Oral Answers to Questions
Cheryl Gillan Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrew Jones
I have met the hon. Gentleman and been to see the particular problems in his area, and I agree that they are acute. I urge everybody to participate in the consultation. Let us try to get the problem finally solved.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
With billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money at stake, after last night’s announcement on HS2, confidence in the transparency and decision-making processes in HS2 Ltd and CH2M have been called seriously into question. First, will the Secretary of State tell us whether CH2M jumped, or was it pushed? For a company to give up a £170 million contract is enormous news. Secondly, will he give the House an undertaking that no further contracts will be issued to other bidders—such as Bechtel or Mace—further down the line before there has been a full inquiry into the decision-making processes in HS2 Ltd and CH2M?
Chris Grayling
I do not normally like to differ with my right hon. Friend, but I am very clear on this: CH2M has done the right thing in taking a step back, having identified a problem that would have called into question whether it could and should operate the contract. It was not some massive misdemeanour, but an error in process that has caused CH2M to take a step back. It is now for the board of HS2 Ltd and its independent directors to make sure that they do the right thing in taking the contract forward. From the country’s point of view, it is important that we get on with the job. We will have all the necessary governance in place as we go through the process of replacing CH2M, but we do need to get on with the job.
Oral Answers to Questions
Cheryl Gillan Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
HS2 Ltd let the early works contract for activities such as demolitions, site clearances and species translocations in November 2016, with work commencing after Royal Assent—you will be aware, Mr Speaker, that earlier this week the Bill passed its last stages prior to Royal Assent. The main works civil contracts to construct the main physical works for the railway, including tunnels, viaducts and embankments, are due to be let later this year. The initial works on the project will begin shortly after Royal Assent. I have been very clear that through the construction phase I expect HS2 Ltd and my Department to do everything we can to ensure that the impact of construction on those affected is mitigated wherever possible.
Mrs Gillan
It is ironic that I should have drawn the first Transport question on the day the Bill for phase 1 of HS2 gets Royal Assent. Although some people are crowing and backslapping each other about it, let us remember that it is tragic for many people. The impact is disproportionately felt by my local authorities, such as Buckinghamshire County Council, and our parish councils, such as Great Missenden. Will my right hon. Friend reassure me, my constituents and my excellent councils that the Department for Transport will reimburse parish, county and district councils for any reasonable expenses incurred as a result of the construction of this dreadful project, HS2?
Chris Grayling
I am well aware that when a project of such national importance is constructed, it inevitably has an effect on some of those who live on the route. I reiterate that we will do everything we can to ensure that the process is as reasonable and fair as possible for those affected. With regard to local authorities, I give my right hon. Friend that assurance and repeat the assurances made in the debate on Monday by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones). HS2 is putting service-level agreements in place with every single local authority along the line of route to set out the additional funding that we will make available for the new railway line’s construction process.
High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill
Cheryl Gillan Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Andy McDonald
I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s clarification, but if a party is in power, it is in power. Whether or not this happened in 2009 or 2010, Labour were still the Government of the day.
There are some points of disagreement between the Opposition and the Government on HS2—I shall return to them later—but the consensus that exists across the House and among businesses and industry experts on HS2 is to be welcomed. Projects of this scale often require the support of successive Governments and support from the Government and Opposition Benches, so it is reassuring to see a consistent approach to this critical investment in our nation’s rail infrastructure.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Is not the hon. Gentleman rather ignoring the fact that most Members are not affected by this project, so they show very little interest in it at all? If MPs’ constituencies are affected by the project, Members are of course passionately engaged. In fact, that consensus has really gone by default.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Let me say that our time should be devoted to the amendments, and I am bothered that we might stray into other areas that should not be debated. I have allowed a little latitude, but I do not want us to open up into a general debate. Let us keep to the amendments.
Andy McDonald
There are two more sentences, Mr Deputy Speaker.
HS2 does not have to be a Deutsche Bahn HS2 or an SNCF HS2 or Nederlandse Spoorwegen or Trenitalia state-run HS2, but it can be—if I may paraphrase the Prime Minister—a British red, white and blue HS2, and the Government should guarantee it.
Mrs Gillan
HS2 may well embrace young people’s entire careers, as the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) suggested, and they will have good careers out of it if it is built. However, I do not underestimate the fortunes being made—by the top echelons of HS2, certainly, but also by people who are benefiting from very lucrative contracts at the taxpayer’s expense.
I presume—and I am hardly surprised—that the Government have accepted the Lords amendments. A number of them correct inaccuracies, many of which have been and continue to be attached to this project, and which have been a source of great anxiety on the part of people directly affected. I join those on both Front Benches in saying thank you to their lordships, who were restricted in what they could do. They were unable to amend the Bill significantly—they could not make any additional provisions—and we are therefore dealing with a group of amendments that the Government are, of course, able to accept in their entirety because they do not do that much to the Bill.
I must say that I would welcome the acceptance of Lords amendment 4, which I call the “land grab” amendment, because it would limit the power of the state to acquire land compulsorily in association with the project for the purposes of regeneration or development. I think it fair to say that the current Secretary of State for Transport, when lobbied by me and by many others—particularly the CLA—responded very positively. Such a sweeping power would have added insult to injury, namely the plundering of property that has resulted from a project that is as ravenous for land as it is for taxpayers’ money. Without the amendment, the Government would have been able to buy up land for lucrative developments virtually without control.
However, some of my constituents have serious concerns about schedule 16. They believe that HS2 has only to give 28 days’ notice to enter, do what it likes to the land and pay no compensation until the job is finished, which they believe could take many years. During those years, my constituents would have to shoulder the loss of value to property and income. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright) believes that there are constituents fighting to prove that they are affected by HS2, whose applications for compensation have been successful, but who are still struggling to agree on a value for their property. When the Minister responds to these amendments, I wonder whether he will care to say something in relation to that and this land grab amendment, which I am grateful the Government are accepting.
Mrs Gillan
My right hon. and learned Friend intervenes from a sedentary position, and he is right that this is an anti-land grab amendment.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I, as much as anybody else, have supported the right hon. Lady for a long time in respect of this scheme, and she raises an important point. I have constituents who cannot get a penny of compensation because they do not meet the necessary requirements. I think something very serious should be done about that, and I hope the right hon. Lady agrees.
Mrs Gillan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and this is what has worried me about this project: it has been a David and Goliath project, and Goliath has won. It has crushed the spirit of so many people, and it is going to affect people who do not yet know how they are going to be affected. I worry for the years of disruption that will come, as I will discuss later.
Amendment 7 will improve the reporting on vocational qualifications, but when it comes to personnel—this is an amendment about personnel—a project such as this should have had continuity and strong leadership. Far from that, there have been three Prime Ministers, five Secretaries of State, four permanent secretaries and three chief executives over the past six years. Young people joining this project to obtain the vocational qualifications that amendment 7 reflects will want assurances that the personnel and training functions are being run by reputable contractors and a reputable organisation.
Questions are being asked about the relationships between the Department, HS2 and contractors such as CH2M. CH2M has already been paid hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in connection with this project and its director has been placed in temporary charge since the very highly paid Simon Kirby departed to Rolls-Royce. It has had so-called Chinese walls during the latest bidding process and now another director of the same company has been appointed as the new permanent CEO on less money than the departing CEO.
We read reports in the Financial Times this morning that the losing bidders on phase two are considering legal action because CH2M could well have been party to information from the CH2M professionals embedded in HS2 on phase one. I ask the Minister to clarify this: he needs to give assurances, or else the pall of suspicion will continue to hang over the top personnel of this project and will affect those young people referred to in amendment 7, whose vocational qualifications are going to be reported on.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The right hon. Lady knows very well that she is stretching not the patience of the Chair, but the terms of the debate in order to allow it to continue. We have to concentrate on the amendments, so we do not want to get into salaries and comparisons in that regard. I am therefore sure the right hon. Lady is coming straight back on to the amendments before us.
Mrs Gillan
I take your admonition, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am trying to use these amendments to make the points that my constituents would expect to be made in the House. They do not understand that we have to try to stick exactly to the final letter, but I do understand that, so I shall attempt to stay in order and not try the patience of the Chair too much.
Lords amendment 11 updates references to environmental regulations, but I am afraid that HS2 continues to be environmentally unsound. The promoters of the project will never be forgiven for the violation of a nationally protected area of outstanding natural beauty, when the technology and capability exist to have tunnelled the whole of that protected area. In fact, the line emerges now from a tunnel near the railway’s highest point.
The derision with which campaigners have been treated is no better reflected than in the words of Lord Snape during the Lords debate. He said that what extra protection was achieved in the Chilterns through tunnelling was
“as a result of demands, including semi-hysterical demands from a then member of the Cabinet, which in the view of many of us who have taken an interest in the project has added unnecessarily to the cost and makes travelling by train less pleasant.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 January 2017; Vol. 777, c. 84.]
Mrs Gillan
My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. Lord Snape was always a real gentleman when he was in this House, and I can see that he has gone on to maintain those credentials of politeness and to be a champion of equality. His elevation was undoubtedly deserved.
Lords amendments 12 to 25 correct references to local roads, and Lords amendment 51 covers the traffic regulation changes. The residents of Great Missenden parish still have concerns about the siting of the north portal and the effect of construction traffic in the area. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me which of the traffic regulation changes will reassure my constituents, who are disappointed that there has been no relocation of the haul road. Great Missenden Parish Council has noted that
“residents were aggrieved that an undertaking to move the haul road further north is not to be met”.
The mitigation package of assurances for Great Missenden was first discussed in October 2016, but it has still not been formally entered on to the HS2 register of undertakings and assurances. I hope that the Minister will also be able to comment on that.
All the major changes to traffic referred to in Lords amendments 12 to 25 will require good community engagement. When it comes to engaging with local communities, however, HS2 still has a lot to learn. My right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington), my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and I know that we and the constituents we represent are not being treated with due respect.
My constituents have instances of HS2 experts failing to take local concerns seriously, even to the extent of giving incorrect information. Indeed, many of these amendments contain corrections to inaccuracies in the legislation. I understand that this is now a matter of formal complaint, but HS2’s actions have continued to fall short of what is expected from a public body. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam has noted that people often have to resort to freedom of information requests and to petitioning Select Committees because communication with HS2 is so poor. It is really disappointing that HS2 Ltd has not shown more empathy or understanding of the human cost of HS2, even now.
