High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Rosser

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. I think I have some good news. I pay tribute the Select Committee’s work on this. I know that it tried very hard and quizzed lots of people as to how it could be done. As is so often the case, when it gets to the stage of involving contractors, sometimes contractors have good ideas. I was talking to some of them and their specialists last week. One of the key ideas is if you bore tunnels from Old Oak Common to Euston and you complete at least one at any early stage, you can take the spoil out through the tunnel. This is a very good idea because you can then deal with it at Old Oak Common. I am told it is possible; they are trying to work it into the programme. If it is possible, the figure for getting spoil and demolition out would probably go up to above 50%—I was told 70% or 80%—which is really good news. In other words, they have come up with some creative ideas. Maybe we were wrong to criticise HS2 in the past for not coming up with such ideas. It has given us a lot of debating time and the committee several days of discussion, but at least people have come up with a good idea. I think four contractors are tendering and I do not know whether they will all adopt this, but it demonstrates that it is possible. I hope Ministers will do all they can to encourage the contractors to be similarly creative.

There is another issue. In Committee we discussed concreting materials and other materials. The present amendment covers just concreting materials. The creative people are now saying, quite rightly, that they cannot bring cement in by train because it takes too long to unload, but that they can bring in most of the concreting aggregate by train and they can put a batching plant for mixing it somewhere on site. I am sure the committee looked at different locations for that; I have, and it is possible. As the noble Baroness said in her opening remarks, there is not a capacity problem for these trains going into Euston at night. It could easily be done.

I hope the Minister will accept these amendments as pointing the way forward to encouraging HS2 to continue to be creative like this. We do not want 1,500 trucks a day in Camden because the construction will last for 19 years—not that all those trucks will be there for 19 years, but they will still there be there for a considerable period. The basic movement out of spoil and demolition material by rail and bringing in concreting aggregate by rail would make a lot of people happy. I am convinced that the project can be done on that basis without any adverse effect on its programme or cost. If it is set up to do that, the contractors will do it well and it will work well.

[Lord Rosser]

As has been said, the amendment calls for a plan to be published for each construction site in the Euston area to show how the number of lorries delivering to or from the site could be limited to meet laid-down restrictions by the weight of materials transported by road, with the remainder being carried by rail. As has been said, this is an issue to which the Lords Select Committee, on which the three main parties and the Cross Benches were represented, gave consideration. The committee said in paragraph 411 of its report:

“We are very strongly of the opinion that as much material as possible should be moved by rail, so as to reduce road traffic congestion and air pollution. However, we are convinced by the evidence that this aim will be significantly more difficult to achieve at Euston, as compared with most of the other projects referred to by Mr Dyer and Lord Berkeley. We are satisfied that HS2 is taking this responsibility seriously, and we are hopeful that significant progress will be made as the time comes for contractors to be appointed and become involved in the detailed planning. In the meantime we see no useful purpose to be served by attempting to set fixed targets. It would be little more than plucking aspirational figures out of the air”.


We do not diverge from the position of the Select Committee. Since it is also our view as much material as possible should be moved by rail, we will not vote against the amendment if it is put to the vote. Indeed, we want to see the “significant progress” made with contractors to which the Select Committee referred in its report.

The amendment does not indicate what should happen once the plan has been published. The plan would be required to set out how the number of lorries could be limited to deliver the restrictions on movement referred to. Presumably, this would be without any detailed reference to costs or any other potential implications. Frankly, rather than the terms of the amendment, with what the Select Committee might or might not regard as its aspirational figures, surely what is required to deliver for the citizens of Camden is a firm commitment from the Government to hold HS2 to the undertaking it has given to maximise the movement of materials by rail, including in the Euston area, despite the difficulties referred to by the Select Committee, with a view to its going well beyond the guaranteed baseline for moving materials by rail of 28% of excavated soil and 17% of imported construction materials. Paragraph 117 of the promoter’s response to the Select Committee’s special report says:

“The Promoter reiterates its overarching commitment to continue to seek to maximise, as far as reasonably practicable, the amount of material that can be moved by rail, and the underlying commitments it has given the London Borough of Camden”.


I hope the Minister will address this point about how the Government intend to ensure that maximising the movement of materials by rail is delivered.

