High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to support this High Speed 2 Bill. I congratulate the noble Baroness on the way she introduced it and, of course, my noble friend Lord Adonis on his very full and fascinating description and arguments in favour of it. It is great that we now have all-party support for this project. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group.

As several noble Lords have very kindly said about rail freight, it is forecast to double over 20 years. We have discussed that, and passenger increase, in previous debates. Therefore I see High Speed 2, certainly in phase 1 and continuing into phase 2, as in effect adding two more tracks to the west coast main line in a way that will not obstruct or close it while it is being built. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, said that he expected that if we did not have this, there would be a shambles in 20 to 30 years. I believe that it will be closer to 10 years.

As part of the preparations, the freight industry is discussing the capacity with HS2. Noble Lords will understand that when phase 1 gets to somewhere around Lichfield, where it joins the west coast main line, you have lots of different train services going on to the west coast main line, which happens to go into a short section of two tracks that go through Shugborough Tunnel. We have had very useful discussions with Network Rail and HS2 about where all these trains will go when seven extra High Speed 2 trains in phase 1 join the residual services on the west coast main line—although “residual” is not the right word, because they are very important services. As noble Lords have said, there is no intention to reduce those services provided to people who are not on High Speed 2. If you add to that the increase in freight, you have a problem. Network Rail is working with the industry on what to do about that problem, but it will still be there in 10 years’ time. Whether it involves diversions, more night working or whatever, that challenge will happen now.

As I have said here previously, if it does not go by rail, it will go by road, and do we want another three-lane motorway somewhere? I think that the answer, as my noble friend said earlier, is that we do not. Therefore we have to find solutions to the capacity problem. It is a problem mainly on the west coast main line and, funnily enough, it is not just near Lichfield and thereabouts, but will happen north of Crewe as well, because there are sections of two-track there when you go over Shap towards Carlisle. The network needs looking at in a 20-year horizon so that the demands of freight and passenger—not just up the line but across it and parallel to it—are met. It is good that it has begun, and we shall probably have to have quite a few debates about the detail of this when one gets to the hybrid Bill and the Select Committees to see what answers and commitments can be made. However, in many ways that is a good challenge to have.

I was struck by comments from my noble friend Lord Adonis and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and others about the appraisals. It is absolutely crazy to say that that the growth will stop three years after phase 2 opens. That is rather like the announcement last week by either the Treasury or maybe the Department for Transport that the forecasts are that the growth of cycling in London will suddenly stop in 2015 and will thereafter decrease. Leaving aside the terrible run of accidents in the past week or two, what evidence is there that the growth in cycling in London over the past 10 years, which has been pretty surprising and gratifying for me, will suddenly tail off? It is probably something to do with the fact that they do not want to spend any more money on it. We need a review of the whole appraisal methodology. Maybe the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, is the person to lead that. The whole structure is not fit for purpose. Having arguments about what the cost-benefit ratio on a project the size of HS2 is is a pretty good waste of time, but still, we have to do it.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, spoke about environmental issues, particularly in the Chilterns, and about AONBs and woodlands; I do not think that he mentioned bats, but they will come in. I was involved in a way with the construction of HS1 and had many dealings with the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, when he was Minister. He certainly tried very hard and very successfully to deal with the objections of some of the people who lived along that route. One person said, “You are destroying the garden of England”. In three years’ time, after the line was opened and the trees had grown up a bit, he told me that it had not made any difference to his life at all. The construction will be hard, but we have to be careful about overreacting to what will, I hope, be a temporary and well managed construction phrase. When it is built, it will not be particularly serious. This makes me worry about how one balances the concerns of people against environmental concerns. As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said, 2,700 properties in Camden are affected against 100 in the Chilterns. How do we balance those? Are the Chiltern people more important, or is the environment more important? That is a very difficult judgment to make, although I am sure somebody will make it. However, we have to be careful that we do not overreact. I say this as someone who was brought up in Great Missenden; I know it very well.

I have had lots of letters from people about objections. Some say that this is about capacity, others that it is about speed, while others argue about the economy. However, let us just look at what has happened to Lille and Lyon in France, which were two of the first provincial cities in France to be connected to the high-speed network. The city of Lille paid a lot of extra money to get the station in the middle of Lille rather than having the line go round the outside, as originally planned. The two cities are completely transformed. To say that such a line pulls economic benefit away from such cities to the centre is all wrong. It will help. Even outside cities such as Lille—up to 20, 30 and 40 kilometres away—there are benefits. We should look and see what has happened there.

We should also reflect on the fact that the first high-speed line in France, to Lyon, was built as a means of providing more capacity; it was nothing to do with speed. It is a virtually straight line from Paris to Lyon, which goes through very sparsely populated countryside, and it has done so well in the 20 or 30 years that it has been open that they have had to replace all the track already and have signalled it so that, I believe, it can now take a train every two minutes, because the demand is increasing. That will probably go on.

The track is very steep and undulating. I remember taking some Members of Parliament there when I worked for Eurotunnel, and they drove a train; we were allowed to drive the trains in those days. It was great fun, although people normally got a bit seasick in the front. It was also very exciting, and it still is exciting—and it just shows what the demand really could be.

To conclude, I shall say a word or two about connectivity. A lot of people have said that the HS2 line is not connected, but I think the Government are right not to specify what services will be operated in 10 or 20 years’ time. The links are there. They are linking into the west coast main line. They are going to link to Manchester, to the west coast north, to Leeds and everything. In the south, Old Oak Common, as some noble Lords have said, is a wonderful interchange.

I have concerns about some of the connections in London. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and I are coming up with an alternative idea that, we hope, will reduce the demolition around Euston and provide better connectivity. I also have concerns about the station in Birmingham and the lack of connectivity on to Wolverhampton, because people will not save much time if they have to walk for 15 minutes between the new station and Birmingham Snow Hill to go on to Wolverhampton.

However, these are small details. The key issue is how to get the connectivity between these new services and the existing ones and city centres. We have problems in many station termini in London: Victoria, Paddington and Euston all get very congested in the rush hour, particularly on the Underground. Connecting some of the west coast main line suburban trains into Old Oak Common and directly into Crossrail will save an enormous number of passengers from going into the Underground at peak times.

Those are the kinds of issues that need to be discussed because HS2 is part of a network, and I hope that HS2 trains will go to many different parts of the north and west on electrified lines. That will provide enormous benefits in capacity. The speed will help in some places, but the important thing is capacity, because if we do not have the capacity we will be really lost. We have to get on with this as quickly as we can. I do not believe that doubling or quadrupling the great central or the midland main line will be enough. Just imagine the hassle in High Wycombe and Princes Risborough if we had to demolish half the houses there and build four tracks. The midland main line will probably have to be reconstructed as four tracks, as it used to be, in addition to HS2, within 10 or 20 years anyway. This is the kind of growth we are looking at. We have to get on with this project. It has been well thought out. I am sure that there are still some improvements that can be made, but I end by asking the Minister this question, to answer when she winds up: when will the hybrid Bill be published?