The Blackpool Gazette, Lancashire Post and Blackpool Lead invited the candidates standing for the Fylde constituency at the upcoming general election to a hustings in which they fielded questions from voters.
The candidates standing for election on 4th July were each given time to answer questions from an audience at The Lowther Pavilion Theatre in Lytham.
Four out of the seven people on the ballot took part in the event with Cheryl Morrison (Alliance for Democracy and Freedom), Brendan Wilkinson (Green Party) and Brook Wimbury (Reform UK) all absent.
In order of appearance on stage:
ANNE AITKEN (Independent)
TOM CALVER (Labour)
MARK JEWELL (Liberal Democrats)
ANDREW SNOWDEN (Conservative Party)
The candidates standing for election on 4th July were each given time to answer questions from an audience at The Lowther Pavilion Theatre in Lytham.
Four out of the seven people on the ballot took part in the event with Cheryl Morrison (Alliance for Democracy and Freedom), Brendan Wilkinson (Green Party) and Brook Wimbury (Reform UK) all absent.
In order of appearance on stage:
ANNE AITKEN (Independent)
TOM CALVER (Labour)
MARK JEWELL (Liberal Democrats)
ANDREW SNOWDEN (Conservative Party)
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NewsTranscript
00:00Transport, does each of the candidates think the train service in Liverpool and Fylde more broadly needs improvement?
00:07So, how would you sort it? I think we're getting a reading from the room.
00:11Anne, I'll start with you on that one. The train service in Liverpool and Fylde more broadly.
00:17So, where do we start?
00:20So I have met with the people who, Tony Ford, who wants to get a link system sorted up at Kirkham.
00:29We are a tourist area. We want good rail links.
00:34However, when I spoke to these groups, they had been fighting for ten years.
00:40Ten years to get a good rail service on the Fylde.
00:44That was so depressing to me.
00:47So, it has to be with National Rail.
00:51The other day we went to St. Ann's. I was talking to a load of people and 90 children came from King Edward School and they were going to go to Preston.
01:00And they had to wait for three hours on the train station because they were all cancelled.
01:05So, it's nationally that we want them to understand we're not a backwater.
01:10We want good rail links. We need to be able to get out to Bolton, Wheaton, Kirkham.
01:16We need them regularly. We need them not to be cancelled.
01:20I haven't got the answer to that and I don't think anybody else has because it's been going on for ten years.
01:26But I just hope whoever gets in fights for a rail that's affordable, that's clean and that's regular.
01:36And that's all I'm asking. I will fight for that.
01:39But how many years it will take, I don't know because it's already taken ten years and we're no nearer.
01:45Charles, have you got a time frame to approve rail service in Fylde?
01:50I think it's two parts to approve rail service for South Fylde particularly because of course Pickman Port and Kirkham are also on the North Fylde line.
01:58The plans for a loop line could double our service but they'd also provide some extra resilience if things go wrong.
02:05But a doubled service of cancelled trains is just twice as many cancellations.
02:11What we need to do is address the fact that Northern, and in fact most of the rail franchises since privatisation, have failed to deal with issues of staffing except post-renewal.
02:25And what's happened with that is that we still have a system where Northern is trying to staff its Sundays from volunteers.
02:34Funnily enough when England were playing the last Sunday there was no rail service in the whole of the North West and indeed much of the North East for, well, any point really after 8pm at night.
02:45I can't quite work out why.
02:47It's about bringing those franchises back into public ownership, back into public control.
02:53GB Railways, a conservative idea I should say, but one we support, is about getting people who understand railways, rather than the Department for Transport who don't frankly, to start specifying the service and making sure that it integrates.
03:07So you don't have the ludicrous situation where you get on a train, a long distance train into Preston and then discover that all the connections to Blackpool North and South have disappeared about five minutes previously because that's bad enough.
03:19It's about making sure there's no longer any incentive to post staff so we have the right number so we're actually able to run a service because the South Fylde is often the line that gets cut first.
03:30And then we can look at better services from there but let's deal with those fundamentals first.
03:37The other part of this is the power to franchise buses that we're going to give back to local authorities because a good rail service is only as good as your ability to get to the railway station in the first place.
03:49And if we can integrate public transport right across buses and rail, and indeed for those going to Blackpool Trams too, then there is an opportunity for a better service.
03:59And when you've got a more reliable service, not just a faster one, but a more reliable service, then you can start to extend your horizons because you can look at the jobs that are slightly further away, you can look at the days out that are slightly further away.
04:13And that's good for everybody in this constituency and when you've got a reliable service you can finally choose to leave the car at home because there is a realistic alternative for you and that's part of dealing with our move to net zero as well.
04:29So it's about the organisation of our rail companies, not just the infrastructure of our current railway lines.
04:36Thank you.
04:42Absolutely. Some of these issues have been going on for well more than ten years, the multi-government, multi-generational issues around investment in rail.
04:51When I was looking up highways and transport the LCC was asked to go to number 10 to discuss transport strategy.
04:58The point I made was that it's no good improving the connectivity time to London by 20 minutes if you can't get a train from any of the regional railways reliably to connect you to high speed rail.
05:10Actually my view has been all the way along and something that I have passionately advocated for all the way along is that actually the investment is needed in the east-west regional railways before it is needed in further expanding the high speed rail routes.
05:25These are incredibly expensive projects and you can't do them all at once, they have to be staged over periods of time.
05:33GB Rail, as Thomas highlighted, is a conservative policy around looking at how the oversight of railways happens from the correct experts and make sure that the correct drive is there behind the railway strategy.
05:48But the investment has to go into regional railways. It has to make it easier for people to go about their day to day lives in a reliable way.
05:57The passing loop on the South Ireland line is an absolutely critical investment and actually whilst it would probably be in the tens of millions it would not be in the grand scheme of how much rail costs that expensive a project for a more reliable and more frequent railway line and that would vastly increase the connectivity.
06:16We all know that there are major employers moving to central Lancashire, in particular the new cyber headquarters. It is absolutely critical that people from Fylde, particularly young people from Fylde starting their careers, can access those highly skilled jobs that are moving into Lancashire and a reliable rail network will be absolutely critical to that.
06:37So GB Rail in terms of looking at the way the companies are structured and looking at the way in which the railways are managed, the investment I would want to champion here is around getting those half hour services on the South Ireland line and then continued improvements across the rail network regionally before we start looking at the connectivity for an extra 20 minutes of speed between Manchester and London.
07:01And I know before anyone points it out it's also about capacity but the capacity can manage and the regional railways hopefully generating more job ecosystems take the demand that the argument is you have to travel to London to get a high paid job.
07:15Andrew thank you and Mark finally to you.
07:23Yes I do know Tony Faulk quite well so I'm well aware of the passing loop which as Andy said in the overall scheme of things that's a relatively small investment really but I think as has already been mentioned there's no point really putting that infrastructure in if you don't have the capacity within the rail network to run more reliably.
07:52So that clearly needs to be addressed as well and a part of the Liberal Democrats manifesto is to invest in our infrastructure, extend the electrification, improve our stations and simplify ticketing.
08:08And it is that joined up transport option that people can have, it's not just the cyber security aspects, we've got BA systems, we've got nuclear fuels as well and the North West is really a vibrant attractive place for people to come to and so we have to build those transport networks up.
08:34So we will also for example boost the bus services by putting them into local authority control so that they have some control over that franchise.
08:44So that's our overall context, the joined up system but we also need to address the reliability issues around our trains.
08:53Thank you, one more from me but they're all from you but one more.