High Speed 2

Baroness Mallalieu Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, I must declare that I live in the Chilterns but not in an area affected by the proposed route. However, for most of my life I have known that stretch of countryside from where the line drops off the escarpment and cuts a swathe through Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. It is not picture-book pretty. Unlike the Chilterns, it is not an area in which walkers such as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to whom we are indebted, come out in numbers at weekends or visit for its views. It is old England, big blackthorn hedges, pasture, beef cattle, hidden woods and coppices, and small villages and farms in which people have been born and lived all their lives. Through that countryside the route goes past Grendon Wood, in which Shakespeare is said to have been inspired to write “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and—this is for my noble friend Lord Grocott—Doddershall, a remote moated house built in 1520. The route also goes through 24 sites of special scientific interest and 67 irreplaceable ancient woodlands. It is proposed to drive HS2 through that, and for what? I will come to that.

The project was agreed by the Government in 2010 without any strategic environmental assessment having been carried out, probably quite deliberately because this is an act of sheer environmental vandalism. A judge has already described that as “an egregious breach” of the guidelines. Litigation is going on at the moment and there will, no doubt, be a Supreme Court judgment next month. For that tract of our countryside and its people the impact is quite devastating.

However, that was not the only flaw in the original decision-taking process. The business case was flawed, as is now generally accepted. The cost-benefit analysis, whether it should have been used or not, never supported the proposal. The budget was hopelessly understated, as has now become clear. I am aware that the lack of any proper consultation and the weakness of the economic case concerned a number of those at the heart of government at the time. I would like to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, and to Mr Alistair Darling in another place for having the courage to speak out about this. I am quite sure that others will follow.

The decision to support this project in the first place by both main parties was a political one, not an economic one. I do not for a moment dismiss the genuine passion for the project of some, including the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for whom I have the greatest admiration, but it is a passion which I believe led to a very expensive mistake. Nor do I underestimate the pressure that was put on politicians of both sides to go ahead from others who stand to profit: mainly the rail and engineering firms and also from a number of local authorities on the direct route who stand to benefit. They make up a rich and powerful lobby, but they are not succeeding with the public and nor must they. To misallocate transport investment to a high-risk, low-return scheme such as this instead of putting the money to low-risk, high-return infrastructure investment with far greater economic benefits in the long run is sheer madness.

In the mean time, before the plug is pulled, the resources of the Department for Transport are being drained by efforts to try to create a new and better case and generate public support, while also delaying decisions on other necessary investment in our transport system. As we know, the original argument was speed—we will get you there quicker—but that failed, so the department is now trying the capacity argument in a desperate appeal to those standing in the corridors of our creaking infrastructure, where investment really is needed.

It will not work; nor will the unconvincing assurances about future cost, because the public simply do not believe it. They have seen the figure going up and up. I think the public will be astonished to know that the figure which we are currently being given, £42.6 billion, does not include trains, without which the railway cannot operate, nor, as I understand it, does it include the essential infrastructure to create links to the city centres where the station is on the outside. Estimates that I have seen go higher and higher. Even in the north, last year’s polling showed that only 32% of the public thought it was a good use of money. If the people who have to pay for it do not want it, do not do it.

This debate is about the expected impact of HS2. There will be some who benefit: the big rail and engineering companies and their employees and the towns and cities with stations on the direct route. But there are rather more places that believe they will lose out, and badly. The biggest losers of all are the poor souls who have to pay for it, who are the British public. What is more, HS2 is unlikely ever to generate enough income to cover its running costs. Construction has to be taxpayer funded, because it is unlikely ever to make a profit and no private money would touch it. The Public Accounts Committee in another place—its report is in the Printed Paper Office today—is utterly damning.

I would like to hope that the impact of this whole saga is that no major infrastructure project will be handled like this ever again, determined by political expediency and not sound economics. HS2 is not yet the dead duck that it ought to be, but it is looking terminally ill. A huge amount of money and energy, much of it paid for by the public, is being devoted to try to breathe some life into it again. It has been called a vanity project, a white elephant on wheels, and a high-speed gravy train. Will someone with political courage please come forward and put it out of its misery?