With Royal Assent will start a right royal assault on the people still living on and around the route. The disruption that will be a daily part of their lives during this project’s construction will go on for many years. It would be fitting to say that this has been a life-changing experience—not just for me, but for so many people in the Chilterns and beyond. We are discussing these Lords amendments today, but I have learned that the House of Lords could actually prevent Members of Parliament from speaking up on behalf of their constituents. I was amazed that our locus standi was challenged by the Department for Transport’s subsidiary, and that any Member of Parliament wishing to put forward constructive ideas could be shut up by a House of Lords Committee.
Dame Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
I support my right hon. Friend’s point. It is incomprehensible to our constituents, who have elected us to speak for them, that we should be prevented from articulating the real concerns that have arisen since this legislation left our House. There are very strong feelings among our constituents about that prohibition.
Mrs Gillan
I would have thought that in a democracy, and particularly as elected representatives in a representative democracy, we would have the freedom to speak in these Houses but, no, that is not the case. The Lords amendments were arrived at without the help and support of the elected Members for the affected constituencies. The process certainly taught me a lesson, and it changed my life and my view of democracy.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Before the right hon. Lady answers that question, I remind the House that the amendments are very, very narrow. The amendments are really quite typographical, and they have nothing to do with what happened over there.
Mrs Gillan
Thank you very much for reminding me of the rules, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am trying to stick very closely to the amendments. Of course, I am referring to the Lords proceedings and to these amendments. I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) that it is extraordinary that Ministers who represent constituencies along the route, and who were therefore unable to speak in this House, were prohibited from speaking to the Lords Select Committee because the locus standi was challenged by the very organisation set up by the Department for Transport—in collusion, in other words. MPs were shut up on this issue, as they have been in many instances since the project was first thought of.
With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will now pay tribute to people such as Hilary Wharf and her husband Bruce Weston. They helped to lead the brave HS2 Action Alliance, which still gives advice to beleaguered people and tries to stop or improve this project. My county council, ably led by Councillor Martin Tett, has put an enormous amount of work into the Bill, as has my district council, Chiltern District Council, led by the formidable Councillor Isobel Darby. I particularly mention my parish council, which is struggling to find the resources, alongside the larger councils, to carry out the work necessary to protect and inform its residents.
An additional burden runs from the amendments on traffic regulations, for example, and those costs will fall on our local councils. The amendments covering flood risk, possession of land and changing traffic flows, for example, will lie at the feet of our financially challenged councils, and there is little chance of the full costs being restored to those councils for all the extra work that has been forced on them, unless the Minister tells me different at the Dispatch Box today. In other words, our constituents are paying not once but two or three times over for this project.
Will HS2 be a success? I am still not convinced. Will these amendments make it a success? We learned from last weekend’s newspapers that the Department is so concerned that HS2 may be overtaken by new technology, such as driverless cars, that it is trying to encourage technology companies such as Google and the ever-popular Uber to take a financial stake in the recently announced combined franchise for the west coast main line and HS2 in order to offset the risk that HS2 is, in fact, old technology.
This is my last opportunity to speak on the Bill, and I want to acknowledge, as did the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, a couple of other people who tried to help those affected by HS2. I think particularly of Neil Caulfield, who tried so hard to help people through an obscure and often frightening process. He was a credit to this House and to the Clerks Department. He was scrupulously fair, and nothing was too much trouble for him. Quite frankly, he went above and beyond the call of duty to try to deal with an arcane process that really should be banished from our procedures in this House.
I also want to mention an amazing constituent, Mr Ray Challinor. He was chairman of the Hyde Heath village society, and his commitment to our community and social action was second to none. Sadly, his family laid him to rest this afternoon. I would have liked to attend his funeral to pay my tribute to him, but I pay my tribute on the Floor of the House because he was not a man who supported HS2. He was a man who was fiercely protective of our local community.
Lastly, I should mention all those individuals who have supported the campaign to either stop or radically change HS2. These are people who often could not afford to donate but did so because they could not believe that the state could ride in such a roughshod fashion over the very people who put it in charge.
The Government will get their way—Royal Assent will be given—but this Bill and this project are tainted by the way in which their people have gone about their business. In a democracy, there should not be a process that is so unequal, giving the state such powers over its citizens without the balance that we would expect from a fair society. I hope that at some stage we will be able to consign this hybrid Bill process to the history books. I wish I could say the same about HS2.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
I shall be brief, as I am well aware that for some people in the House this has been a long process and it is good that we are getting to the end of it. I caught the end of the previous debate, in which people were saying that the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill was 64 years in the making, so this Bill has, in fact, taken somewhat less time. My party is generally supportive of this bold proposal from the Government, but we would like it to be bolder in the long run as it is important that HS2 extends to Scotland. We also need improvements to the existing line north of Crewe in the meantime so that we can have shorter journey times up north.
I am well aware that I am supposed to be speaking to the Lords amendments. As they have improved the Bill, we support them. We welcome the amendments to clause 48 relating to compulsory purchase order powers. It is important that the Secretary of State sticks to his commitment that any CPO powers will be used sparingly and as a last resort.
As I said, we are supportive of the concept. My background is in civil engineering, so I appreciate the value that infrastructure investment can bring in long-term wider business and economic benefits. On that basis, I would like to see the project go forward and I look forward to the start of the construction. I am well aware that some enabling contracts have been let. While we want to see construction starting, I again remind Ministers that we need improvements north of Crewe, and we need this line to get to Scotland sooner rather than later.
Dame Caroline Spelman
It is not every day that one walks into the Chamber to find parts of one’s constituency, villages or parishes singled out in legislation, but Lords amendment 1 does precisely that. Madam Deputy Speaker, you reminded us that these amendments are narrow, describing them as largely “typographical”, but I wish to impress on hon. Members that this is a topographical amendment. I should not want any Member to leave this Chamber without understanding exactly what we are talking about. The lovely parish of Bickenhill is perhaps where some hon. Members have disembarked from the west coast main line at Birmingham International station. Perhaps they have stood on the platform looking across to the National Exhibition Centre, but they might not have been wholly aware that they were in the green belt. Very close by is Chelmsley Wood, one of the largest council estates in western Europe. I mention those topographical points because, as I am sure that hon. Members can see, names such as Bickenhill and Chelmsley Wood conjure up images of lovely rural locations, yet people there are at no point further than 8 miles from the centre of either Coventry or Birmingham, so we are talking about land that is precious to those who try to keep the balance of green space and urban density.
Bickenhill parish lies in what is known as the Meriden gap, and ever since I have been a Member of this House, I have fought strenuously to protect it, because it is the green lung that holds Coventry and Birmingham apart. Although a matter of 3 or 4 hectares of green space may not theoretically—maybe abstractly—appear to be all that important to everybody else listening to this debate, it is an important issue for the residents of Chelmsley Wood, because the estate has a very high population density of 60 units of accommodation per hectare. The loss of green space in the area is therefore significant.
The local authority, Solihull Council, made representations when the Bill was considered by the Lords Select Committee because every hectare of green space in our green-belt borough is a matter of great importance to all of us who share completely in the local authority’s motto of “Urbs in Rure”. All Latin scholars will realise that that tells us everything we need to know about the balance we need to strike between urban and rural sustainability, side by side. I would therefore say that this is a bit more than just a typographical matter, Madam Deputy Speaker; it is really important for my constituents.
Will the Minister consider whether the Government’s proposals are compatible with their commitment to biodiversity offsetting? As the 2012 “Natural Environment” White Paper set out, the whole principle of biodiversity offsetting was to make it clear that when we destroy green space, we should create new green space to make up for the loss of natural capital. When he responds, will the Minister be clear about whether he has considered that important dimension?
If, by chance, the Government have not thought about the compatibility of their proposals with biodiversity offsetting, I impress on the Minister the enormous opportunity that exists to do something ambitious, at scale, to offset the loss of green space of the type referred to in the amendment. A good proposal to regenerate the Tame and Blythe river valleys has been worked up by a professor at Birmingham City University and presented to the Department. Rather than glossing over a small piece of green space, should we not seize the opportunity of working together to ensure that people who prize green space in urban areas get proper compensation for the green space that is so important to them?
Mrs Gillan
My right hon. Friend is articulating, through the medium of this small amendment, the fears of many people about environmental matters. Does she agree that we face a huge danger because the costs of the project are spiralling out of control, and we all know that it is environmental payback that gets sacrificed if the project cannot afford it? As a major infrastructure project has never been delivered on time and on budget in this country to date, that is the danger.
Dame Caroline Spelman
I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend. The fact is that we now know so much more about the true value of green space that is lost—we can actually calculate the value of the natural capital. I set up the Natural Capital Committee, which reports to the Treasury, so that we no longer make decisions on the assumption that nature provides things for free. That is not true, because when we take away natural capital, there is a cost to our economy, so it is important that there is proper offsetting.
When the Lords Select Committee discussed the issues relating to Lords amendment 1, it was stated that there is already enough public open space in the locality. Well, I beg to differ. With a housing density of 60 units of accommodation per hectare, there is obviously great pressure on what public open space remains. We should not regard the situation as static, because from the moment the high-speed railway is built, the pressures on the parish of Bickenhill will be enormous. People are always trying to put some new development in the Meriden gap—we already have the M6, the M42, the west coast main line, Birmingham airport and the Chiltern line. We almost had the national football stadium, and we have the National Exhibition Centre. Space will be at an enormous premium, so to disregard the significance of just 4 hectares of green space is not a little matter, which I why I particularly wanted to raise it in this debate.
Mrs Gillan
My right hon. Friend mentions David Higgins. In fact, the outgoing chief executive is Simon Kirby. Sir David Higgins is the chairman. He has just joined the board of Gatwick, and he is also on the board of an Australian bank, so he is doing three jobs at once. I think that my right hon. Friend has made a mistake, which I would love her to correct.
Dame Caroline Spelman
There has been a bit of change at the top of HS2—my right hon. Friend is right. However, I received a letter from David Higgins, and, despite my reminding and re-reminding the offices of HS2 that the case needs to be expedited, it still has not been dealt with.
Lords amendment 51 deals with traffic regulation, which will be very important during the construction phase. I do not pull my punches over this issue with my constituents. We are going to be a building site for at least five years, and that will be extremely disruptive around one of Britain’s busiest transport nodes: the midlands motorway crossroads. I impress upon the Minister that a continuous haul route is very much sought after in my constituency. We have so far been unable to secure undertakings that construction traffic can be prevented from thundering through some of our villages.
