HS2

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I notice that does not apply to the mover of the Motion.

I remind the House of my railway interests which I have declared on the register. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, on securing the debate. The questions she has asked about the route, the speed and the station locations of HS2 are very interesting ones and are, I suggest, comprehensively answered in the report Oakervee Review, to which she made not a single reference in her speech.

Paragraphs 6.9 and 6.10 of the Oakervee Review say:

“If starting from a blank sheet of paper, the cost impacts from reducing the speed and frequency of the design could have the potential to be quite wide-ranging: different alignments could be found, stations could need fewer platforms, junctions like the approach at Euston station could be de-scoped, and structures could be cheaper … However, to achieve these cost reductions would require revising the route alignment and designs. For Phase One, this would require changing the Phase One Act which, depending on the amount and scale of changes required, would require new environmental impact assessments, consulting with newly impacted communities and enacting new legislation. This could significantly delay the forecast opening date of Phase One, causing further uncertainty and blight to local communities on the route.”


This is my final quote from Oakervee:

“The key question is whether to build HS2 now with the maximum capability for 18tph at 360kph, or reduce requirements now and risk in the future wanting to add in this capability, which would be much more expensive to do.”


The answer is self-evident. While it may make sense to start with a more cautious level of service, with fewer trains per hour perhaps operating at slightly lower speed, we have to build in the capacity to run trains faster and more frequently in future. Can noble Lords imagine any of the great Victorian railway builders such as Brunel imagining that they would build a railway geared just for the speed of the 1840s and 1850s? No, they built for the future. That is why we have a railway network as it is. We have to show the same imagination with High Speed 2.

The noble Baroness also asked about the location of stations. I express my strong support for the Government’s decision to accept the Oakervee recommendation to make Euston the London terminus. While Old Oak Common could temporarily be the terminus for trains from the north while the line to Euston is being completed, it cannot be a long-term solution.

As far as Birmingham is concerned, I am delighted that Curzon Street remains the city’s terminus. Railway historians in the House will know that not only was Curzon Street the station serving both the London and Birmingham Railway and the Grand Junction Railway when the line opened in 1838, but happily it survives today as a grade 1 listed building. The Curzon Street area has already attracted £724 million of investment as a direct result of High Speed 2 and the overall effect on Birmingham as a whole has been immense, with both HSBC and PwC locating major parts of their business there in anticipation of the coming of the new railway. Andy Street, the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands, has said:

“This is more than just a new railway, this is a game-changing project that is driving huge economic growth to the West Midlands, with thousands of jobs already created. A project of this significance cannot be allowed to be derailed by spiralling costs.”


Similarly, numerous other towns and cities—not just the initial 25 that will receive direct HS2 trains, but many more up and down the country—will get better rail services. Local growth plans show that almost 500,000 jobs and 90,000 new homes will be the result of the better connectivity that HS2 services will bring. It already supports 9,000 jobs across the country, including 320 apprentices, and 70% of the 2,000 businesses that have already worked on the project are small and medium-sized enterprises.

There is one other potential station considered by Oakervee, which I support and on which I would welcome the Minister’s comments in due course. Conclusion 14 of the report reads:

“The DfT should consider making passive provision for a future HS2 station near to Calvert.”


The Oxford to Cambridge line is currently being rebuilt in stages. It was not in the Beeching report for closure and should never have closed in the 1960s, but it is being rebuilt and the route will cross HS2 near the village of Calvert. There will be a phase 1 infrastructure maintenance depot for HS2 there, and there is a lot of residential and commercial development planned for the area. While it does not make sense to delay HS2’s construction to build the station now, it would be sensible to make provision for it.

It is worth remembering that other countries that have successfully built and are operating high-speed railways have added stations as demand has increased. Taiwan for example, which I know well as the Government’s trade envoy, opened its high-speed line between Taipei and Zuoying in 2007, and added four additional stations in 2014 and 2015, as well as extending the line. They worked to the principle of “build the capacity and the people will come”. Your Lordships may be impressed to learn that last year that railway carried 67.5 million passengers and 99.88% of its trains ran on time. That is the sort of service we can look forward to with HS2.

