A peer is calling on the government to spend £130 million upgrading the Cumbrian Coast rail line.

Lord Roger Liddle argues that the rail link needs an immediate cash injection in view of the huge industrial projects planned along this route.

These include a new nuclear power station at Moorside, near Sellafield and a £350m investment by GSK at Ulverston.

Lord Liddle, a Labour peer and former special adviser to Tony Blair, was speaking in a Lords debate on the Institute for Public Policy Research's annual State of the North report.

He said: "We have argued for government commitment to a £130m improvement in the Cumbrian Coast railway that runs from Carlisle, to Whitehaven, past the new nuclear build at Sellafield and the Barrow shipyard to Lancaster.

"At present that journey round our magnificent coast is a longer and much bumpier ride than the Virgin train from Carlisle to London.

"The new Northern Rail franchise will lead to some rolling stock and service improvements but it is only new Network Rail investment in track and signalling that can be transformative."


Lord Liddle Lord Liddle was scathing of the decision to award Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership a fraction of the £165m it bid for to fund 12 key infrastructure projects. And he said the government must invest more to give its Northern Powerhouse project a chance of delivering prosperity.

He said: “For us in Cumbria, the Northern Powerhouse came as a beacon of hope. But today that flame has been reduced to a flicker.”

He also called for more “joined-up thinking” in Whitehall.

He said: “How can it make sense for the government to be supporting a plan to build a new nuclear power station, which will require a workforce of 6,000, when at the same time vital services at Whitehaven hospital are threatened with closure?”

Lord Liddle, who lives at Abbeytown and is a county councillor for Wigton, also called for local government reorganisation, scrapping the system of country and district councils.

He added: “Our structures of two-tier local government are frankly hopeless and, at a time of continuing public austerity, disgracefully costly.

“The government must show the colour of its money and give a lead. Without it, the remaining flickers of the Northern Powerhouse will be snuffed out.”