structured to make a small number of people incredibly wealthy, not to meet the needs of our country. Will the White Paper address the outrageous and outdated ownership model to ensure that we tackle the problem? We will not deal with the issue by tinkering around the edges. It will only change when we have the kind of regulation that the industry cannot shimmy its way around, and when we have an ownership model that puts water supply and water users ahead of an amoral dash for profit. If we do not act now with joined-up planning, proper investment, accountability, strong regulation and a better ownership model, then the shortfall of water forecast by 2050 will hit communities across our country, and Governments both past and present will rightly get the blame.

• 9 Dec 2025 · Water Scarcity · Hansard source

  More

  Not yet.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Child Poverty Strategy · Hansard source

  More

  What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the impact on child poverty of the Government’s rather blanket approach to changing local government funding and taking support away from rural councils? Westmorland and Furness council stands to lose 13% of its budget, which will not only exacerbate child poverty and reduce educational and life chances for children in my constituency —one in five children in Kendal already live in poverty—but undermine the Government’s plans to regenerate the town of Barrow, which underpins the UK’s nuclear deterrent and defence capability. Will the Secretary of State, at this last moment, urgently get involved and talk to Cabinet colleagues to prevent those deeply damaging cuts, which will exacerbate child poverty and put the country at risk?

• 8 Dec 2025 · Review of Carer’s Allowance Overpayments · Hansard source

  More

  Cumbria has a much higher than average number of unpaid carers, largely due to the much higher than average number of people who are older, and the situation is exacerbated by rural isolation. It is a community with a significant amount of seasonal and variable work. What is the Minister doing to ensure that carers can take flexible seasonal work without fear of losing all support?

• 2 Dec 2025 · Pandemics: Support for People with Autism · Hansard source

  More

  I pay tribute to the hon. Member and his marvellous constituent Ivan, who he is speaking about so passionately and affectionately. Does he agree that support for autistic children and their families must be treated as a priority during and in the aftermath of pandemics and other crisis events of that sort? In my constituency, the parent of a three-year-old child who is showing clear signs of autism has been waiting for 18 months for a community paediatric assessment and just as long for dietetic support for suspected avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder. That delay is already affecting his development and nutrition at a critical stage. Does the hon. Member agree that neurodevelopmental and early years services must be properly resourced and protected, and not sidelined, so that such children are not left without support when they need it the most?

• 1 Dec 2025 · M6: Junction 38 · Hansard source

  More

  I feel that the Minister is about to conclude, so I just want to press him on the meeting with myself and the local community. Is he willing to do that? He is welcome to come to Westmorland, but we would happily come down to see him here.

• 1 Dec 2025 · M6: Junction 38 · Hansard source

  More

  If possible, I would be grateful to have sight of the workings showing National Highways’ consideration of the slip roads, and what drawings and designs it did and then discarded. I have not heard of this to this date, and I am not convinced that it did that at all.

• 1 Dec 2025 · M6: Junction 38 · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman is a world-standard crowbar applier in this place, but that was not a crowbar—that was very relevant. England’s connectivity with Ireland via Stranraer is utterly affected by what is happening at junction 38. He is absolutely on the money, and I am very grateful for his point. We must avoid the closures of these junctions. Let us start with one group who are mentioned regularly and helped rarely: at a time when they are already facing so many threats and pressures, the closures will be a logistical nightmare for our farmers, who will face rising fuel costs, some land being made inaccessible to them, and threats to animal welfare as they have to make more arduous journeys throughout this three-year period. Secondly, given the Government’s priority of seeking economic growth, the junction closures are also a huge risk to our multibillion-pound tourism economy. Tailbacks north and south and the junction closures will mean that some of the 20 million visitors we have each year will vote with their feet, putting many of the 60,000 hospitality and tourism jobs in our county at risk, and further damaging the UK’s fiscal position. Local businesses will be hit by the closures, including—I do not think this is parochial hyperbole either—Britain’s finest service station, Westmorland services at Tebay—