Contrary to what the noble Baroness said, HS2 will be a green and environmentally friendly railway. There is a commitment to creating a green corridor along its tracks, with 7 million new trees and shrubs already being planted along the phase 1 route, and the establishment of a woodland fund to restore existing ancient woodlands and create new ones. There will be 650 hectares of new woodland. That contrasts with the 29 hectares of woodland that will be lost over the 140 miles of HS2; that is out of 3.19 million hectares of woodland in the UK, of which around 1 million is described as ancient woodland. By contrast, the Independent reported that when contractors widened just 2.5 miles of the A21 in Kent they took out 9 hectares, almost a third of the HS2 total.

Above all, HS2 will be crucial in achieving the transition to carbon net zero by 2050 and create a long-term carbon alternative to domestic flights or driving. I hope the Minister will be able to give a commitment that her department will look again at HS2’s potential for modal shift, as that would significantly enhance its business case. As the Prime Minister said in his Statement on 11 February:

“Passengers arriving at Birmingham Airport will be able to get to central London by train in 38 minutes, which compares favourably with the time it takes to get from Heathrow by taxi”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/2/20; col. 712]


There is an inescapable logic in that statement, because the greatest environmental gain which HS2 will make possible is the abandonment of the third runway at Heathrow. I hope the Green Party might be able to agree with me on that at least.

Transport Infrastructure

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I thank my noble friend for his local question about Lincoln. I do not have statistics to hand about our roads investment in Lincoln. I am fairly sure there will be something, and I will write to him.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for the letter of 4 February that she wrote to all Peers who took part in the debate on 23 January. I certainly found it very helpful and encouraging, although not all her noble friends did. I will raise a question that was touched on by her noble friend Lord Haselhurst. The Minister says that, if the project goes ahead, HS2 will create a long-term carbon alternative to domestic flights or driving, and that HS2 can play a key role in achieving the transition to carbon net zero by 2050—something that I wish the Green Party would occasionally take seriously. The Prime Minister’s Statement says that:

“Passengers arriving at Birmingham Airport will be able to get to central London by train in 38 minutes, which compares favourably with the time it takes to get from Heathrow by taxi”.


Presumably we are not now going to have a third runway.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

My Lords, the third runway at Heathrow is a private development. If it falls within the criteria of the airports national policy statement, it will go ahead.

High Speed 2 (Economic Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my railway interests as declared in the register. Over the decade or so that we have been debating, planning and now building HS2, the demand for rail travel in Great Britain has continued to grow at a rate that those of us who worked for the railways back in the 1970s and 1980s find astonishing. Back then, British Rail was planning for contraction and there was still talk of closing lines.

We have heard from some noble Lords that it is possible to divert money from High Speed 2 to upgrading existing lines, but I think that was answered very convincingly in Construction News earlier this week by the Network Rail chief executive, Andrew Haines, in his description of the sort of disruption that it would cause to train services for years and years. My noble friend Lord Adonis referred to that. Assuming continuous weekends of closure, for example, the east coast route would be closed at one location every week for between 26 and 29 years. We all remember—and indeed shudder at the memory—the disruption caused week after week, month after month, during the attempt around the start of this century to modernise the west coast main line. If we did not build High Speed 2, we would have to do that all over again, and indeed cause similar or worse disruption on all three main lines to the north.

It is not true to say that there is plenty of capacity on those lines, as the noble Viscount has just indicated. There are no train paths available at all on the west coast main line and no additional train paths available out of either King’s Cross or St Pancras. Network Rail’s report on new lines published in 2009 forecast that the growth in passenger demand would be 2% a year and concluded that two new running lines south from Birmingham would be needed to cope with the demand. Growth has in fact been double that, at up to 5.4% a year, so we are running out of time and certainly running out of capacity.

There are only three effective ways of dealing with this growth in demand for train travel. The first is to choke off demand by raising fares to unreasonable levels, pricing all but the most wealthy off the trains, and degrading services at the same time. British Rail was told to do that by the Government in the 1970s, as I remember very well; it did not work out well for anybody—not for the Government and certainly not for the railway.