Such a village is Balsall Common, which is just outside the parish of Bickenhill. It carries the Kenilworth road, and an alternative for haulage needs to be found because the thought of construction lorries going through the village centre, where children walk to the secondary and primary schools, gives me and their parents real cause for concern. Is there anything the Minister could do to assist with this? David Higgins showed real interest when I raised the possibility of finding a solution under the legislation. It is not in HS2’s interest to have its construction traffic thundering down the centre of villages where children walk to school, but all the alternatives cost money.
Local authorities just do not have the money to create new roads to take five years of construction traffic away from centres of habitation. There is a very real prospect of a good legacy project arising from achieving a continuous haul route so that permanently, and once the railway has been built, people who want to use it do not tear through the centre of the village trying to catch a high-speed train. Perhaps the Minister could make a note of the importance of that for my constituency. Of course, we really wanted a tunnel, which would take some of the pressure off, but rather like my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) we recognise that some of our early requests have not fallen on fertile ground.
I also pay tribute to the work of Neil Caulfield. It is important, particularly with the Clerks of the House present in the Chamber, that we share with colleagues that he was a man who went the extra mile for our constituents. I always think that the Clerks go the extra mile for us as Members of Parliament in a way that the public often do not see, such as by helping us with amendments to Bills and finding ways to give expression to the things that our constituents want to see in legislation, but Neil went even further than that. He interacted with a huge case load of people’s needs. These people were desperate to find solutions to the threat of losing their home, or at the very least to get proper compensation. I remember that he took the trouble to come away from the Houses of Parliament to visit the constituency with the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill Committee in order to see it all for himself. That was a remarkable commitment by a Clerk of the House. Although the Chair of the Commons Select Committee is not present in the Chamber, I am sure that all members of that Committee, who put in many hours of listening to our constituents’ needs, would like to ensure that we recognise the special role that Neil played.
I give my last word to my constituents, who have gone from being shocked at the proposal when Lord Adonis first mooted it, to believing that it would never happen, to having the dawning realisation that we have to work with how it turns out in practice. I commend Solihull Council for creating a working group that meets once every month—I attend the meetings—to talk through the day-to-day implications as the project unfolds. However, there is no disguising the fact that this is going to be a life-changing experience for the constituency of Meriden and especially for those of my constituents who are most directly affected. They will read this debate and listen to our deliberations, and I would like them to know that I will not give up fighting on their behalf to ameliorate and mitigate the impact of the railway, which will fundamentally benefit our region, but whose impact will fall disproportionately on a few homes.
Andrew Jones
There are quite a lot of questions to answer. This has been a very helpful final debate on the Bill and I will try to answer colleagues’ questions, some of which had themes in common.
I will address the questions in no particular order. Several Members have said that it is important that we maintain and commit to an ongoing dialogue. I am happy to make that commitment. I do not view this as the end of a process; I view it as the end of one phase of a process and the start of another. We go from a project in development to a project in delivery, and that will require more dialogue, not less, particularly as we work, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) has just said, to keep mitigation at the forefront of our minds during the construction process. I am happy to make that commitment —there is no doubt about that.
Many people have also been concerned about the hybrid Bill process. The locus standi rules are set by the House, not by the Government, but the House is considering the hybrid Bill procedure. That review is under way and I am sure that it will consider colleagues’ views on whether they were able to participate and petition in the other place. I know that those petitioning arrangements caused much frustration and, indeed, confusion among our constituents. The process is not straightforward.
Mrs Gillan
I know that it is too late now, but it would have been nice if the Government had actually instructed HS2 Ltd not to get its very expensive barrister to object to our locus standi. The Government had a simple solution in their hands: they could have let all the MPs represent their constituents, but they chose not to do so. I appreciate that the Minister is relatively new to the issue, but it was really and truly a case of being let down by your own side and of your own side letting down democracy.
Andrew Jones
I am not sure that I can comment on that point. It refers to something that happened way before I took any responsibility for this area, but my right hon. Friend has made it firmly.
The Labour Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), asked about traffic regulation orders and I can confirm that reasonable costs will be met by HS2 Ltd. I will ask HS2 Ltd to confirm that to local authorities, in case there is any doubt.
On Great Missenden, the relocation of the haul road was considered by both Houses. Moving the haul road north would have created new, significant environmental effects, and a new version of the register of undertakings and assurances, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) has asked about, will be published at Royal Assent.
Several Members talked about the skills footprint and the careers legacy of HS2, with people perhaps spending their entire working career on the project, and I completely agree with them. I had a great visit to the HS2 college in Doncaster this morning. The college is progressing very well. It is due to open in September, and it is already attracting significant interest. In fact, the number of applicants seeking to go there in September is way ahead of projections. This is part of how HS2, among our other railways, will redefine the future. I saw the progress that the college has made—it has actually got as far as having track laid in the training workshop area—and that brings home to us that the project really is a very big and exciting opportunity.
I can confirm, in answer to several requests, that the Government fully accept Lords amendment 4, which colleagues have called the land-grab or non-land-grab amendment. I confirm that we accept all the Lords amendments, including Lords amendments 1 and 2 in relation to the work in the Meriden constituency.
Many colleagues have mentioned the compensation arrangements and how long it is taking to come to financial arrangements with HS2 Ltd. This is a mixture of the financial costs and the fact that we must recognise that there is also a human or emotional cost. We do not just invest cash in creating our homes; our homes are much more than that, and we must respect the human cost. If some people have their homes repossessed or changed, we have to be sensitive and to treat people with respect and generosity. Quite frankly, if colleagues are not seeing that happen, I am sure they will be keen to raise that with me—they have already done so—and I am very happy to continue to raise their points with HS2 Ltd. I want HS2 Ltd to be a good neighbour, and I know that view is wholly shared by HS2 Ltd itself.
I welcome the SNP’s support for this project. I recognise that we are going no further north than Leeds and Manchester—I should perhaps add that we are going no further north than Leeds and Manchester yet, and I see much merit in taking it further—but there will be immediate benefits for the people of Scotland from the development that will, I hope, receive Royal Assent this week. Its capacity will allow more services and the time involved in journeys will be reduced.
Andrew Jones
That is way above my pay grade. I simply do not know the answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question, so I will have to do some checking to find out.
There were a number of other questions. I have clearly heard the points about compensation and mitigation raised by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). I can confirm that we are working on the tunnel portal location, but we are not yet in a position to make any announcements. I recognise that such a change will make a significant difference to many people, but we are working on it, as he will be aware.
Mrs Gillan
I am sorry to go back to the Barnett consequential, but as it has been raised may I point out that there was a Barnett consequential to the travel element of the Olympic park for Wales and Scotland? As this is a transport project, I presume that there will be Barnett consequentials for the devolved Administrations.
Andrew Jones
I am not sure that I can add anything to what I said a moment ago. Barnett consequentials are way above my pay grade, and I will have to do some checking before commenting one way or the other. It sounds as though making a presumption would be a very foolish error, and that is clearly not within the remit of these amendments.
High Speed 2: Yorkshire
Cheryl Gillan Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Edward Miliband
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. I noticed the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) nodding from a sedentary position; I know that he raised this issue in the Transport Committee as well. It is also something that my constituents have raised with me.
The other thing I would say about the challenges and constraints is that we are not comparing like with like. We are comparing three or four years of work on the Meadowhall route with, frankly, back-of-a-fag packet calculations in relation to the M18 route. My constituents with houses that are going to need to be demolished have not had letters saying that their houses would need to be demolished. There is a whole range of issues. A whole new housing estate, the Shimmer estate in Mexborough in my constituency, is threatened with demolition. Some of the most distinctive countryside around villages in my constituency such as Hickleton, Barnburgh, Clayton and Hooton Pagnell is under threat. Our argument is not simply about the local effect—it is a wider argument about the benefits to South Yorkshire. However, I do think that that is relevant, and proper work has not been done on the constraints of this route.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
As somebody who has opposed HS2 right from the beginning, I have a great deal of sympathy with the case the right hon. Gentleman is making. Although I do not want to intervene on the merits of the M18 route or Meadowhall, does he agree that there is a serious problem with the governance of HS2 Ltd? It has had five Secretaries of State, four permanent secretaries and three chief executives. Now, even the former permanent secretary to the Treasury, Lord Macpherson, has said that HS2 is not good value for money for the taxpayer and the money could be better spent on other road and rail projects that would benefit Yorkshire and the rest of the country.
Edward Miliband
The right hon. Lady has a long track record of campaigning on this issue. Although she and I may differ on the principle around HS2—I support it—the point that she makes about its inconsistency of approach is deeply troubling. It was recommending the Meadowhall route not just in October 2014 but, as we discovered thanks to FOI, in late 2015 and as late as February 2016. I was going to call this debate—partly in order to attract more people to it—“The mystery of HS2 in Yorkshire”, because it is a mystery to me what changed. In February, HS2 was saying that Meadowhall was the right option. By April or May, the previous Secretary of State was walking around my constituency looking at the other route.
Oral Answers to Questions
Cheryl Gillan Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Andrew Jones
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor committed to dualling the A66 in last year’s autumn statement. On the new Tees crossing, we have provided funding to take the business case to the next stage. We will happily work with the area’s local authorities. I recognise the importance of Teesport to the local economy and the value that a new Tees crossing would provide, so I am very keen to see that take shape.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
I am committed to managing the cost of HS2 and ensuring maximum value for the taxpayer. Total expenditure on HS2 in the period from 2009-10 to 2015-16 was £1.4 billion, of which £450 million was spent on land and property. The rest has ensured that HS2 is on track for delivery, and includes money for developing the scheme design, consulting affected communities, bringing the High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill to Parliament and developing HS2 Ltd. Figures for the current financial year will be available in the summer.
Mrs Gillan
The cost of HS2 is not just to the taxpayer but to those it affects. The House of Lords Select Committee on the HS2 Bill has recommended amending it to ensure that HS2 Ltd does not have a blanket power to compulsorily purchase land for regeneration or development, and to provide that it must limit its land acquisitions to what is needed for the scheme, particularly in relation to clause 48. As you know only too well, Mr Speaker, farmers, landowners and communities have been blighted for years by the scheme, and the threat of further compulsory purchase orders is truly worrying. Can the Secretary of State reassure me that he will accept the Committee’s important and very welcome recommendation on clause 48 and alleviate the anxiety of those affected by this project?
