Two former Transport Secretaries who were instrumental in bringing Hitachi to Newton Aycliffe write exclusively for The Northern Echo to share their fears for the factory's future.
Wherever you live in the UK, people know that carmaker Nissan has been building cars in the North East for decades.
That investment has helped power the development of a regional and national economy. And it’s produced a skilled workforce and supply chain that itself provides an attraction for other investors.
The North East is a region that has shown it can bring the long-term talent pipeline when a business can provide the long-term investment.
As Transport Secretaries from 2011 to 2016 we had a vision that rail manufacturing could do for the North East what Nissan’s commitment to car manufacturing had done. It was a vision that Hitachi Rail shared when they chose Newton Aycliffe for their European rail manufacturing headquarters.
Like Nissan before them, they could see why it made sense to invest. For all of us, the benefits of bringing rail manufacturing back to the North East were clear – a further boost to the regional economy and yet more skilled jobs for people.
And located in Newton Aycliffe, where those opportunities could really transform lives and where engineer George Stephenson first put the revolutionary Locomotion No 1 on the tracks in 1825.
Crucially, with all the planned rail investment in the UK, the Hitachi Rail decision gave Ministers a domestic choice for rail manufacturing capacity, making us less reliant on overseas production. It was ‘securonomics’ before Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves had coined the phrase. And with all the skilled jobs being created, it was ‘levelling up’ at a time Boris Johnson was still just London Mayor.
With support from local government, local communities and a local education system the region has created a pipeline of skilled-up talent that now proudly builds trains as generations before have done.
A decade on from Hitachi Rail’s groundbreaking investment, 750 people now work at the Newton Aycliffe site, and it supports 1,400 jobs more widely. If you’ve taken a East Coast Mainline Azuma train, it’s been made in Newton Aycliffe. People talk about ‘levelling up’ but this is it in action. Our plan has worked. Until now.
Changing priorities on rail investment have pushed back and reprofiled train manufacturing decisions so just for a couple of years there’s less to do for Newton Aycliffe’s iconic rail manufacturing site. It’s only temporary - after that, it’ll be full steam ahead again, with much more work to be done, and many more trains to be built, including for HS2.
But next year’s pipeline gap means that today, jobs are on the line. We risk losing those skilled workers and rail manufacturing capacity, not because we won’t need it in the future – we will - but simply because there's a temporary lull in UK Government investment. It would be the ultimate own goal for the UK to lose its long-term rail capacity and become reliant on overseas suppliers again, all because of a short-term lull in production.
In fact we think there’s even more at stake. Levelling up needs long term, sustained effort from Government. It means committing to plans for the long term, not ditching them when the going gets tough.
The Japanese have a mantra of ‘kaizen’ - it means continuous improvement, always trying to make things better. We need a ‘kaizen’ approach for levelling up too. It means making sure we protect the progress we’ve already made, understanding this is a moment to decide we must prevent taking an unnecessary step back.
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Getting projects off the ground is tough – but that hard work’s been done in Newton Aycliffe. It’s a success story we cannot simply let disappear.
Why have all that investment and skillset built up but going to waste when timely, smart strategic decision-making to speed up other national and local rail procurement decisions can plug the pipeline gap?
It’s more than just about saving jobs; it’s about protecting rail-building skills of national strategic importance. It’s about whether governments can think and act for the long term.
The Prime Minister rightly says, ‘stick to the plan’. We agree. He should stick to the plan – our plan and Hitachi Rail’s plan for Newton Aycliffe. It's delivering levelling up. It needs to continue.
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