The second option, which I am pleased to say nobody today has so far put forward, is to embark on another programme of motorway construction. We would need two new motorways to provide anything approaching the same capacity as the High Speed 2 railway line.

The third option is to do what most major economies in Europe and the Far East have done, as detailed with great care by my noble friend Lord Grocott: to build a network of high-speed railways. The one aspect that is common to all these countries is that none has regretted it and all have expanded their high-speed network after opening it and having built and operated their first lines. Not only do they solve the problem of meeting growing passenger demand for rail travel, they also achieve huge environmental benefits as a result of what is called modal shift.

The most immediate benefit of creating extra capacity on our existing main line railways is to provide room for attracting extra freight on to those routes; an argument which I remember my noble friend Lord Berkeley put forward with great skill when he was involved with the Rail Freight Group. It is particularly true of the west coast main line, and would enable us to replace thousands of heavy goods vehicle movements.

High-speed railways also have the desirable effect of attracting passengers from shorter-distance air services and longer-distance car travel. I commend to your Lordships an excellent piece by the journalist Ian Walmsley in August’s Modern Railways, entitled, I think, “HS2: Stand Up and Be Counted”. I shall quote just one paragraph:

“HS2 stands or falls on modal transfer from road and air, but that’s no problem because high-speed rail achieves exactly that. The problem starts when you look at the Department’s figures for modal transfer, which are unbelievably low. All over the world road and air traffic has moved to high-speed rail when it becomes available, yet predictions for HS2 show just 1 per cent of its business coming from air and 4 per cent from cars.”


I have no doubt that the potential for attracting air passengers is far greater than the department has so far allowed for.

High Speed 2 is essential to achieving net zero emissions and tackling climate change. I think that only the noble Lord, Lord Mair, has mentioned the climate emergency in this debate so far. Today, a high- speed rail journey would typically yield a 90% reduction in CO₂ emissions compared with flying the same route. When electrical power generation is fully decarbonised, this will be a 100% saving. Rail freight reduces carbon emissions by 76% compared to road, and passengers travelling on High Speed 2 will emit almost seven times less carbon emissions per passenger kilometre than the equivalent intercity car journey. Phase 1 of High Speed 2 will make a significant strategic contribution towards a carbon-neutral economy, with the whole-life carbon footprint of its construction and operation being less than one month’s road transport greenhouse gas emissions. I have to say that this is one reason that I find the opposition of the Green Party to High Speed 2 so inexplicable.

If HS2 does not proceed, it is not, of course, the case that funds would be immediately transferable to the north. As the Minister said on 24 July, in response to a question from her friend the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham,

“northern powerhouse rail … is a very important railway project, but it is not an either/or situation. We can have HS2 and we can have northern powerhouse rail; indeed, for both of them to work, they both need to be built”.—[Official Report, 24/7/19; col. 751.]

According to the Times on Monday, Britain’s construction companies have written to the Prime Minister warning that scrapping HS2 would cause “irreparable damage” to the sector and would jeopardise “an industrial renaissance” in the Midlands and northern England. As the biggest infrastructure project in Europe, HS2 is expected to create around 30,000 construction jobs and 2,000 apprentices. There is no alternative shovel-ready infrastructure project that can sustain the tens of thousands of skilled workers needed to maintain Britain’s engineering and construction capability. I quote from the letter:

“It would take many years to get an equivalent pipeline of work in place, by which time the damage would already be done to the supply chain. Just as the original railways built by the Victorians are still in use today, HS2 is not just a ‘once in a generation’ project, but a multi-century investment.”


They are absolutely right.

Thomas Cook

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, the reason why the 150,000 Thomas Cook customers are able to be repatriated at no expense to themselves is largely because of the EU package travel directive that was agreed in 2015. Will she give us an assurance that, if the United Kingdom does leave the European Union, the protection given by that directive will continue?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I believe that that directive has been brought across and is in our law.