Chris Grayling
First, on behalf of the Government, I thank all members of the House of Lords Select Committee for their work over the past few months. Indeed, I thank those who served on the equivalent Committee in this House, for whom this was a long and arduous task. We are carefully considering the Lords recommendations and we will publish our response shortly. If my right hon. Friend will forgive me, I will save my detailed response for that publication, but I am looking extremely carefully at the recommendation to which she referred.
HS2 Phase 2: Consultation
Cheryl Gillan Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I want to make clear, on behalf of my constituents, my very strong objection to the proposals in section 4 of the document entitled, “HS2 Phase 2a: West Midlands to Crewe design refinement consultation”. I have already registered my objections to HS2 on many, many occasions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) have also taken a very strong line on this whole subject for a very long time. There will be a Bill, presumably after December. At some point, there will be a hybrid Bill, on which my constituents will be able to petition if they need to do so.
I want to set out my objections to these initial proposals. They amount to a railhead at Yarnfield, in between the proposed HS2 route and the M6, which is likely to become, we believe, a permanent maintenance facility to replace the infrastructure maintenance depot at Crewe. Stone Town Council has said in its objections that it is extremely disappointed with the level of consultation of Stone residents. That does not really fit in with the Minister’s saying in the previous debate, in which I took part with my right hon. and hon. Friends, that he was absolutely determined that consultation would be at the very highest level. I have to say that my constituents do not believe that that has been effective in this particular case, and I ask him to look into that.
I recently held a public meeting with my constituents in Yarnfield village hall, and the depth of frustration and anger at the proposals, which have caused extreme anxiety in the local area, was evident to all, as in a meeting with local residents that I had on the same day in Baldwins Gate, further to the north. I will hold a further public meeting on 3 December in Walton community centre.
The Yarnfield railhead sliver is totally new in the September 2016 consultation. The railhead was meant to have been in Crewe, and this is a shock to all my constituents in the towns of Stone and Eccleshall, and all the villages in and around the area, particularly Yarnfield. This is not a conceptual design, as the others have been; it is a detailed design that required much more time for consultation of the affected people. HS2’s standard consultation process was therefore hopelessly inadequate. Why did HS2 identify the Yarnfield area as appropriate instead of Crewe?
My constituents have raised an important issue in relation to the options appraisal in the community area report for my constituency. It contained eight options, but four were not taken forward. A brief commentary is provided with regard to only one of the four rejected options, which is Madeley. Of the remaining three, one is not related to Stone—option 5, for Crewe—and this is described in one section as the preferred environmental option. Of the three remaining Stone options, option 8—the Stone hybrid, now selected by HS2—seems to be a combination of options 2 and 3, but we have had only a very limited amount of time to consider all this. We believe that there has been misinformation about the number of jobs and a lack of evidence to demonstrate that there was availability in Crewe. This seems to have been overridden, and we do not understand why it has happened.
With regard to the railhead south of Crewe at the northern end of the phase 2a route, the consultation paper does not explain why Yarnfield must be chosen, nor why the so-called design development work would lead to the identification of Yarnfield as appropriate. The reason to move the location from Crewe to Yarnfield cannot be that Crewe is now to have 370 new homes, some of which have already been built. That would be baffling, because the site at Yarnfield is even more inappropriate given the positioning of local residential buildings.
The disruption that has already been caused by HS2 project preparation throughout my constituency, including Stone and Swynnerton, on top of the ongoing works at Norton Bridge that have been shattering the local area and having a great impact on nearby residents, has been excessive. Therefore, the attempt to minimise disruption in Crewe only to maximise it in Yarnfield does not seem, by any means, to be a good idea or a sensible option.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we need better communications with HS2? It has started to do the exploratory groundworks in my constituency, but it failed to get the correct permissions in Chalfont St Giles and since then a lorry has had an accident there. I think that we as MPs need a hotline to HS2 and to the Department, so that we can report some of the aggravation that is going down in our constituencies. If it is already happening in my hon. Friend’s constituency, all I can say is that I have a great deal of sympathy, because it is certainly happening in mine.
Sir William Cash
I am extremely grateful to, and concur with, my right hon. Friend. Accidents have occurred and I think that a hotline is an extremely good idea. I hope that the Minister is listening.
An analysis of the population of Yarnfield and the Stone area shows that over-65-year-olds make up a significant number of the local population. The proposed option will do nothing to enhance, let alone accommodate, an environment to support such an elderly population. Many residents in Yarnfield who are elderly and infirm will have to live with those proposals being imposed on them. Not only will they create dust, noise, light pollution and total disruption to all the residents of numerous surrounding villages and the Stone town, they will also ruin the lives of many who have chosen to retire to a rural environment and who have settled in the area in good faith. People in Stone town itself are also deeply concerned.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)
I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) on securing this debate on the consultation process for phase 2 of HS2, and specifically on his constituency of Stone. I acknowledge his tireless work on behalf of his constituents, alongside my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), in challenging HS2 Ltd to really examine its practices to seek the best possible outcome for the people of Staffordshire.
Having said that, I must also restate the strategic importance of HS2 to our country’s infrastructure and its longer term economic health. The number of seats available out of Euston at peak hours will treble as a result of HS2, relieving congestion while freeing up space on the existing network. Journey times will be cut not just along the newly built line but to destinations throughout the north of England and Scotland. Although, as has often been said, HS2 will become the largest infrastructure project in Europe, its value is not as a stand-alone project but as a fully integrated part of our national rail infrastructure.
With that in mind, we have a duty to consider how each region will benefit from the project, but we must also consider those for whom the construction of the railway will have a cost. For that reason, the ongoing consultation and engagement form such an integral part of HS2’s remit. That will continue to be the case throughout both phases of HS2, and I intend to give a brief overview of that process later. However, I wish first to turn to some of the issues raised by my hon. Friend regarding his own constituency.
Let us start with the proposed railhead near Stone. I fully understand that the proposals as they stand will have a significant impact on some of my hon. Friend’s constituents. That is clearly the case, and so I reinforce the Secretary of State’s commitment to treating those along the route with “fairness, compassion and respect”. In doing so, it is important not to lose sight of the need to deliver the best outcome for the country as a whole—we have a mixture of the individual and the public here.
I must remind my hon. Friend of why we are looking at a railhead at Stone. If the proposal were to go ahead, it would allow HS2 Ltd to significantly accelerate the construction schedule of phase 2a; because the site is situated in the middle of the phase 2a route, it would allow construction to start to the north and the south simultaneously, while negating the need for maintenance loops at Pipe Ridware, to the south of the site. That is why HS2 Ltd has put the idea forward. In addition to the programme-wide benefits, there would be benefits to the region in the form of approximately 150 new jobs.
If the railhead at Stone goes ahead, it will clearly have to be built with minimum disruption to local residents. The documents accompanying the recent consultation represented a worst-case scenario. It is important to say that no decision has been taken on road access to the site or on the closure of Yarnfield Lane, and HS2 Ltd must seek to keep the lane open; it will try to do so whenever it can. The strong message from colleagues tonight will clearly have been heard.
It cannot be overemphasised, however, that the consultation process underpins and is integral to all route decisions. As it is the main point of debate tonight, let me move directly to the consultation process. I am well aware of my hon. Friend’s concerns about the length of the consultation, as we have met and discussed it previously. However, we have been pleased by the high number of responses we have received to the three consultations, which suggest that residents have been able to engage with the issue and respond positively. I will update the House on the number of responses we have had. There were 442 responses to the working draft environmental impact assessment report, 98 responses to the equality impact assessment and 553 responses to the design refinement consultation, representing a total of 1,093 responses to the three consultations. I think the design refinement consultation has particularly exercised my hon. Friend, because it incorporates the proposed changes to the location of the railhead and depot.
As to the length of the consultation, I should say that the phase 2a consultations followed the same timescale as the phase 1 consultations. We are not seeking to treat one part of the country differently from any other. It is important to state that we have been entirely consistent on that. I have been through this with HS2 Ltd, and I am persuaded that during the course of the eight weeks it has been effective in getting out there and meeting people. I have looked at the press adverts that have gone out advertising the venues. There have been adverts highlighting the consultations in the Crewe Chronicle, the Staffordshire Newsletter, the west midlands’ Express & Star, The Sentinel, the Advertiser and the Lichfield Mercury. Those adverts have appeared on a number of occasions. There has also been a social media effort, which has reached several hundred thousand people. There has been positive engagement, as well as a series of public meetings, including in Yarnfield.
I understand entirely why this matter is of concern to colleagues and the people they represent. I am very supportive of the idea of a hotline. HS2 Ltd already offers colleagues individual technical briefings and I will make sure that those continue. It would be helpful to have a hotline for MPs and that idea is on the agenda for my next meeting with HS2 Ltd, so it is already in play. I am interested to hear that colleagues think it would be a good idea.
Mrs Gillan
I am very grateful for that positive response. I raised the idea with the interim construction commissioner several weeks ago, so obviously it has filtered into the system. A hotline would be of great assistance to my colleagues who are here, as well as to me and other colleagues in Buckinghamshire.
Andrew Jones
I thank my right hon. Friend for that comment. This is an important national project, but it has such implications for people on the line of route that we have to ensure that we treat everybody with openness, transparency and respect. Making sure that colleagues are informed, so that they can deal with their constituents and make the case for their areas effectively, is a key part of that.
I will certainly look into the consultation process. We have already made some changes for the consultation on phase 2b. I was able to do that before the announcements were made last week. I will always take feedback from colleagues and if we can improve things, we certainly will do. We have to treat people fairly and I am sure that the significant efforts that are being made now will pay dividends later.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone asked about the timing of the Bill and whether people will have the opportunity to petition. We are looking to introduce the hybrid Bill for phase 2a next year and that will, indeed, offer residents the opportunity to petition, as was the case with phase 1.
As well as the measures I mentioned earlier, the publicity for the consultation took the form of leaflets distributed to households within 1 km of the proposed route, alongside information packs sent to public libraries and parish councils, with the request that the documents be made available at all community locations. Furthermore, briefings were provided for local authorities and parish councils.
There has often been feedback that the consultation events are not handled professionally. I have not been to the consultation events that have taken place for phase 2a, but I know that HS2 Ltd has always arranged training for staff to prepare them and clearly set out the conduct required for such events. I am confident that in the overwhelming number of cases, staff conduct themselves well, but any time any colleague has any concerns, I will be extremely available to hear them and will take them up with HS2 Ltd.
