High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill

Debate between Baroness Barker and Lord Tunnicliffe

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th November 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

We will come to you after the Minister. If you were ready then to make a short speech, I think that would be in order. I call the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the position that we take on HS2 is unambiguously to support it, therefore I am not seeking to find devices to slow it down or otherwise damage its future. However, I recognise two things. Speaking first to Amendment 4, I note that the Government have gone some way towards the aim of that amendment by promising six-monthly reports. Indeed, the first one was published on 13 October in the form of a Written Ministerial Statement, as far as I understand it. If the department and the Minister were to look upon this debate positively, there could possibly be a meeting of minds, ideally before Report, on the contents of those reports so that the many sensible concerns expressed in this debate could be met.

On the environment, towards the end of the report it says:

“In the coming months, HS2 Ltd will establish a new Environmental Sustainability Committee (as a sub-committee of the HS2 Ltd board), let by its Chair Allan Cook. This committee will be charged with strengthening Environmental Sustainability Reporting including the development and publication of an Environmental Sustainability Report. HS2 intends to publish the first report next year.”

Perhaps the Minister might know of this report and be able to tell us when it will be published.

The discussion on ancient woodlands—I have to be honest—was merely the Labour Front Bench doing its duty and making sure that all issues were fully debated. I will not repeat the briefings that I have had from the Woodland Trust and others, because they have already been employed in the arguments so far. I urge the Government to listen to this debate and, once again, to enter discussions with Members of this Committee who have spoken so passionately on it to see whether the need for regular reporting can be merged with the particular and important needs of ancient woodland.

On the issue of the periodicity of reporting, the divide between one amendment calling for three months and the other amendment calling for one year could probably be crossed by a merger of the two. We settled on six-monthly reports, but with a wider range of issues, particularly involving ancient woodlands. I hope that the Minister will be able to achieve through discussion some consensus on these two issues, because while I recognise that speakers in this debate are, to some extent, coming from different directions, the generality of their contributions tends to be to the common ground of a report covering a wider range of facts.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

I call the next speaker, Baroness Vere of Norbiton.