Railways: High Speed 2

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Viscount on securing this debate. It is timely and he has raised some interesting points. Certainly, he made a very good point about compensation. When I worked on the Channel Tunnel, which was an Anglo-French project, we were struck by the difference in the compensation regimes of the two countries. I think that in France people got the valuation of the property plus 10%, plus their moving costs. It was remarkable that very few people complained there, whereas they did in England and they continue to do so. Given the extra time and hassle, and the unfairness that the noble Viscount mentioned, I think that there is a strong argument for improving the package.

The noble Viscount mentioned the link to Heathrow. I believe in a new line to get extra capacity on the railway between London and the West Midlands, the north-west and the north-east. Whether that is via a high-speed passenger line, an ordinary passenger line or a freight line—I declare an interest as the chairman of the Rail Freight Group—more capacity is needed. The traffic is forecast to double in the next 20 years and the existing line certainly cannot cope with that. The Government have chosen the high-speed line.

Personally, I do not have too much of a problem with most of the route. It is interesting that it is still subject to change, as we have seen. I do not think that a spur to Heathrow is particularly sensible. I am sure that passengers going to Heathrow are terribly important, but the volume there compared with the number of passengers going to central London is very small. Probably only one train an hour is justified from, say, Manchester, whereas there will probably be three or four going to central London. They are not going to get to their terminal without changing trains because there are three groups of terminals at Heathrow. Therefore, if they are going to have to change anyway, they might as well change at Old Oak Common—that is my simplistic view on it.

However, what I worry about with the present situation is that we are getting more and more tunnels. We have a new one next to East Midlands Airport, which I think is very good for the logistics industry, we have another one near Ruislip, which I am sure my noble friend Lord Rosser will be pleased about, and we have lots of tunnels or extra lengths through the Chilterns, where there may be more to come or there may not. The extra cost of these tunnels is now probably well over £1 billion, although it may be more than that.

I have two issues to raise relating to the tunnels. The noble Viscount said that they slow down the trains. They do unless you build a tunnel big enough to reduce the air pressure, and that costs more, so there is a balance to be struck there. I do not have a clue what the right balance is but he made some good points.

However, I question whether one needs quite so many tunnels. If you go down and look at the line in Kent, you will see there are not that many tunnels. I spent quite a lot of time working on the side of line when it was being built. There was enormous opposition at the time. I thought that the environmental protection was pretty good—there are some fake tunnels and a real tunnel through the hills. You do not find many people there who now say what a disaster it is. They live with it; they are quite happy with it, and they basically ask what all the fuss was about. Having been brought up in a nice little village called Great Missenden, the one thing that I did not like was the road going through it from Aylesbury and Amersham, which, even 40, 50 or 60 years ago, was a pretty horrible road with lots of traffic. Frankly, building beside it a high-speed railway that was pretty straight, with the right sound barriers, I would have thought was probably just as good or bad as building a long tunnel—but that just happens to be my opinion.

Many noble Lords have talked about, and probably will talk about, the alleged destruction in the Chilterns and elsewhere. I do not know how many houses are going to be affected along the route outside London, but in the Camden area probably 400 houses are going to be affected by the proposed demolition west of Euston station and up at Camden Road. Residents there have just as much right to be considered and looked after as the people who live in leafier areas.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and I have come up with an alternative scheme for the London end of High Speed 2 that avoids those two areas of demolition. The idea is instead to construct an underground station linking Euston and St Pancras, next door to where Crossrail 2 might go. That would give a much better passenger throughput to the two stations as well as allowing a proper connection to HS1. It would provide not only for international trains, such as they may be, but for a new east-west Thameslink, which would probably become very popular—new forecasts are coming out quite soon that will support that.

Does the Minister have any views on this “Euston Cross” proposal? We have met representatives of HS2; we have met some Ministers. We have got further work to do, because HS2 Ltd says that it is too expensive—but it would, wouldn’t it?—but if it is going to add £1.5 billion to the budget for tunnels, it should at least look at this scheme. If it is the same price or even a little bit more and has a greater cost-benefit, it should be investigated.

I hope that this scheme goes ahead, with some changes, because if it does not then we will have to start the whole process over again. I hope that HS2 Ltd will engage with more groups and individuals along the route and listen to some of the comments being made, otherwise it will find a very large number of petitions waiting for it when it gets to the Commons and Lords Select Committees, which will cost it a lot of time and a lot of money.