High Speed 2 (Economic Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am indebted to the noble Lord who drew attention to the Green Party’s position on HS2. I am sorry that he is not now in his place and will be reading my comments later. He said that my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb had made that position clear to your Lordships’ House. The Green Party has held that position since the start of this debate. I ask anyone who wants to try to use environmental arguments about HS2 to look at our position and our very loud and clear statement that HS2 is no solution to the climate emergency or our nature crisis.

I always aim to be positive so I want to speak in favour of a lovely, exciting rail project going ahead right now. Unfortunately it is in Sweden, but it has a potential impact on all your Lordships’ travel: the return of night trains, which, as has been highlighted, means you will be able to get from Copenhagen in the middle of the evening to London for lunch by train. That is truly replacing flights with rail travel. If we are talking about using all the capacity of our existing lines, night trains are one way in which we potentially have more capacity. Indeed, when the Eurostar started the plan was to have sleeper trains to the continent, and that is something that I would very much like to see revived.

Perhaps I should have begun by declaring an interest as a resident of Sheffield and as former Green Party leader. I have not kept count of the number of train miles that I have completed over the last seven or eight years, and I am glad I have not. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to the level of expertise in this House, and I think I can claim expertise as a truly veteran long-time train traveller. I can also tell any noble Lords who wish to know exactly where the Pacers always leak when it is raining.

The Green Party came out in opposition to HS2 at the 2011 spring conference. I remember that debate. It was a long and heated one because, understandably, people asked: “The Green Party opposing trains—how can that be?” There has been lots of discussion in your Lordships’ House about economic arguments but there is an argument that I have not heard yet. One of the key economic and social arguments that we focused on back in 2011 was that HS2 would focus people, money and resources even more on London than is already the case. That is the last thing that this country needs, and indeed that London needs. I know the Mayor of London has expressed his support for HS2, and many politicians feel the need to keep arguing for growth. That is an argument that we might perhaps have another time in your Lordships’ House, but what London needs for itself is a healthy hinterland—a healthy north—and of course the north needs a healthy economy and society. London is a primate city; everything is focused here, and that causes massive damage to everyone.

The Green Party has called HS2 “an utter waste”. We need massive spending on transport but, as many noble Lords have already said, on other rail routes, particularly those that run east-west. Also, although I have not heard every speech in this debate but I have heard nearly all of them, I have yet to hear the word “buses” used. I apologise if it has been said and I did not hear it. When it comes to how most people get around, get to work, see their relatives and friends and combat loneliness—all these issues that we are concerned about—buses are crucial, as are walking and cycling. That is where the funding and spending need to go.

I have talked about my personal expertise. I refer to the TransPennine so-called Express—I think some of your Lordships will be well aware of that—and for the need for all this to be integrated and fitted together. When I catch trains in many parts of the continent, every carriage has an indicator board telling you the next station and giving you real-time information about what bus connections you can make. It even sometimes tells you about where you can hire a bike and ways in which you can have an integrated journey. That is the kind of thing that we should spend money on.

There has been some discussion that this is not either/or. I refer your Lordships to a lot of the discussion we have had about the difficulty of our capacity in managing projects—our capacity to have the labour, skills and knowledge. We have problems with planning capacity. These issues may come up in another debate in your Lordships’ House on the immigration Bill, when that arrives. We undoubtedly have huge problems, so saying that we can build more and more projects is a question of the availability of not just money but skills.

I said that this is not an answer to the nature crisis. I feel like a lot of these arguments have been made already, very notably by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall. This HS2 plan means huge damage for the environment. One of the arguments put forward by HS2 and its proponents is that they will do biodiversity offsetting. In the earlier debate on fisheries, we discussed how incredibly nature-depleted Britain is as a country. We have lost so much. As the noble Baroness said, we have only 2% of our ancient woodlands left. We simply cannot afford to lose more. The idea that you can plant some trees to replace or offset the loss of ancient woodland simply does not stack up.

On the arguments people make suggesting that HS2 will help the climate emergency, several noble Lords have pointed out that it will not replace flights. Actually, what we hear from regional airports along the route is how much of a boost it will be and how much it will increase their capacity and flights. The fact that, having declared a climate emergency, we are still talking in any way about airport expansion really does not add up. HS2 adds to and assists airport expansion. As I said before, I have not heard every single contribution but I have heard most of them, and I have noticed that no one has mentioned that we might even get to Edinburgh and Glasgow one day with HS2. That is where the argument started; that is how it was going to replace flights. I refer your Lordships to the issue of timing. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told us that we have 10 years to turn things around. In 10 years, we might get to Birmingham with HS2. That is nothing like the timeframe we need.

I will touch on the environmental damage being done. When I started having arguments about HS2, people said that it was designed for speed. Now, we hear that it is designed for capacity. If we went for simply capacity, we would not have the environmental destruction. That is something that the committee report covers.

I am being told to wrap up, but I will make one final point, because a lot of noble Lords have referred to the way we make decisions and deliver infrastructure in the UK. I sometimes say that if you invite me to talk about algae, I will bring up democracy, so I will bring up the issue of the structure of our governance now. First past the post politics produces really bad decision-making. It produces decision-making aimed at winning seats in particular places. We are indebted to a Member of this House who is not here today: your Lordships might like to look up the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, telling the FT in 2013 about the political reasons why this decision was made.

I finish with a simple statement: do not go for greenwash, which is what the arguments for HS2 are. Let us choose the local and regional, cross-country, non-London-focused transport improvements that we need.