Railways: Newcastle and Edinburgh

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I thank my noble friend for his intervention. I too am a traveller using South Western Railway and I was disappointed that services were interrupted last week. Obviously, we are encouraging discussions to continue. It is not good that strikes are taking place and that there are poor industrial relations on that particular line. We are doing what we can to make sure that the conversations continue.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, remaining in the north of England for a moment, the Minister will know that I have tabled a Question about the provision of services between Middlesbrough and Whitby. Despite support from the community rail partnership, Northern railway is declining to put on any extra services. Could I have an Answer to that Question quickly? Perhaps the Minister will write to me if there is a problem with it.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I will have to write to the noble Lord about services between Middlesbrough and Whitby, but I can say that LNER plans to introduce direct services between Middlesbrough and London in due course. However, I do not know about the services to Whitby.

Transport: Freight Services

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, as I said, we absolutely are consulting Transport for the North on our funding, and we have committed that £2.9 billion to the trans-Pennine routes upgrade, which is the largest investment in existing railways at the moment. Obviously, the rail system is complex, crossing all parts of the country, and it is important that we co-ordinate it centrally, but we listen to the needs of people in the areas where we are making the investment.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the construction of a high-speed network is critical to the provision of extra capacity for freight on the entire rail network north of London, and not just to the Midlands but to the north-west and the north-east?

[Baroness Sugg]

I certainly agree with the noble Lord. Our railways are absolutely at capacity—we have seen a doubling of passengers—and we desperately need more space, which is what HS2 will deliver.

Railways: Reliability

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for securing this very interesting debate. I too welcome the Minister to her first railway debate. I am sure there will be many more and I hope she will be here to take part in those as well. There can be no one in your Lordships’ House who disagrees with the aspiration to improve the quality of Britain’s rail services. I remind the House of my railway-related interests as declared in the register, particularly my chairmanship of the Great Western Railway advisory board. I am also president of the Cotswold Line Promotion Group, and chair of the North Cotswold Line Task Force, which has been set up by Worcestershire County Council and is supported by all local authorities and local enterprise partnerships in the area to act as the catalyst for a better and more reliable train service.

As the noble Lord, Lord Patten, may remember from his days as the Member for Oxford, the principal obstacle to achieving this is the infrastructure, as there are still substantial lengths of single-track railway at both the Oxford and Worcester ends of the line. Short of closing the route altogether, which was talked about in the immediate post-Beeching era, no single decision damaged the reliability of rail services—not just on the Cotswold Line but on routes such as the noble Lord’s South Western Main Line to Exeter—as much as that to reduce a double-track main line railway to single track, because of the delays that inevitably creates at the passing points.

Apologists for the Governments at the time—both Labour and Conservative—argued that, as the railways were thought to be in terminal decline, taking out excess capacity and eliminating alternative routes were inevitable and necessary cost-cutting measures. What utter nonsense that was, and how short-sighted. While none of us who were working in the industry then could have foreseen the astonishing growth in passenger demand over the past two decades, just a small degree of foresight in the 1970s and 1980s—particularly leaving infrastructure in place rather than ripping it out—could have saved hundreds of millions of pounds today as Network Rail battles to restore capacity and reopen routes such as that from Oxford to Cambridge through Milton Keynes.

That leads me to High Speed 2, the project conceived by my noble friend Lord Adonis and supported steadfastly by all transport Ministers after him, and by an overwhelming majority of Members of this House and the other place. In my view, the argument in favour of High Speed 2 has now been comprehensively won, and we look forward to the publication of the hybrid Bill which will take the railway north from Birmingham towards the end of the next decade. When we weigh up the arguments, we should take account of what we know about High Speed 1, Britain’s first high-speed line, from London to the Channel Tunnel through Kent. As recently as last September, Visit Kent published a report to mark the 10th anniversary of the line. It found that since 2010, leisure journeys to Kent via High Speed 1 had increased ninefold, from 100,000 to 890,000 in 2016, and that the total economic impact of HS1 on the visitor economy in 2016 alone was valued at £72.7 million. For every High Speed 1 leisure journey made to Kent in 2016, £81.65 was added to the local economy. Since 2010, High Speed 1’s activity has led to the creation and support of 5,766 tourism sector jobs in Kent. These are real facts relating to a real railway, so when we hear about projections for High Speed 2 we need to take those into account and realise what the benefits to the Midlands and the north of England will be when the railway gets there.