On the wider implications of the process we are discussing, I assure all colleagues that HS2 Ltd will continue to build on the good engagement work that has been done thus far as it goes forward with the phase 2 consultation.
Oral Answers to Questions
Cheryl Gillan Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Andrew Jones
I think the hon. Gentleman is mistaken when he says that franchising is the answer. All the conversations that I have had with local authorities have produced a mixture of solutions, but most of have focused on partnerships: good partnerships between local authorities and bus companies which will meet local needs.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Chris Grayling
I have looked at the report, and I recognise the importance of protecting our biodiversity. Our country is probably more covered in woodland today than it has been for many centuries in our history, and I find it encouraging that organisations such as the Woodland Trust are continuing to plant the forests and woods of the future. However, I am sceptical about a 1:30 ratio which appears to be based on nothing more than a gut instinct. I am not sure that that is an appropriate way of dealing with the issue. What is important, to my mind, is replacing lost woodland with extra planting, and following a “finger in the air” formula may not be the best way of doing so.
HS2 Update
Cheryl Gillan Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
First, let me welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for the principle of the project, although we obviously have one or two areas of difference.
Let me start with the issue of the route through Sheffield. The hon. Gentleman accuses us of dithering. I would simply remind him that we have a statutory duty to consult. We are bringing forward a new set of proposals. He will not, I am sure, argue that I should break the law when it comes to the consultation process that we need to go through. I clearly want to give people as much certainty as possible, as quickly as possible, but I have a statutory duty, and I intend to fulfil it.
I recognise the issue that local communities face, and part of what we will need to do through that consultation process is listen to those local communities about the things we can do, large and small, to mitigate the impacts on them. That is a very important part of the consultation process.
The hon. Gentleman talks about an unrealistic timetable. I think many people in this country would share my frustration that, actually, it will take 17 years from today to complete the whole of HS2. If that is an unrealistic timetable—if it should take much longer—heaven help us. This project has taken a long time to get to this point and will take more years than I would wish to complete—and we need it to be completed—so the idea that it is an unrealistic timetable to complete this project by 2033 seems to me a strange one.
The hon. Gentleman raised the question of electrification. I would simply remind him that, through 13 years in government, Labour electrified 10 miles of railway line. It is small wonder, when we actually started to electrify key main lines, that the expertise was no longer there. It is all very well Labour calling on us to do this, but we are the ones who are undertaking the modernisation of our railways. Through all those years when Labour was in power, the investments in our railways were pitiful by comparison with what we are doing today.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of HS3. He will be aware that Transport for the North is working on proposals for what is now being called northern powerhouse rail. That will be much more than a single railway line, and it will build the connectivity we need from east to west. I am waiting with interest to see Transport for the North’s proposals for the future.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the west coast partnership. He will understand that, on the day before this line opens, there will be Pendolinos running up the west coast main line, and, on the day after, there will be express trains running up HS2 to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. I want that to be a smooth transition. We have to make sure the train drivers are trained. We have to make sure the staff are ready for the change. I do not envisage a situation where we sack all the staff one day and hire a new group the next. It makes sense to have a smooth transition, and that is what we are planning.
On the hon. Gentleman’s point about the private sector, let the Labour party hark back to the days of British Rail; we want a railway that is modern and progressive. Since the railways were privatised, after decades of decline, the number of passengers has doubled and new stations and railway lines have opened. This is a railway that is moving forwards, not backwards, as it would under Labour.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
I welcome today’s announcement by the Secretary of State, not least because it gives a degree of certainty to all the poor people and businesses that are going to be affected by this project. Perhaps he will forgive me if I do not share his overexcitement about its potential, as no benefit accrues to the Chilterns. He is well aware of my criticism of how HS2 has conducted its operations. Will he therefore give me, and people beyond this Chamber, a personal undertaking that there will be generous, fair and rapid compensation, the highest environmental protection, and timely and thoughtful community engagement? I hope that there will also be a revision of the totally archaic hybrid Bill process, which has in itself added pain to the suffering that people along the line have had to experience so far. It is crucial that lessons are learned from phase 1 before we embark on phase 2a.
Chris Grayling
I absolutely echo the need to make sure that we do the right thing by people affected on the route. I slightly disagree with my right hon. Friend about the benefits in the Chilterns, although it is true that in her constituency, which is on a different line, the benefits are different from those a little further away on the other side of the Chilterns on the line that runs up through towns such as Tring, where there will be a benefit in extra capacity on commuter services—it is estimated that there will be twice as many seats on trains going to Euston station in the morning peak, and I think that will be very welcome to the people who use that line. Of course, I absolutely understand that we have to take great care. I share her concern about the hybrid Bill process. It is clear from the discussions we have had on this in the past that there is a widespread view in this House that we want a simplified and modernised process, and work is being done right now on how that might be achieved. However, I also believe very strongly that we need to invest in our future, and that is what this is about.
HS2 Ltd: Communication and Engagement
Cheryl Gillan Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
I am delighted to have the opportunity to raise, in what will be a slightly lengthened Adjournment debate, the subject of the effectiveness of communication and engagement by HS2 Ltd.
I welcome the Minister to the Front Bench. I think this is the first time he has had the joy of responding to a debate on HS2 that I have secured. I hope that he will be in his place for many years to come to respond to future such debates. I have great hopes that his response will be full and encouraging, both to my constituents and to many others up and down the line of phase 1 of HS2.
I thank Buckinghamshire County Council and my local parish councils in particular for their input into the debate, for their perseverance and for their work for greater mitigation in our area; I extend those thanks to local authorities up and down the line, which have worked tirelessly to try to mitigate the damage to their areas.
I am one of the few MPs along the route of phase 1 with the privilege of the freedom of the Back Benches to speak on these matters. It would be remiss of me not to thank my colleagues up and down the line who have had an input into the debate. I pay particular tribute to their researchers, who do so much work on HS2. The burden has fallen disproportionately on our offices as MPs. Although she has absolutely no idea that I am going to do so, I pay tribute to Kate Fairhurst in my office, who has done tremendous work in co-ordinating and working on this subject for a long time.
I am particularly disappointed still to be facing the prospect of having to raise the quality and standard of HS2’s communications and engagement, which have made this project a very difficult one for my constituents in Chesham and Amersham in particular. They have found it difficult to deal with in the past, and I am afraid it still fills them with dread for the years to come.
It would be unfair if I did not recognise some of the efforts that HS2 Ltd has made recently to try to improve its communications. Indeed, it has done so in some instances—for example, the introduction of local engagement managers. But that is too little, too late, and must be set against the background of the scars of communications in previous years, which have left a deep-rooted history of poor engagement along phase 1.
It is fair to say that that has resulted in an atmosphere of mistrust among many of our constituents, up and down the line, along with a great feeling that there is a complete lack of empathy from HS2 Ltd and the people who work for it. In the words of one of my constituents, its
“record is poor and they have been talking about more engagement for months, but for the local affected resident at the coalface, it’s hard to spot any change”.
I understand that that view is replicated in the constituencies of many of my affected colleagues. For an organisation with such an enormous operation and rapidly expanding workforce, I think the Minister would agree that this is unacceptable and requires addressing with senior personnel and at ministerial level.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) recently wrote to the chairman of HS2 Ltd to convey her concern that her constituents were not being adequately communicated with, ahead of their petitions to the House of Lords Select Committee. That caused undue frustration. She asked me to introduce that into my speech this evening, because she is at an HS2 meeting herself and is unable to be here.
In the course of preparing for this debate, I have been contacted by Chalfont St Giles parish council, which reports that HS2’s original attempts at engagement, in the form of focus groups, did little to allay the fears of the local population. It was felt that they were entirely controlled by HS2. The council felt that the community events were designed to promote the project, rather than to engage effectively with those who were most affected. It reported to me that HS2 personnel seemed uninterested in tapping into the wealth of local knowledge, which could have helped HS2’s work hugely, in places such as Chalfont St Giles. This point is echoed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden, who feels that more positive solutions could have been generated if HS2 had just listened and utilised local expertise.
I do not know whether the Minister has had the chance to study the design panel for HS2. It is full of the great and the good, with some marvellous members, including leading stars in the worlds of architecture and design. However, what is not as obvious is the local input that we were promised. We were promised that the design of this project would rely on local input to help to get the best possible solutions in areas as the line goes through them.
I think it is fair to say that the earlier community forums are considered to have been disastrous. Great Missenden parish council felt the engagement was part of a tick-box exercise by HS2, which was unable to provide the detail that residents and constituents want. Residents tell me that they think HS2 is going through the motions during community engagement. That is not good enough. For them to come out of the community engagements thinking that it was a one-way-only, top-down discussion, reflects very badly on the quality, content, thought and input that goes into them. The situation was summed up in a recent comment by a parish councillor in Great Missenden:
“The parishioners have no real knowledge of what is happening; in fact, most still believe that HS2 will not happen. This is not democratic. In fact, it is bordering on a dictatorship.”
It is sad that after six or seven years that is how residents feel following an attempt at engagement with the community.
This poor engagement will continue to cause problems with the progress of HS2’s work. As I understand it, there was a fracas at Fairford Leys recently, when HS2 omitted fully to communicate to residents that it would be accessing a site for groundworks. I am told that households were leafleted only after the work had commenced.
I am very pleased to see the Leader of the House of Commons, my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington), in his place. I know he shares my concern that this kind of incident is a very worrying precedent for the future. I ask the Minister to familiarise himself with these interactions and to seek improvement. This sort of work is going to multiply and increase dramatically in the coming months. I do not want to see any repeat of this type of incident, which actually comes from poor communication.
The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) became so exasperated with HS2 Ltd’s poor communication that she personally delivered more than 1,000 leaflets explaining to residents in Brent how the construction of a vent shaft would affect their homes. It really is a sad indictment when a hard-pressed, stretched Member of Parliament has to do the job of an organisation in receipt of such vast sums of taxpayers’ money and do the communications on behalf of the project.
