For more than two years, I have been trying to solve a problem that should never have been allowed to become so difficult: the orange water pouring into Whitehaven Harbour and, for the last year, the closure of Bransty Tunnel.
This week, we finally got there. With government support, Network Rail has been able to commit £60 million to a solution that will tackle the pollution and get the tunnel reopened.
That is a huge win for West Cumbria. But the story of how we got here also tells us something important about why the way we run Britain needs to change.
Over the past two years I have had repeated meetings with the Rail Minister, the Water Minister and the Energy Minister. I have worked with Network Rail, the Environment Agency, the Mining Remediation Authority, the Marine Management Organisation, Natural England, United Utilities, Whitehaven Harbour Commissioners and Cumberland Council, among others.
In total, more than a dozen public bodies and government departments have been involved.
The problem was not that nobody cared. Lots of people in those organisations wanted to help. The problem was that responsibility was fragmented across the system. Who owned the problem? Who was liable? Who had the power to make a decision? Who should pay?
For far too long there was no clear answer. And worse than that, many of these bodies held a veto over others on progressing solutions because of the narrow tasks they were responsible for.
In the absence of any process capable of gripping the whole problem, I had to create one. Through the Harbour Task Force I got the different organisations around the table and kept pushing until we had a solution. When we couldn’t resolve issues through these agencies, I took the problem directly to ministers.
It should not take an MP convening more than a dozen organisations over two years to solve a problem as obvious as an orange harbour and a closed railway tunnel.
That is why I strongly support the new government’s determination to rewire the state. Andy Burnham has been clear that government has become too centralised, fragmented and difficult to navigate. Power, funding and accountability need to be brought together so that government can solve problems rather than pass them from one organisation to another.
Bransty Tunnel is a textbook example of why that matters.
And this outcome was never inevitable. Plenty of people understandably came to believe that the tunnel would never reopen and the harbour would stay orange. There were moments when a solution looked a long way off.
But we kept going, and eventually the system moved.
That gives me quiet optimism. Government can work. Public bodies can come together and solve difficult problems. But it took far too long, and we need to make that kind of joined-up action the norm rather than the exception.
That will be my overriding priority in all my work for West Cumbria: whether securing new nuclear, further upgrading our railway, regenerating our town centres or improving our health services, I want to get the machine working for West Cumbrians, not against them.
This week shows that it can be done.