The other really significant point to make about High Speed 1 is its astonishing reliability. In 2017, the average delay affecting all operators, including the high-speed domestic Southeastern services as well as Eurostar, is just six seconds per train—the sort of reliability figure that the Japanese railways achieve regularly with their high-speed trains. So, the lesson for High Speed 2 is that a new railway is a reliable railway. It is also a popular railway which attracts customers in greater and greater numbers and provides the capacity which our conventional main lines can no longer offer because demand has grown so much. Above all, these railways demonstrate, and provide the proof, that railways are central to economic growth and prosperity.

We have had a number of briefings for this debate. I particularly commend that of the Railway Industry Association, which points out that passenger numbers have doubled in the last 20 years, that the rail industry employs 240,000 people and contributes £11 billion gross added value to the economy, and that with a vibrant rail industry at home, we are now again able, as we did in the past, to sell our railway expertise abroad. As the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Taiwan, I have had the privilege of leading a railway industry delegation to Taiwan, where there is huge interest in buying British expertise. I anticipate that I shall do that again in January. However, you need a vibrant rail industry at home before you can be credible when you are selling your expertise abroad.

This has been a good debate, and everybody has been reasonably positive. I learned more about the railways of north-east Lancashire than perhaps it was necessary to know, but it was great all the same to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, speak about that. I support his aspiration to take the Colne line through to Skipton. Indeed, I am a member of the pressure group that is attempting to do that. I look forward very much to hearing what the Minister has to say on her first outing at the Dispatch Box.

Railways: Northern England

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

The noble Lord is right: I do have an extensive list. However, I do not see that one on it, but I will write to him on that particular case.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my railway interests in the register. The Minister will be struck by the support that exists all over the House for the reopening of rural railway lines. Can I draw his attention to the report by the Association of Train Operating Companies in 2009, which looked at communities with more than 15,000 inhabitants, and at the potential for reopening services where they used to exist? There were 14 lines of the highest priority where there was either an existing freight line or a disused line. No Government have yet acted on that report, so will the Minister now please have a look at it?

[Lord Callanan]

I will certainly have a look at the report, now that the noble Lord has drawn my attention to it.

High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

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

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

I intervene to remind noble Lords that this is Report. The rules of debate state:

“On report no member may speak more than once to an amendment, except the mover of the amendment in reply or a member who has obtained leave of the House”.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

Will the noble Earl take the trouble to read the very wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, who spoke a few moments ago about the consequences of accepting these amendments? If one of them were passed, the Bill would have to be re-hybridised. It would have to go back to the hybrid Bill Committee and months and months would be taken up by looking at the Bill again with these provisions in it.

I cannot believe that the House would want to do that, bearing in mind the exceptionally good job that the hybrid committee did. I see a number of its members are in the Chamber at the moment and they deserve the thanks of all of us for looking at this Bill in such detail and displaying such patience in listening to huge numbers of petitions and far too many lawyers who were presenting them on behalf of people with, in some cases, entirely spurious objections. The committee went through that very well and came up with a series of recommendations for change, and the Government, to their great credit, have accepted them all either in spirit or literally. The fact that the committee has done that job and we have a Bill to which we can give Third Reading and get work under way is very important.