Construction is due to begin next year, as the Minister will know. Not only are construction timetables not yet available to residents, but the newly appointed construction commissioner will apparently be unable to intervene in individual cases. The newly appointed, interim construction commissioner came to see me in my office. I have to say that I still question his independence, particularly when I am told that any correspondence should be sent to HS2’s office. That hardly gives the impression that that commissioner is totally independent from HS2. I said to him—and I think this is fair—that my constituents and others deserve to be informed of what is happening well in advance of construction works. At the moment, if they want to find out anything, they have to ring an HS2 helpdesk, and they have no information about who exactly they are dealing with and no named person to deal with. HS2 can honestly be said to have not taken a proactive approach to engagement with the community, but is relying on a reactive strategy, putting the onus on the very people who are adversely affected by the plans.
To pursue this issue, I have invited the construction commissioner to attend the HS2 compensation and mitigation forum, a group in the House that was founded by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) back in 2012. I hope the construction commissioner will come to our next meeting in a few weeks’ time and reassure us that communication on construction matters, not least with MPs and their offices but also with our constituents, will be a priority. I would like to ask the Minister now whether he will talk with the newly appointed, interim independent construction commissioner and try to ensure that when he arrives at that meeting he has more to tell us that we can pass on to our constituents than when he first came for his courtesy call on me last week.
When there is one commissioner, another commissioner always comes along, and in this case it is the residents commissioner. We all welcomed the appointment of the residents commissioner last year, who we thought was there to assist specifically with communication. I have met her several times. I have to say that she is a thoroughly nice woman and I am always encouraged by her intentions. However, the reality is that the impact is very low. First, the Minister should be aware that she, too, does not appear to be independent. She reports to the HS2 chairman, she is paid by HS2 Ltd and she sits in its offices. Again, that does not strike me as an independent operation. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority certainly does not sit in the House of Commons, but instead sits down the road and is truly seen to be independent. It is nothing to do with MPs, as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker; in fact, it seeks to regulate what MPs do in their expenses.
Secondly, the residents commissioner only makes recommendations to the chairman. They are in no way enforceable. That seems to me to be pretty weak and to lack teeth. Thirdly, she cannot intervene in individual cases either, which prompts the ongoing question of who my constituents can go to when problems arise. Of course, they go to their MP, and, as we have heard, when MPs have to distribute leaflets with information about a Government project, their offices become only too hard pressed and the burden that disproportionately falls upon them becomes quite tremendous.
The result is a lack of confidence. Residents along the line do not have the confidence that the residents commissioner is a credible independent figure, and thus her role to scrutinise HS2’s communications has, I believe, so far been pretty ineffective. I stress that it is no reflection on her individually. The problem comes from the job and the description that has been given to her and from the approach that HS2 has to this project, which has always been, “We’re doing it whatever; we have the mandate to do it, and you are just getting in the way.” That is the message that has come across to our constituents. When it comes to those two commissioners, it is fair to say that constituents feel that all roads lead to HS2, which is effectively both judge and jury in all circumstances.
I do not know whether the Minister has had a chance to read it, but in March this year the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, on which I happen to sit, produced a report on HS2’s communications, following the damning report on its communications by the parliamentary and health services ombudsman. The ombudsman determined that HS2’s actions towards a community in Staffordshire had constituted maladministration. The Committee concluded that “the necessary fundamental changes” had not taken place, and that
“the continuing existence of a culture of defensive communication and misinformation within a public body, responsible for the delivery of such a large and highly controversial project, is not acceptable”.
I think you would agree with me, Mr Deputy Speaker, that that is not acceptable.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) has been working alongside Jonathan and Elaine Loescher and the wider community at the heart of the ombudsman’s report for some time now, and in spite of them receiving an apology by HS2 Ltd, the Loeschers have contacted me—and I have been in contact with my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth—to say that very little has changed in practice. HS2 Ltd’s treatment of residents remains poor; it simply does not prioritise community engagement. In fact, there is no one to hold its feet to the fire or to ensure that HS2 Ltd fulfils its responsibilities to residents. Sometimes it feels as if I am the only person holding its feet to the fire on many issues.
I do not know whether the Minister is aware of it, but only a couple of weeks ago, HS2 advertised for four newly qualified graduates to work for six months, at salaries up to approximately £30,000—I am quoting from the advert—to “write the story” of HS2. I have been a Minister, and it sounds to me that the record-keeping in the Department and in HS2 Ltd is so poor that they do not know how they have got to where they have got to, so they are bringing people in to do some forensic analysis to try to dig out the policy. Frankly, that is not good enough, and it reflects some of the chaos that I see from the outside as being evidence of what is happening in the organisation.
Ultimately, the two commissioners—the construction commissioner and the residents commissioner—have been put in place to hold HS2 to account, and I do not think that the drafting of those jobs and the way in which their remit will operate in each case is going to fit into the Bill. I know that I bang on a bit about HS2 from time to time, but I and others have put considerable thought into the amendments tabled to the Bill, which is currently in the House of Lords.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
My right hon. Friend may well bang on and on, but she has many admirers in this place for doing so on such an important issue. My constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) are going to be affected by phase 2a, so I encourage her to go on banging on.
Mrs Gillan
I am grateful for the break in proceedings and for that kind intervention by my hon. Friend. As I have said before, it is never possible to over-flatter a politician! I feel passionately about this issue, as do many others, and if I have the freedom to speak, I am very happy to reflect the views of others. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) has himself worked very hard on trying to mitigate this scheme. In fact, I am now alongside two Staffordshire Members. I am second to none in my admiration for the support that I have had from my colleagues who, I think, feel as strongly as I do.
At the time of Third Reading, I tabled amendments proposing the introduction of an adjudicator—an independent regulatory body that could deal with complaints swiftly and fairly. People who are affected by the scheme would have confidence and faith in such a body, and I think that it is still badly needed. I urge the Minister to think about the amendments again before Royal Assent, to accept them and to try to create a body that would give confidence and faith to the people who are being so badly affected.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) is aware, we have a serious problem in our part of Staffordshire. What my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) is suggesting would help enormously to deal with the frequent complaints about the manner in which HS2 Ltd is operating, which is causing local people enormous anxiety. I shall be seeing some of them over the weekend to discuss these very questions. I am deeply grateful to my right hon. Friend, and totally endorse her proposal.
Mrs Gillan
I thank my hon. Friend for what he says. We spent some time drafting the amendments, and some serious and senior legal brains were brought to bear. The Minister is new to his post, so he might not be as familiar with this project as the rest of us, and this would be a good opportunity for him to review my proposal. Then at least I would feel that it had been examined and considered before being rejected, whereas at the moment I feel that the proposal was rejected out of hand because it came from someone whose constituency was affected so badly by the scheme.
I am astounded by the lack of information that HS2 Ltd has about communications. I do not know whether the Minister has had a chance to look at the answers that have been supplied to my written questions over the past fortnight. In preparation for the debate, I asked for the annual budgets for communication and engagement by HS2 Ltd since 2010. The response stated that the figures could not be provided, as
“the amount of time spent on communication and engagement activity is not centrally tracked.”
I am astounded that, in spite of all the external criticism and scrutiny of its poor communications, HS2 Ltd is not even keeping track of what it is spending, how it is spending, and who is doing what.
Sir William Cash
The cost of HS2 started at £30 billion, then rose to £50 billion, and is now increasing further. According to the latest estimates from all the experts, it is rising exponentially. One can imagine that it might end up being £80 billion or even more, in which case it would cost more than Hinkley Point, the Heathrow development and a development at Gatwick, if that were also to take place. We are talking about a payment of massive sums for what many people regard as a badly thought out project that will cause a great deal of anxiety and trouble.
Mrs Gillan
It is a case of the three Hs: Hinkley, Heathrow, and HS2; and the greatest of them all is HS2. The Minister has probably heard me say this before, but I still think that the project is so gargantuan that it deserves to be overseen by a dedicated Minister who would keep an eye on it. A sum of £80 billion is larger than the budgets of many Departments of State. It is absurd to think that five Secretaries of State and as many Ministers have overseen this project over a comparatively short period. The lack of continuity is ridiculous. Now we have lost the chief executive, of course, who is going to Rolls-Royce. We have an interim chief executive—Mr Hill, I believe—who comes from CH2M, which has just received a bonus from HS2 for some of its works, and I believe is still in the running to bid for contracts. The arm’s length relationship with contractors does not seem to have been maintained in the current circumstances.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire asked me to raise particular communications flaws in the need-to-sell scheme. Apparently, constituents still find it difficult to speak to a named lead on their case and cannot retrieve information from HS2 Ltd until they have made an application. On Tuesday, in reply to a written question inquiring about the effectiveness of the scheme, the responding Minister told me that it was operating fairly and as intended. That is certainly not reflected in my right hon. Friend’s remarks to me, so that is worth looking into. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to that.
I will not go into the inadequacy of the legislative process through which the HS2 Bill is being put through this House and the House of Lords. That is a matter for another time but, needless to say, the process itself causes a great deal of confusion and consternation. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright) raised with me the excellent point that better communication and provision of information would have negated the need for the House of Commons Select Committee to hear so many petitions. Constructive engagement beforehand could have promoted a dialogue away from the Committee Room, and thus speeded up the passage of the Bill. I think that people felt the only way they could communicate with HS2 Ltd was by depositing a petition and coming along in person to make their case.
I also wish to highlight the poor practice of corridor deals during the Select Committee process. The relocation of the construction haul road in Great Missenden in my constituency was agreed in principle between Buckinghamshire County Council and HS2 Ltd in such a deal. The promise by the promoter altered the evidence given thereafter in Committee and, as it stands, the pledge has not been fulfilled.
The nature of these corridor deals means that vital discussions are not transparent and assurances cannot be enforced. In this case, my constituents feel they are left in a very uncertain and unclear position as to HS2’s intentions towards a traffic management plan that will have an enormous local impact at Great Missenden.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam also asked me to raise the unsatisfactory fact that constituents need to resort to submitting freedom of information requests to obtain meaningful and detailed information. Once again, such information should have been available from HS2 Ltd at the outset, and it is a great shame that it does not display greater transparency. It must understand that I, as an MP—I think I am speaking for my hon. Friends in the Chamber with an interest in the matter—have always approached this on a twin-track basis. If I could not persuade the Government that this was not the scheme in the right place at the right time, and going to the right places, I would be working hard to mitigate its effect on my constituency, and especially on the area of outstanding natural beauty. However, it always seems to me that HS2 thinks that MPs are working against it, yet if this scheme is going to go through, we will have to accept that, but we need to work with HS2 to improve the outcomes for the people we represent.
