MP warns of county’s prospects under Labour

Herefordshire should not expect the new Labour government to do it any favours, county MP Jesse Norman has warned.

Having represented Hereford and South Herefordshire for 17 years, Mr Norman was among only 121 Conservatives to win seats in last month’s sea-change general election, fending off a close local challenge from Labour.

He said the state of the county’s roads was “the biggest issue of the election campaign”.

But though the previous Conservative government, in which Mr Norman served for a time as transport minister, had announced a £208 million package to fund transport improvements in the county, “none of that has yet been received”, he pointed out.

“Not having that money is likely to lead to a deterioration of the road network – and this is the time of year when you want your teams out mending the roads,” he said.

Though it has made few major policy announcements so far, the government appears to be focussing resources on public sector pay rather than infrastructure – including ditching funding to reopen railway stations.

“Any possibility of a new Golden Valley Gateway railway station at Pontrilas has been kicked into the long grass,” according to Mr Norman, a long-term backer of the plan. “Even the option of applying for money for it has been removed.”

And he said it was “worrying” that Labour “haven’t made any announcements about how they will handle the Wye”, adding: “I hope they will keep on [former Conservative MEP] Anthea McIntyre as river champion.”

With the new government likely to pressurise counties like Herefordshire into accepting more new homes, he feels the county’s housing needs “are not well-handled by top-down commissars saying where they should be”.

He also expressed alarm that “in its rush for onshore wind power, the government will see it as convenient to cover the land with turbines and pylons, when the focus should be on our flourishing offshore wind industry”.

This leads to a wider concern, which is that with a huge and largely urban government majority, rural voices will not get a hearing.

“If Labour have aspirations to be a national party, they can’t ignore areas like ours,” he said.