Old Oak Common is a wonderful place. It is where my great-grandfather lived in a Great Western Railway house when he was a top link driver on the railway in the early years of the 20th century. But it is not a place where people want to go when they are travelling on high-speed trains from Birmingham or the north of England. Indeed, the practicality of finishing a journey there has been addressed by Transport for London. It answers the point made by my noble friend Lord Berkeley about Crossrail. Yes, Crossrail is going really well and will be a great success. But when HS2 arrives at Old Oak Common, it is estimated that about a third of the passengers will get off, get on to Crossrail and go into the City. However, if they were all required to go on to the City, the difference between these two—HS2 terminating at Euston or at Old Oak Common—would, in the words of Transport for London, be the difference between Crossrail coping and Crossrail falling down. That would be the implication of accepting this amendment.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, it is nice to be thanked for one’s work. I see several Lords from the eclectic group who served on that committee, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, whom I must congratulate on the way he handled both the hearings and the committee.

I have recently been reading a book—I hope this slight digression will be acceptable, as it relates to this amendment—called Mr Barry’s War, by Caroline Shenton, one of the archivists. The bit that I like is when she talks about an attempt by Barry and a group of architects—someone called William “Strata” Smith, a great geologist, was also involved—to find stone to build this place. They travelled all over the UK. They get to Lincoln, with its magnificent gothic minster, the Ancaster stone quarries—said to be Roman—then Grantham, Stamford and nearby Burghley House. Once they get through Kettering and Northampton by coach, they,

“made their way back to London by the novel means of Robert Stephenson’s thrilling new London and Birmingham Railway, which had opened along its whole length just five days previously on 17 September. This was the first London intercity rail line, and Euston station the first mainline terminus in a capital city anywhere in the world. Its magnificent Doric Propylaeum”—

I do not know if I pronounced that correctly—

“or entrance archway, made of millstone grit, stood for 125 years until pulled down by modernist planners in 1962”.

I could not help feeling that that was rather a propitious bit of reading prior to this debate.

We did not debate the overall cost—that was not in the committee’s remit—but we certainly debated some costings by my noble friend Lord Berkeley and his expert witnesses. I regret to say, however, that they did not stack up. Neither did Old Oak Common. I had to smile when someone said, “It’s just an interim stop”. We all know that if it finishes at Old Oak Common it will be a real stretch of the imagination to believe that that will be interim.

The noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, said that the route had not been decided. It has been decided, and we had a debate, I assure noble Lords, on whether it would be more desirable to terminate at Old Oak Common. That was not the view of the committee after listening to a range of expert witnesses and for some of the reasons cited by my noble friend Lord Faulkner.

We can all have a view, if you like, about people’s motives and intentions—I will assume that they are motivated by the best of all reasons—but one thing you cannot assume is that the process would be speedy, for either the first or the sixth amendment. This will be a lengthy process, and, as has been said, we are now seven years—I was going to say “down the track” but that is an unfortunate pun; if only we were. We have some way to go. As someone who, like the noble Lord, served on Crossrail, I remember just as many criticisms of that. Now it is all enthusiasm, but it was not at the time, I assure noble Lords; there were just as many doubters and naysayers.

My view—and you have heard from other colleagues on the committee—is that we gave this a thorough examination, and I am certain that we also debated it in Committee. I cannot remember how many times I have heard this debate. As a former Attorney-General once said, repetition does not necessarily enhance the value of your contribution. I am beginning to feel that way in this case. I hope noble Lords will not support these amendments; I do not believe they add anything to the existing analysis. As I recall, in the recent Grand Committee debate the Minister reported to us that the National Audit Office has run its calculators over this. Every time there has been a challenge on the costings done by HS2—the classic one was on the tunnel costings in Wendover, which we may unfortunately return to again—they were independently checked. The proposed tunnelling at Colne Valley was independently validated and HS2 was found to be correct in those circumstances. I listened carefully to the argument but I incline to the views expressed by so many of my fellow committee members, and by my noble friend Lord Faulkner.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I pick up the theme of my noble friend Lord Snape and express my disappointment at the lack of ambition that some Members of this House seem to demonstrate towards our capacity as a nation to build wonderful railways. Some of the finest structures created in the 19th century were built by railway engineers, whether it was viaducts through the Peak District or magnificent railway stations. To have such a lack of ambition and to say, “Gosh, this new line must all go in tunnels because it’s going to be so obtrusive”, is very disappointing. Also, as my noble friend says, it is very expensive. I remember at one of the early briefing meetings given by Sir David Higgins I asked him, “Wouldn’t it be possible to reduce the cost of the project if we didn’t have so much tunnel in it?”. He said, “Yes, but I’m not allowed by the Government to answer that question”. I am not sure whether it was this Government or the previous one who made it impossible for him to answer, but it has undoubtedly added to the cost.