• 1 Dec 2025 · M6: Junction 38 · Hansard source

  More

  It is a great privilege to secure a debate on a matter that is causing immense anxiety across Westmorland and beyond. National Highways is planning to close and replace seven bridges that carry the M6 motorway over the Lune gorge in Cumbria. Those S-joint bridges are reaching the end of their lifespan and we recognise that this work has to be done. The wider Lune gorge project proposes bridge replacements, overnight closures, weekend shutdowns and contraflow systems operating at sometimes as little as 30 mph. Crucially, the plan also entails the closure of the southbound junction at Tebay for 18 months, followed by the closure of the northbound junction for a subsequent 18 months. We argue that the junction 38 closures are not necessary, that there are clear alternatives such as temporary slip roads, and that insufficient attention has been paid to those alternatives. All the while, National Highways intends to keep heavy traffic moving through rural diversion routes and has, astonishingly, not produced a full impact assessment for the project—no assessment of the impact on the road network and no assessment of the impact on the wider community. I do not think it is just parochial hyperbole when I say that the Lune gorge is without doubt the most spectacular and beautiful stretch of the UK’s motorway network, so I suspect that when the Department for Transport and National Highways looked at that stretch of the M6 while weighing up the project in its early days, they were struck more by the scenery and far less by the very significant population that depends on junction 38 and therefore did not give them very much serious consideration at all. Local communities rely on junction 38 for access to work, school, health services, business and the operation of the local economy. The current plan will devastate local businesses—whose model is often completely reliant on proximity to the M6 and the junctions north and south—effectively isolating the community from the motorway for three years within a wider programme of four to six years of ongoing disruption. It also puts the safety of my constituents at risk, given that emergency services’ access to our communities will be severely curtailed for years on end. I recently spent time with our wonderful ambulance crews, who were keen that I should emphasise this point especially. The impact on our communities will be enormous. The key effects are first and foremost on the village of Tebay itself, but there will also be an impact on a much wider area. Seven bridges carry the M6 itself, and they need replacing—I get that. The eighth bridge, across the M6, which also requires replacement, carries the A685 connecting Tebay with Kendal, 12 miles away, and is the only remaining link between the two when the M6 junction is closed. As a community, we campaigned hard to persuade National Highways not to close this bridge at the same time as the other seven, and we are grateful that National Highways has changed its mind on this point. I thank everyone who campaigned hard with us to achieve this success, which means that Tebay, Orton, Ravenstonedale, Kirkby Stephen and other villages will now at least have one connecting road to Kendal; otherwise, residents taking their children to school, and commuters, would have faced an additional 250 miles a week for an 18-month period. Having said that, the A685 is a winding, narrow, single carriageway running for 12 miles from Tebay to Kendal, and for 18 months, all local traffic will be dependent on it, meaning a huge increase in traffic going through Tebay, Grayrigg and Kendal in particular. My first ask of the Minister is to ensure that this traffic is managed along the whole of this route and that the A685 Lawtland House bridge is strengthened and kept safe through this time, when this already weakened bridge will be facing massively increased usage, carrying an enormous volume of traffic displaced from the M6. The towns of Kirkby Stephen and Kendal are already at capacity and breaking point when it comes to traffic management and cannot withstand a motorway’s worth of displaced traffic; they cannot withstand it at all, but they certainly cannot withstand it regularly and for years on end. Westmorland and Furness council is set to lose £39 million a year due to the new, ironically-titled fairer funding 2.0 settlement—a staggering 13% cut to its budget. It will therefore not have the funds to expand traffic management in consideration of the volume of traffic to keep those roads safe and flowing securely. Incidentally, this is a financial settlement that puts at risk the council’s crucial investment in the town of Barrow, which is critical to the UK’s defence capability, including our nuclear deterrent. I would be grateful if the Minister took this matter up separately with his colleagues the Secretaries of State for Defence and for Housing, Communities and Local Government. This cut would be a colossal strategic own goal for the Government—one they would rightly get the blame for—but there is still time to reverse it. For this debate, though, the key point I want the Minister to focus on is that the closure of junction 38 southbound and then northbound, for three years in total, will be catastrophic for our communities. It can and must be avoided.