High Speed Rail (London–West Midlands) Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Rosser

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 12th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Rosser]

In part, the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, relates to an issue I have asked about previously, which is also contained in the Select Committee’s report on page 97, on permanent or temporary land take. Certainly, the Country Land and Business Association, for example, believes that HS2 is seeking powers to take land permanently which it needs only temporarily, and that this is leading to a highly unsatisfactory situation. I would be grateful if the Minister can reconfirm what I believe he has already said, that when the Government come to respond to the Select Committee’s report, they will address what the Select Committee had to say on the issue of permanent or temporary land take, on pages 97 to 99 of that report. It may well be that, in the light of what the Government have to say, an amendment on this issue will need to be pursued on Report. Therefore, I want that assurance that those paragraphs which the Select Committee included on permanent or temporary land take will be commented on in the Government’s reply.

I appreciate that I am stretching things a bit in raising this, but the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, asked a question earlier about the moving of the portals of the tunnel at Euston. I too have had an email which said that there is a suggestion that staff at HS2 Ltd have indicated that consideration is being given to moving the portals of the tunnel from which the proposed high speed line will emerge to the west of Euston station, about one kilometre nearer to the station. Can the Minister say whether that is correct and whether consideration is being given to this?

[Lord Berkeley]

To add to that, I have also heard that same rumour from some of the local residents. It is particularly unfortunate if we hear stories like that from residents and we cannot get the answer from Ministers, so I am sure that the Minister will do his best to respond.

On the compulsory purchase and compensation side, I have heard allegations that some of the land subject to compulsory purchase in the Old Oak Common area will be allocated or transferred to a separate company—many of the directors of HS2 seem also to be on its board—and then used for, shall we say, non-railway purposes. Surely compulsory purchase for railway schemes is designed for railway purposes, but if this is to be used for other purposes, it begs a lot of questions as to whether that is an appropriate methodology. If the Minister cannot answer that this afternoon, I am sure he could write to me, if that will be possible.

High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Rosser

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Lords & Report stage: House of Lords
Tuesday 10th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I follow my noble friend’s example. While I fully support her wish to have woodland preserved, I do not know much about it. I think it is a very good idea and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I hope that it will be in the response next week. However, I have problems with Amendment 15. Overhead power lines for railways are a necessary part of making the trains run, unless you use diesels. Diesels are not only polluting, they are very heavy and they do not really like going as fast as is planned for HS2.

Noble Lords may be aware that when the east coast main line was electrified—before my day, but perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Snape, was around then—it was done on the cheap and the wires do come down with depressing regularity. Network Rail, in electrifying the Great Western, have therefore gone to the opposite extreme and put up some pretty hefty towers, supported on piles in the ground, and the wires will be so strong that they will probably resist a good hurricane. But then the people of Bath said that they did not want wires on the railway going past the beautiful city of Bath. When Bath was built, there was not a railway, was there? But a railway was put through it so that the good people of Bath could get to Bristol and London and other places. They did not want a catenary at all; they wanted a third rail because you would not see it. It would have cost billions to develop a special train to go just there so you would not see the wires. The later idea was that the people of Goring, somewhere between Didcot and Reading, did not like the look of these posts and so they are taking legal action, I believe, against Network Rail to have the posts redesigned.

If we want to move around in a modern way, we need electric wires to move the trains. The further apart you put the posts, the more the wires are likely to come down when there is any wind. There has to be a compromise. Yes, we have railways going through AONBs and other places but if you go to places such as the Swiss Alps, the Austrian Alps or other beautiful parts of the continent, all the lines are electrified and the wires just blend in with the rest of the infrastructure. I would strongly resist HS2 being told to have special architect-designed posts for a particular area. It will not work. It will cost an enormous amount of money. These things will fit in with the surroundings quite well. Frankly, when 40% of the line is in a tunnel anyway, you are not going to have too many posts around to look at.

[Lord Rosser]

I want to make just one or two comments about Amendment 28, to which my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone has spoken. Obviously, I am aware of the comments that have been made by the Select Committee, which was not, let us say, fully enamoured of the report by Natural England. Equally, as I understand it, it was a report that Natural England was asked to produce in relation to this issue. As my noble friend has said, it has made its recommendations. The Select Committee took the view that it did not feel the reference to a scale of 30:1 was evidence-based. Before I go any further, I accept that I was not a member of the committee and therefore do not know everything that was said when evidence was taken. I do not doubt in that sense that the committee had good reason for making the point it has.

I hope the Government will look sympathetically on the amendment. Certainly, I, too, wish to hear what their response is to the report and the review by Natural England. If their view is that they do not feel they can go down the road of that report, I hope they will set out very clearly what their reasons are and perhaps whether they have alternative propositions to those that have been made. I hope the response will be, at least in large measure if not in its entirety, that they would be willing to accept what was in the report that Natural England was asked to prepare.