Jeremy Lefroy
Phase 2a has not reached Parliament yet, but the effects of blight are felt by my constituents, as they are by those of my hon. Friends the Members for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), for Stone (Sir William Cash), for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) and for Crewe and Nantwich (Edward Timpson). These constituents feel that they are not being given the necessary support for planning if they will have to move house. Some of my constituents’ homes will be demolished in phase 2a, but they are being told that because parliamentary consent for that phase has not been given—the matter is not even before Parliament—nothing can be done, even though they have to make plans over the next four or five years to build a new house. Has my right hon. Friend come across such instances?
Mrs Gillan
What is so depressing is the fact that the lessons from phase 1 that we have tried to point out do not seem to have been learned, and the mistakes are being repeated in phase 2. The burden of supplementing HS2’s poor performance has certainly fallen disproportionately on local authorities. I am fearful about the next part of the process and the planning that will follow, because there will be more and more burdens on our local authorities, whose budgets—let’s face it—are stretched as it is.
Sir William Cash
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford implied, the fact is that whatever is decided regarding the current Bill as it goes through the House of Lords will inevitably be applied as a precedent for the next Bill. That is why we need to follow closely what my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham says. I congratulate her on doing everything possible to get this right now.
Mrs Gillan
Separately from giving evidence and making recommendations on how we should change the procedures of the House, I think that everyone would agree that it is inequitable that our Standing Orders prevent Members of Parliament from appearing as petitioners in the other place. The Chairman of the Committee had no choice but to interpret the Standing Orders in that way, but to remove the right of advocacy from Members of Parliament seems self-defeating and inadequate, and I am sure that Members of both Houses will want that to change.
The burden on local authorities, especially in relation to communications, has been astronomical. The leader of Buckinghamshire County Council told the House of Lords HS2 Select Committee on Monday that the council had spent £110,264 in 2015-16 on community liaison relating to HS2. That was entirely to cover for HS2’s poor communications. The council has asked for retrospective compensation to recover those costs, which I think is entirely reasonable. I hope that the Minister will agree to that request. If he cannot do so at the Dispatch Box today, perhaps he will do me the courtesy of looking into the matter to see how we can compensate our local authorities.
I would like the Minister to note that I find it incredible that a county council can provide actual figures for communication and community engagement, down to the last pound, whereas HS2 Ltd cannot do so. Indeed, the county council has since incurred further costs in assisting HS2 Ltd’s groundwork investigations, as its staff are consistently used to help to mediate between HS2 Ltd and residents when intentions to access land have not been adequately communicated. HS2 Ltd could and should be doing that job satisfactorily on its own, if only it had the will. Prior to the introduction of the local engagement managers, local authorities were expected to plug the gap in communication and to provide residents with information that was not readily available from HS2 Ltd. The Minister should bear in mind the fact that that was all done at the councils’ own expense.
It is not just local authorities, parish councils and residents that are affected in this way; HS2 Ltd’s poor engagement reaches into a wider constituency. I have been contacted by the Woodland Trust, which reports that it has not been engaged on the independent review of biodiversity, as recommended in the House of Commons Select Committee, and that it might now have to petition the House of Lords without the information it needs. It also tells me that information regarding third-party planning applications has not been forthcoming from HS2 Ltd, and that that has caused unacceptable delays in compensation payments. A project of this size that brings with it such a heavy burden on our environment, in particular the violation of the AONB in the Chilterns, really should ensure that it deals with the detail and follows up with the environmental organisations that are trying to help to mitigate the project’s impact on the environment.
I ask the Minister to take note of the ongoing communication failures and to ensure that he will make sorting them out his priority. This catalogue of errors has considerably hindered HS2 Ltd’s operation—it is the company’s fault—and is costing the taxpayer even more money. The Minister needs to consider creating a scrutiny body with teeth to hold the organisation to account, especially with construction fast approaching.
HS2 Ltd needs a better attitude towards the affected people. When I was preparing for this debate, I thought of two main themes that I wanted to leave with the Minister. First, I want to ensure that there is an overhaul of the communication and engagement strategy and the attitudes of HS2 Ltd. That should be considered at the highest level of the Department for Transport. Secondly, echoing the interventions from my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), I want to ensure that this communication calamity never happens again. Residents who received substandard treatment during phase 1 should be the exception, not the rule. If residents are going to be treated the same way under phase 2, the taxpayer will be paying even more for the project than is anticipated.
We have to reconsider how we do major infrastructure projects. We had an announcement this week on Heathrow, which I welcomed because it will be of economic benefit to Buckinghamshire, my constituency and my residents. We finally got a decision after the Davies commission and years of investigation—the project has been examined from every angle. HS2, however, was written on the back of an envelope by a Labour Transport Minister and immediately adopted by the coalition Government. All those processes were not followed. One system is far too long and the other is far too short. We need to find a way of ensuring that our infrastructure projects are the right projects in the right places, and that communications and engagement are of the highest standard, otherwise greater problems will emerge as such projects progress.
I do not usually talk at such great length and did not realise that I was going to have the luxury of taking so many interventions. I thank my colleagues in the Chamber for their support today, particularly those who must remain silent. I hope that the Minister will assure me that he will use his influence radically to re-evaluate how HS2 Ltd deals with our constituents, and that he will embed a culture of respect, transparency, openness and improved communications.
Andrew Jones
It would be a little extreme to say that all the reports that have been written on this project are universally condemning it—I do not believe that to be the case. I recognise that some voices have cast doubts upon the project, or have said that we should be doing a different project or that there could be an alternative use of public money, but there is now real momentum behind this project, which had overwhelming support in this House, with the votes on Second and Third Reading of the phase 1 hybrid Bill being passed by nine to one in favour.
When construction begins next year, attitudes will change on this again. We intend to start construction shortly after Royal Assent, which we anticipate will be towards Christmas or in January, depending on the progress that their lordships make; the commencement of work should be in the spring. At that point, the debate will change. It will not be about whether or not we should be doing this project, but about how we can maximise its benefits, because this project is going to happen. When the construction does start, HS2 will rapidly become the largest infrastructure project in Europe. A project of the scale, complexity and duration of HS2’s nature requires engagement across many communities, organisations and individuals.
Mrs Gillan
Having just confirmed the scale and complexity of the project, does the Minister agree that it would be sensible to have a dedicated Minister for it, as it is of such size that it needs supervising closely? It is clearly out of control at the moment.
Andrew Jones
I would not say this project is out of control. The apportionment of responsibilities is mercifully way above my pay grade, but I am thoroughly enjoying having responsibility for this project, because it is an exciting one that will transform our rail industry. It is our long overdue recognition that we need to start taking responsibility for our own transport futures. We are still trading off Victorian infrastructure, which shows not only how significant the ambitions of our Victorian forefathers were, but how we need to address the situation and take responsibility for ourselves.
Let me get back to my point about the scale of the project. We are dealing with a project of enormous scale, complexity and duration, and we are talking about one of the largest communications and engagements challenges ever undertaken on an infrastructure project in this country. On a project of this scale, we cannot leave the communications and engagement to chance. The Government and those who enact the policies of the Government, such as HS2 Ltd, have a duty to communicate clearly and openly with everyone, but above all with those on whom Government policies may impact and, in some cases, disadvantage. All of that takes time, resources and professionalism. Above all, the underlying attitude has to be to treat individuals and communities with respect. That point underpinned many of the remarks of my right hon. Friend. It is very disappointing to hear that there are huge concerns about this, and that people feel that that has not happened. I personally undertake to take all the points from today’s debate to HS2 Ltd, and to have further conversation about them, because the attitude that has been described is unacceptable and will have to change.
Andrew Jones
My hon. Friend makes a legitimate point. Consultation in the worst cases can simply be a tick-box exercise—a process that has to be undertaken for lots of different elements of public policy or for planning applications. That is not good enough, but during the progress of the Bill, we have seen many changes in the original proposals, the consultation and the route and the communication around it. We are not in that place where people are just going through the exercise and not listening, but I do not want people to think that their voices will not be heard. We must ensure that people recognise that their views are respected. That goes back to my earlier point about ensuring that, underpinning everything, there is an attitude of openness and respect for individuals.
Mrs Gillan
I am sure the Minister will—he has a good 20 minutes, and he thought he was going to have only 10, so he has plenty of time.
Yes, in my area, for example, we have had route changes, but the proposal that HS2 should come up in the middle of the football pitch in the middle of Old Amersham was geologically incompetent, and it had to be changed because it was impossible for it to come up in that particular area, so they moved it along to Mantles wood. However, the change was made by the Select Committee here in the House of Commons on additional provision 4, so it was not HS2 or the Department that were listening; it was actually the House of Commons Select Committee—our colleagues—that was listening and made changes. We in the Chilterns area would still like further tunnelling to protect the valuable and fragile landscape. However, that is rapidly diminishing into the great beyond and is impossible, but I am hoping that, maybe, the Minister will give me encouragement that he is listening and that he could achieve that for us.
Andrew Jones
I am, indeed, listening. I am not entirely sure that I can promise extra tunnelling in the Chilterns—that was a very big ask. We have, as a House, and through this project, been over that ground in some detail. However, the point remains that consultations are to genuinely listen to local input so that projects can be improved, whichever part of our public services it is. That cannot mean that everybody gets what they want—that is not possible—but it certainly means that people should be treated with respect and that it is not just a tick-box exercise.
The point about the numbers I was going through earlier is that there is already scale to what is happening. These are big numbers, but the big numbers have to be backed by practical help. In April 2014, an improved assistance package for property owners close to the route was announced. I would stress that the Government are committed to fairly compensating land and property owners directly affected by HS2. Most large infrastructure projects compensate property owners only when statutory compensation measures apply. Given the time it will take to develop HS2, which is a most unique project, the Government recognise that earlier discretionary schemes help those property owners who are most severely affected by the proposals.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) raised the point about those most affected by blight in phase 2a. They can submit a blight notice, and that means, potentially, face value for property—10% homeowner’s payment and costs. I will write to my hon. Friend with details of that so he can pass those on to his constituents and anybody else who may contact him.
Residents with properties on the full phase 1 and phase 2a routes currently have access to a package of compensation measures and assistance. Overall, these are available much more widely than for other infrastructure projects, and, indeed, offer more choice. We intend to bring forward proposals for long-term property compensation and assistance schemes when the HS2 phase 2b announcement is made later this year.
