HS2: Phase 2b Route (Manchester and Leeds)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I shall do my best to cram as much as I can into the remaining 10 minutes. The hour-long debates in this place are neither fish nor fowl, I have rapidly learned.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) for doughtily providing her usual list of issues for me to consider. She is a firm champion of the people of Eddisbury, and I shall try to focus on her main concerns, but I want briefly to address some of the points made by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) from the Labour Front Bench. I agreed with much of what she said about economic investment and the need to ensure that things all join up. However, I must gently chide her on one key point: we have not stopped work on east-west links across the north. I met only the other week with both Network Rail and Transport for the North to talk about how they are bringing forward Northern Powerhouse Rail. I have always argued that HS2’s full potential will not be fully delivered unless we properly improve east-west links as well. It is not for me to determine the engineering solution that Network Rail will alight on for any particular line or stretch of line, but that work is ongoing—on a cross-party basis, as Transport for the North is also governed by Labour local government leaders across the north, who are also setting the objectives. That seems to me to be how things should be taken forward.
Paul Maynard
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not; I am sure it will not be the last time we have the discussion, and I must give some time to the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury. Her main concerns focused largely on some of the ground instability problems that we encounter in Cheshire, crossing the salt fields. As someone born and bred in Northwich I have been brought up on photos of houses that have collapsed because of subsidence, and have suddenly disappeared into the Bull Ring in the town centre. I am more than aware of those issues; but I reassure hon. Members that we are seeking to manage them actively.
HS2 has commissioned a specialist mining engineer, in consultation with the Cheshire Brine Subsidence Compensation Board, to undertake a study on the consultation route using available data such as those from the British Geological Survey, the salt industry and local authorities. Those light detection and ranging surveys have been completed by HS2 Ltd, identifying the wet rockhead features to which my hon. Friend referred near to the route, and will be considered with other LIDAR surveys. I think it is fair to say that between Crewe and Manchester every route option presents risks and issues. It is a matter of balancing those carefully and working out which offers the optimum solution. We carefully weighed those matters both in 2013, when we listened to concerns, and on the now-confirmed 2016 route. On our assessment those risks were more manageable on the latest version of the route. One of the key reasons for that was to avoid the gas storage caverns to which my hon. Friend referred. The route has been moved to better avoid salt brining and gas storage infrastructure, reducing underlying mining and geological risks during construction and operation. The route has also been raised to better allow for drainage and options for ground stabilisation. In terms of travel through Cheshire, other alternatives were looked at, including tunnelling options, but this was felt to be the best option of those on the table.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury referred to the report by TerraConsult. Its first report was taken into account before the November 2016 announcement, as was its second report before the July 2017 announcement. I further understand that HS2 Ltd is meeting on Tuesday 12 September with TerraConsult and Mid Cheshire Against HS2 on how HS2 Ltd came to make its recommendation on the alignment between Middlewich and Pickmere. Senior engineers with a background in geotechnical engineering will attend that meeting. I also understand that HS2, accompanied by engineers, is more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss her concerns and is waiting to confirm a date with her office. Once she has had that meeting, I will still be more than happy to put myself—with my limited expertise—at her disposal also.
I recognise that this is a sensitive and complex section of the route. There is more work to be done to further assess geological risks and to provide suitable mitigations for them. HS2 Ltd plans to carry out early geotechnical investigation work in the mid-Cheshire area to gather more advanced survey information. We will continue to work with my hon. Friend to try to ensure that the best mitigation possible occurs.
I also want to touch briefly on my hon. Friend’s concerns about the siting of the depot at Wimboldsley and its proximity to the primary school. The re-siting of the rolling stock depot to Wimboldsley has taken into account both the potential risks of the previous site in Golborne, which saw the demolition of a grade I listed property, and the potential impacts in Wimboldsley. The site is strategically located on the HS2 network, south of the Manchester junction, so that it can receive empty trains from both the HS2 main line—from Preston and indeed further north—and the HS2 Manchester spur. It is also located at the point where the line deviates from the existing west coast main line, so it is also well placed to receive empty HS2 trains from Liverpool. Other locations around Basford and Crewe are less proximate to where empty trains from Liverpool and Manchester might be coming from.
While I understand that there will be impacts associated with the rolling stock depot, I very much welcome the fact that HS2 Ltd is in conversation with the headteacher at Wimboldsley Primary, and I hope that any outstanding concerns get fed into me as well, so that I am aware of them.
In particular, this proposal avoids direct impacts on the grade II listed buildings to which my hon. Friend refers and also proximity to sites of special scientific interest. I recognise that there are still concerns about the Leeds and Liverpool canal. Indeed, other canals were also mentioned. As someone born in mid-Cheshire, I have a great fondness for canals and want to ensure they do not suffer in this process.
Paul Maynard
If my hon. Friend has further information on where she thinks there might be impacts, I will happy to look into it.
Furthermore, significantly less infrastructure is required at this location than if it were at Golborne. In particular, there is no need for a northern chord from Manchester out to the HS2 junction. That reduces the overall infrastructure development requirements in the area and, indeed, creates more space in the HS2 budget for other mitigation elsewhere on this stretch of the route.
In the remaining two and a half minutes, I will not be able to do justice to everything that my hon. Friend said, so I am more than happy to meet her. I recognise her points about ancient woodlands and about some of the lowland deciduous woodland in Cheshire. There are woods around Plumley, Smoker wood and woods around Lostock Gralam. I know that HS2 is very keen to ensure that when it does the environmental assessment, it can put forward how it intends to mitigate that loss of woodland. I urge Members to look carefully at that assessment when it comes out later in the year, because it will be full of information, and I am sure that local people will want to have their say on whether the mitigation is adequate.
I want to finish on the most important point. I apologise to the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Sir Kevin Barron) that he will not get any look-in in what I am saying, because I have run out of time, but I am more than happy to meet him as well. I know that there is an outstanding meeting, and I will be keen to meet him. There is a wider point here about how HS2 engages and consults with local communities and how it processes need-to-sell applications. This is a difficult area, but it is impossible to build infrastructure of this scale without inconveniencing someone. The key test is whether those people who are being inconvenienced and asked to sell or leave their homes feel that they are being treated in a fair and proportionate manner.
I urge all Members here today who have specific cases to come to see me personally, as my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) did. It is only by properly understanding those individual cases that I get a more holistic sense of whether the system is working or not. I noted the concerns that my hon. Friend raised about how some specific local circumstances make the existing package not always appropriate. I have heard that message and will ask officials to look more closely at Long Eaton in particular. If Members have a specific local issue, they need to let me see the detail, because there have been examples already where I have been able to exert influence. I expect HS2 to get this right, and that will be my final word on the matter at this stage.