• 1 Dec 2025 · M6: Junction 38 · Hansard source

  More

  Thank you. There will be an estimated cost to the service station alone of £1 million in damage if the junction is closed. Dozens of other businesses will also be affected, with millions of pounds of lost revenue, increased costs and the potential loss of hundreds of jobs. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, there will be a huge national impact on the haulage industry. Most lorry companies use junction 38 as their halfway point on the route to Scotland and the ferry ports serving Ireland. With the closure this coming January of the M6 at Clifton—at the top end of my constituency near junction 40—heavy goods vehicle drivers coming from Scotland and the ports connecting us to Ireland will be diverted from Penrith, across the A66 to Scotch Corner, down the A1(M), and across the M62 to rejoin the M6 near Warrington. That is a colossal detour, with horrendous costs in fuel and journey times—and that is only for a few weekends at the beginning of next year. The Lune gorge plan is to run for four to six years, not a few weekends. The work will have an enormous negative economic impact for the whole country. The consequences have clearly not been fully thought through. Given that we know some of the impacts of the closures, we have asked National Highways for sight of its impact assessment. To my utter astonishment, it has not conducted one. The Minister can blame previous Conservative Ministers for that failure if he wishes, but he only gets to do that if he puts it right immediately this evening. Where is the economic impact assessment? Where is a credible traffic management plan? With help from local residents, businesses and farmer groups, we did our own survey of the impact and calculated that the damage just to that relatively small section of the local community who live in the villages closest to junction 38 would be upwards of £10 million over three years. The real impact would be much wider, of course, and therefore the cost would be much, much higher. The closure of junction 38 would also mean greater pressures on junction 37 to the south and junction 39 to the north, both of which are dangerous hammerhead junctions. Junction 37 has seen three tragic fatalities and many other accidents in the last 18 months alone, yet National Highways’ current plan—such as it is—is to send tens of thousands of vehicles down to junction 37, or up to the similarly designed junction 39. Those junctions are to be used as crude roundabouts by extremely heavy vehicles in utterly unreasonable volumes. Again, this underlines the failure to conduct a meaningful impact assessment or present any kind of credible traffic management plan. The crucial problem that I want the Minister to focus on is the closure of junction 38 southbound for 18 months and then northbound for 18 months. It is completely unacceptable. Let’s face it—National Highways would have never even considered it in a more urban part of the network. I reiterate that we are not against the works taking place. We know that the bridges need to be replaced, but there are clearly alternatives to lengthy closures of junction 38, yet those alternatives have not been seriously considered or properly investigated. I have a high regard for so many of the people I work with from National Highways, but from the beginning of this project there has been a failure to consider the community and the Cumbrian economy. Now that National Highways is being called to account and asked serious questions, it seems as though excuses are being made rather than solutions being explored. Local businesses commissioned the well-respected motorway highways consultants BWB, which produced a detailed feasibility study confirming that temporary slip roads are absolutely possible—indeed, they are straightforward if the order of bridge removals is slightly rearranged. National Highways rejected this proposal with, at best, a cursory assessment, and it has provided no credible reasons for doing so. On behalf of my communities in Westmorland, my first ask is that the Minister looks at the proposals himself, takes independent expert advice from his officials, and at the same time instructs National Highways to properly, formally consider the temporary slip roads—to make certain that these very credible plans are properly evaluated. Meanwhile, as the works proceed, many full motorway closures are planned, and the apparent plan is to route the entire M6 load through the narrow streets of Kendal and Kirkby Stephen. This is ludicrous and unsustainable, and it will take ministerial intervention to put right. The second ask therefore relates to the Kendal relief road, otherwise known as the northern access route. In 2023 the previous Government pledged £460 million for 21 “smaller road schemes” across the north, including potentially a short new road linking the A591 Windermere Road to the A6 Shap Road just north of our thriving but often congested main town of Kendal, but in July the Department for Transport announced that the scheme’s future had been placed under review, with a final decision set to be announced by the end of the year. Given the disruption from the M6 closures already this year, the case for that road is stronger than ever. Can that project be brought forward so that it can be done before the M6 Lune gorge project happens? The third ask is for help to be provided to solve the congestion that M6 and A66 closures have on the beautiful town of Kirkby Stephen. The provision of new, additional off-road parking for residents on South Road in Kirkby Stephen, along with sensible highways modifications, would mostly solve the problems there too. Will the Minister please instruct his officials to take action on that point before the work on the Lune gorge bridges causes repeated chaos to the town? Fourthly, earlier this year the Government gave the green light for the A66 dualling after our lengthy campaign, and I am grateful to them for that. The plan includes an underpass close to the M6 junction 40 underneath the notoriously busy Kemplay Bank roundabout at Penrith. It is vital that the work is sequenced before the M6 closures so as to avoid crippling congestion around Penrith and to alleviate the devastating impact of running those projects at the same time. The solutions are here—experts have done the work and local businesses have provided the evidence—yet National Highways has not meaningfully considered the very options that would prevent economic and social disaster for our communities. My final ask of the Minister tonight is this: will he meet me, along with representatives of the local community, local businesses and their skilled highways consultants, to discuss the temporary slip road proposals and the wider sequencing of these works? If he can visit the Westmorland site in person, we would welcome that hugely, and that would help him to see at first hand the issues that our local communities are facing. But time is of the essence, so we will gladly meet him in London if that can happen more speedily. It is essential that he understands for himself the profound and unnecessary impact that the project will have on Kendal, Burneside, Grayrigg, Tebay, Orton, Ravenstonedale and Kirkby Stephen, and on the wider economy of the Lake district, the dales, Cumbria as a whole and the UK’s haulage industry. The M6 bridge work must be done to keep us safe for generations to come, but it is wrong for it to be done in ways that ignore the catastrophic impact on our residents, communities and businesses in Westmorland.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  I agree with everything that the hon. Lady has said about child poverty, and I welcome the lifting of the cap, but is there a little bit of a blind spot in this Government when it comes to rural poverty? Their own figures show that by the end of next year, the average hill farmer will earn barely above half the national minimum wage. Is the hon. Lady as disappointed as I am that the Government have not tackled that in the Budget and, indeed, have not got rid of the family farm tax, which will tax many of those farmers out of existence altogether?