The need-to-sell scheme is, I believe, operating fairly. I will of course pick up the points my right hon. Friend mentioned. We already have updated guidance to reflect learning from the scheme since its inception in January last year. In particular, a change made earlier this year allows a successful applicant to choose one of the two initial valuers, either from HS2 Ltd’s pool or any Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors-registered valuer. While that change is recent, initial results show fewer properties need further valuations to determine their fair price. That is an issue the right hon. Lady has raised, and I am grateful to her for her contribution. It was alluded to by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General, when he talked about how increased and improved communication may have mitigated the need for more petitions as the Bill progressed.
A residents’ charter has been introduced setting out clear commitments by HS2 Ltd to local communities. Through the charter, HS2 Ltd pledges to communicate plainly; respond to inquiries quickly and efficiently; and promote awareness of all discretionary property schemes. Holding HS2 Ltd to the standards of the charter is the independent residents commissioner Deborah Fazan. I have met her already, and I intend to have a regular series of meetings with her and, indeed, others, to make sure they are taking up and following through any issues raised with me by colleagues.
HS2 Ltd has introduced a robust, verified complaints-handling process which includes an independent review stage that meets ISO 9001—the nationally accredited standard. The real prize, of course, is to avoid as far as possible giving cause for complaint. That means building HS2 carefully and correctly. An environmental statement accompanied the introduction of the hybrid Bill, and further environmental statements have accompanied the additional provisions considered by the Select Committee. Changes made in the Select Committee mean less land take, more noise barriers, and longer tunnels. On the latter point, I again acknowledge the successful campaigning by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham to lengthen the tunnel through her constituency.
Andrew Jones
I am not a geologist, but I am aware of concerns about the ground conditions on the route for phase 1 and phase 2a. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) has highlighted the challenges regarding salt mines. These issues will be tackled in full and in detail by geologists. I recognise the challenges involved in a project with significant tunnelling, but, as a country, we have learned more about that through the progress made on Crossrail.
My right hon. Friend has made very clear the frustrations of not only her constituents but those of her colleagues’ constituents. HS2 Ltd acknowledges that it has not always got communications right, as we know. It did not in the case of Flats Lane near Lichfield, as the parliamentary and health service ombudsman’s report and the inquiry by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee laid bare. I am not here to make excuses for the company. We must deal with all those affected with fairness, and fairness requires the highest standards of engagement. I believe that HS2 is an organisation that is learning, and it needs to learn and improve over time. Communications on phase 2 reflect the lessons of past engagement. I cannot correct what has happened before, but I can seek to learn from it, to make sure that the company has learned from it, and to correct and improve things for the future. Much has taken place and much more is planned.
On phase 2a, HS2 Ltd has seen 2,184 people at 13 information events held this month and last month, as well as numerous meetings with parish councils and action groups. It has also met individuals directly and indirectly affected by the 2a line of route. In addition, 1,487 people have been seen at phase 2a property events this year, and 1,442 were seen in 2015. On phase 2b, the company has already seen 6,458 people at nine information events held in South Yorkshire, plus a further 123 at appointment events. For me, that shows how much demand for information there is from the public. They know that this is a big deal, and they need to know what it means for them. High-level communication has to be at the core of a successful project. Following a decision on the phase 2b route, the company has plans for a series of further engagement events, details of which will be made known once confirmed.
Vital as good engagement on phase 2 is, the first phase of HS2 is poised at a significant threshold—the start of construction. HS2 Ltd will specify the behaviours it expects of its contractors in their engagement with residents and communities. For contractors working on HS2, key performance indicators on community engagement will form part of their contracts, and HS2 Ltd will measure their approach to this. The phase that we are entering will see many more people working not just on HS2 but all through the HS2 supply chain. The number of potential interactions between members of the public and the project will therefore increase. It is important to note that this is not just an HS2 Ltd issue; it is an HS2 Ltd and supply chain issue.
Mrs Gillan
One of the key things I have tried to put across during this debate is the fact that people do not have confidence in HS2 or in the independent commissioners who are supposed to represent their interests if things go wrong. Does the Minister agree that for HS2 to have an interim chief executive who comes from a contractor that has already received contracts from HS2, and that is now bidding for further contracts from HS2, makes it look as though there is a conflict of interest? Does the Minister agree that it hardly engenders confidence in the public that the project is being anything other than steamrollered through by people who are connected and who do not share the best interests of those who are affected by the scheme? Is that a relationship that the Minister is happy with? I think that there is a conflict of interest.
Andrew Jones
We sought to make sure that the project continued in its critical phase of delivery when Mr Kirby left to join Rolls-Royce. People leave companies all the time. He had a very good offer to go into Rolls-Royce, and he has taken it. “Man leaves company” is not necessarily news, but it would be news if the project faltered. We seek to secure continuity of delivery while we engage in a full and open recruitment process for a replacement for Mr Kirby.
I understand all the points that have been made about trust and communication. Trust is easy to lose and difficult to gain. As the project develops, the company will simply have to work much harder to rebuild trust. It takes ages to rebuild something that can be lost in a moment. As I have said, we cannot correct what has happened in the past. I know that there are frustrations from communities, councils and colleagues here. We have to learn from them and put in place measures in HS2 and the HS2 supply chain, with a means of appeal. We can come on to the commissioners in a moment. Those have to be the principles by which we can plan for the future. The company is developing its plans for working with contractors to deliver engagement plans for each area, and they will be captured in a public code of construction practice.
An announcement will be made shortly on HS2 Ltd’s appointment of a director of community engagement, who will answer directly to the CEO. In addition, HS2 Ltd has recruited engagement managers for the phase 1 route, and their numbers have increased from six earlier this year to 26 today. They will be the main points of contact for local communities and will be responsible for acting on the concerns of those communities. Moreover, the engagement managers will be responsible for ensuring that the issues that are raised with them are addressed by HS2 Ltd in a timely and open manner.
As a statutory undertaker, HS2 Ltd has been required to appoint an independent construction commissioner. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham highlighted her meeting with Gareth Epps, who was appointed to the role on an interim basis in July. His is an interim role, but we envisage that it will increase after Royal Assent. It would be inappropriate to start adding to the cost base by allocating offices and taking on staff until we have clear Royal Assent. We intend to make sure that that role is independent and away from HS2 Ltd.
Andrew Jones
That message is now firmly on the record. It is inevitable that when projects of great scale arrive in any area, they will attract enormous public interest, public concern and, in many cases, public enthusiasm. We need to make sure that we get this right, and Members of Parliament have an important role as a natural place for a resident who is concerned about a national policy initiative to go.
The construction commissioner will mediate in unresolved disputes between HS2 Ltd and individuals or bodies, including under a planned small claims scheme. He will also monitor complaints and advise on how to reduce them where possible, and he will scrutinise HS2 Ltd and the community engagement work of its contractors, to provide a clear steer for the company. As I have said, following Royal Assent we expect it to become a permanent role, and I intend to have regular contact so that I am fully informed of any issues up and down the line.
I have alluded to the variety of communities and groups with an interest in HS2. The company understands the importance of a tailored approach. Its equality, diversity and inclusion team is at the forefront of engaging with harder-to-reach communities, including perhaps those with a language barrier. There have been concerns in the Camden area, for instance. That highlights the importance of local representatives, so local government has a significant role to play in HS2.
HS2 Ltd provides briefing sessions for local authority elected members and chief officers, and it meets, briefs and seeks input from them. I have met authority leaders in Birmingham and Manchester in the past few days. They are looking at the project in a very encouraging and exciting way and are considering how they will be able to redevelop their areas when the project lands. However, it is not just about redevelopment; it is also about construction work. HS2 Ltd, local authorities and other bodies, such as Highways England, have to engage properly in order to plan the building process effectively.
Mrs Gillan
Will the Minister give an undertaking that he will look at my amendments relating to the adjudicator?
Andrew Jones
I am coming to that and the answer is yes.
HS2 Ltd also has to engage with business organisations, to ensure that they know how to take advantage of the opportunities provided by HS2. I want HS2 to be a project that is from the UK for the UK, with UK contractors bidding for and winning business.
This is a project that matters to everyone, and I believe that it is in the national interest. Of course, it matters particularly to those whom it directly affects, and doing what is right by them includes excellent communications and engagement. That is what I and, most importantly, those along the route are entitled to expect from HS2, and it has given me that commitment. It is seeking to learn and build on what has happened before.
I will visit the HS2 offices in Birmingham shortly to review the community engagement plans. I will sit down with the team to discuss them and I will go through all the points that have been made by colleagues today. I can certainly provide an undertaking to review the amendments, as requested by my right hon. Friend. I will also consider her point about compensation to local authorities and write to her.
The point that I really want to make is that we cannot correct the past. This is a project that is happening. I believe that it is exciting and necessary and that it will transform our rail industry and provide a huge opportunity to regenerate large swathes of big cities across our country. Ultimately, I believe that it is a project that we will be proud of as a nation, but we have to make sure that we deal with the issues that have been raised, including building trust and communicating better. I can certainly give colleagues the undertaking that they can raise issues with me and that I will then take them up with HS2 right away. I want to make sure that, from the moment we set about building the project and right along the length of its line, people are treated with openness and respect, and that through that we can build the trust that has been missing, as judged from the comments of colleagues today.
Question put and agreed to.
Airport Capacity
Cheryl Gillan Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Chris Grayling
We listened to the Airports Commission, which did detailed work on this. It recommended that this was an approach we could take and meet our obligations. We have validated that work since and we still believe that to be the case. I was encouraged, as I said earlier, by the ICAO agreement, which I hope will make it easier for the aviation sector to meet those obligations.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
The business opportunities arising from the expansion are substantial for Buckinghamshire. Bucks Business First and the Buckinghamshire Thames Valley local enterprise partnership have both welcomed today’s announcement. It will continue to reinforce Buckinghamshire as a prime location for businesses to locate to. However, will the Secretary of State undertake to do an assessment of the impact on the local economy of the potential disruption and cumulative effect of having two major projects, namely Heathrow expansion and HS2, being constructed within the same timeframe and in close proximity?
Chris Grayling
Clearly, we have to work to ensure that the impact of two major projects on surrounding communities is minimised to the maximum possible extent. I know everyone involved in both projects will seek to do that. Undertaking two ambitious, modern future-looking projects is a sign of the direction that defines the approach we are taking to governing the country. We want to prepare for a stronger and better future for Britain.