High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I draw the House’s attention to my interests in freight transport issues.

A number of questions remain unanswered by these proposals, and it is pitiful that we have only five minutes to elaborate on them. Constituents and others have asked me whether there is a better way to spend £50 billion to £100 billion to ease capacity, which is a problem that is recognised across the House—by those in favour of HS2 as well as by those against it. Better connectivity between existing airports has been suggested as a better way to address the matter. Constituents have talked about improving signalling so that we can increase capacity on the west coast main line. Interestingly, someone mentioned the idea of reducing the number of first class coaches on some of the west coast main line trains. Indeed, we have also heard about the double-decking of trains, which is used extensively on the continent and would certainly boost capacity.

Dr Beeching’s name has not been heard in this Chamber today. Constituents have talked about rolling back some of the Beeching cuts and opening up some of the lines to increase connectivity. There has also been talk of having dedicated freight lines, and improving HS1, and removing this nonsense of having to travel all the way around London to get through the tunnel and into mainland Europe rather than the better idea of having a freight terminal north of London.

There is also this matter of a slight identity crisis. This proposal was always about developing a high-speed line—or, more accurately, a very high-speed line—but now it has morphed itself into a capacity issue, or possibly both. What has been missed time and again is that if we are to have a new high-speed line and are to free up capacity, we will have to cut services on the existing west coast main line. That brings me to the issue that has been raised by my hon. Friends. At the moment, a passenger can get on the train at Stoke-on-Trent and in one hour and 23 minutes, they can be in Euston. If we move to HS2, a passenger will have to travel for an hour to Birmingham and then get on a 40 or 50 minute train to Euston. How can one hour 50 minutes be better than one hour and 23 minutes? That will be the case. It is not an issue of timetabling. As the Government have said time and again, this is all about freeing up capacity on the west coast main line, and that means cutting existing services on that line.

In the moments I have left, I want to go back to this issue of the very high-speed line. The line we are talking about has gentler curves and lower gradients because it is being built to a much higher specification than the trains that will run on it, so that is an area in which savings can be found.

To jump ahead now, there are also issues relating to east-west connectivity and the KPMG report, which I raised in an intervention. The report said that the only city actively to lose out on these proposals would be Stoke-on-Trent. That brings me to the Stoke-on-Trent proposals, which are a very good response by the city council to the HS2 phase 2 consultation. I hope that Ministers have read them, because they were making lots of uncosted announcements about Crewe while the consultation was still going on. I am delighted to see that the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson) is sitting so close to his Front-Bench colleagues from the Transport Department.

Understandably, colleagues in Manchester want faster journey times, but the Stoke-on-Trent proposal would allow a faster service seven years earlier than the consultation proposals by using a combination of high-speed lines, as far as Stoke-on-Trent, and then classic compatibility on the existing lines into Manchester. Manchester would benefit seven years earlier than it would with the consultation proposals. Again, the proposals from Stoke-on-Trent would not require the expensive remodelling of the west coast main line junction point, which would be the case with the Crewe proposals. Indeed the Stoke-on-Trent proposals are costed, whereas the Crewe ones, which would require a new station two miles or so further south than Crewe, are not costed at all.

With just seconds left, let me say that there is great detail here about why the Stoke-on-Trent proposals would make so much more sense. We are talking about connecting in millions more people than the Crewe proposals. I am not convinced that they are the best way to spend the money—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), and my speech will echo much of his. Like him, I support High Speed 2 and not just because I am a Greater Manchester MP, although we will benefit from it substantially. I support it not just because our railways need the capacity, although they do. I support it not just out of a parochial desire to see more transport investment in the north, although I do not think being a parochial northerner is necessarily a bad thing. Much more than all of that, I support it because it is genuinely wonderful that, for once, we are choosing to solve a transport problem that we know is going to happen but has not happened yet. By that, I mean the looming capacity crunch on our railways. It is the polar opposite of how we usually approach transport issues. Secondly, I very much welcome the cross-party agreement on delivering a fundamental piece of infrastructure when, frankly, there are a great many reasons why a Conservative Government might not want to do that.

We simply have to acknowledge that the changes in how and where people live and work has driven a huge demand for regular and reliable train travel. Thirty years ago, there would have been enough jobs for almost everyone who lives in my constituency to work in my constituency, but as our economy has moved more towards services and the creative industries, those jobs are clustered more in the cities, so many more people need to commute—and these are jobs that are much more geographically mobile. Before the last election, I worked as a solicitor in Manchester city centre. I would travel into Manchester every day from what is now my constituency, but it was relatively common at some point in the day to receive a message saying that I needed to go to Birmingham, London, Leeds or elsewhere to attend a meeting or a completion or something else.

Those economic changes are what lies behind the doubling of passenger numbers on the railways in the last decade. Looking at the numbers is genuinely startling: over the past 16 years, passenger journeys on inter-city trains have doubled to 128 million a year, and the number of all rail journeys has doubled, from 750 million a year to 1.5 billion. Of course, the UK’s population is predicted to grow by a further 11 million by 2035. I do not believe that it is the less-than-impressive performance of rail privatisation that has driven that growth. For once it seems we might be trying to provide the capacity we require in our transport network before the problem hits us. If only the Parliaments of the 1970s and ’80s had done the same with our airport capacity.

Some people are concerned that HS2 will actually suck prosperity out of the regions towards London, but that is illogical. If that were true, the best way to achieve regional prosperity would be to tear up our existing railways and motorways and promote some sort of regional autarky. That would be just as foolish and ill-conceived at regional level as it would be at national level.

I recognise that it is in the nature of a high-speed train line that some parts of the country take the burden of hosting it, while others, such as in my area, receive the benefits. I absolutely agree that there should be adequate compensation, particularly in London around Euston station, and there should be proper mitigation of the route where possible. I understand colleagues who need to represent the needs of their areas where local opinion is opposed to HS2. I do not think it credible, however, to argue for increased mitigation such as expensive tunnelling and then complain that the cost of the project has gone up; clearly, there is a balance between the two. I would say that the development of the British economy in a way that spreads prosperity, growth and opportunity more evenly around the United Kingdom, rather than focusing on the south-east is genuinely in everybody’s interests.

The price tag appears large, but Government investment in capital projects is about £50 billion each year, and the costs of HS2 will be spread over 20 years. Crucially, this is wealth-creating infrastructure. We should recognise, too, that there is a cost to not proceeding with it. There will be a cost to not creating the capacity we require on our railways. Imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, if we had not regenerated London’s docklands. Think of all the private investment that followed it, which would not have occurred without it. There are many other examples—the original M1 motorway has already been mentioned in the debate.

Some hon. Members have claimed that investment will be diverted from other schemes towards HS2. Let me say that the only time we know that that has ever happened was when we tried to patch and mend the west coast main line. It cost billions and drained investment from every other project certainly in the north-west, but across the whole country, too. The destruction was, frankly, untenable.

For once, we have a far-sighted proposal with cross-party agreement and the political will to deliver it. We would all like to see our favoured amendments implemented. I would like construction to begin in the north. This Bill certainly deserves its Second Reading today, which I warmly—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.