I also make a plea for the people who like travelling by train and love the Chilterns and want to be able to see them. There is no reason why we should not be able to see them rather than the inside of a tunnel from the railway. Look at the other engineering projects in the Chilterns. The M40 is a six-lane motorway which carved a swathe through the Chiltern escarpment, and probably the largest intrusion into an area of outstanding natural beauty in the south of England. There was a lot of objection. It is used by very large numbers of people, but it still causes an intrusion and environmental damage far greater than the two-track railway that we are discussing this evening. Wendover benefits from a new bypass, which is being constructed to one side of the existing Chiltern railway line and is producing a huge amount of noise and traffic. It is very nice for the town because traffic is taken out of the town, but the new railway is going to go alongside that as well. Why is that somehow unreasonable compared with the road that is already there?

The Chilterns are beautiful. The environment of the Chilterns will be enhanced by the building of the railway, and many more people will be able to enjoy them. There is no need for these amendments.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their participation and contributions to the debate. I am minded to start with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Snape. Certainly when he suggested that I should not be tempted by these amendments, I was reminded that we start proceedings in the House every day with the Lord’s Prayer, which says:

“Lead us not into temptation”.


I will fulfil that prayer’s requirements in my response this afternoon.

We have already touched, even this afternoon, on the cost of HS2. I say again to all noble Lords that the costs of HS2 have been the subject of intense analysis and review over several years, as we have already heard. As I indicated earlier this afternoon, we will continue to review costs for years to come. Let me once again praise the incredible work done collectively by the two Select Committees of both Houses. Let us put this into perspective: it is a combined period of two years of hearing evidence, considering all aspects of the proposed Bill, and on many occasions reviewing the costs for elements of the phase 1 scheme when asked to consider potential alternative options. It is sometimes suggested, and has been suggested again, that somehow there has not been an exhaustive examination; I challenge that. The best way to do so is to read the detailed analysis, recommendations and reports of both Select Committees. I recommend that to all noble Lords who have not yet had the pleasure.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green. As he noted in Committee, and as he has reminded us, the Select Committee considered all options that were presented for additional lengths of tunnelling in the Chilterns and in Wendover. It was not convinced of the need to recommend any further work on any of these options. As I have already said, these were exhaustive discussions, and I believe that that decision should be respected.

The Select Committees of both Houses also considered in detail the provision of additional environmental mitigation measures. It pains me to say it, but I disagree with my noble friend Lady Pidding that the Government have not published details of how certain things have been considered during the process of the Bill. It is worth noting, as I hope my noble friend will acknowledge, that many assurances have been given to the areas covered by the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty, including the provision of a £3 million fund for additional environmental mitigation measures.

My noble friend raised the issue of publishing tunnelling costs. The information used to assess the decision on whether it is appropriate to undertake a bore tunnel past Wendover and an extended bore tunnel through the Chilterns was published as part of the exhibits placed before both Select Committees that were used to establish the Government’s position regarding the decision not to provide any additional tunnelling. It was that information that the Select Committee—I refer to the Commons Select Committee here—used to recommend an extended tunnel in the Chilterns and an extension to the tunnel in Wendover. The exhibits included figures for several Chiltern tunnel options, which I mentioned in Committee. They range from £82 million to £485 million. The additional extension of 2.6 kilometres to the Chilterns tunnel, which I hope my noble friend acknowledges, was agreed following a specific recommendation from the Select Committee in the other place. That was at a cost of £47 million.

Turning to the costs more generally, an updated cost estimate for the project is published, as I said earlier this afternoon, at every iteration of the business case. I repeat that the next iteration is due for publication in the summer of 2017. The project as a whole, including its cost estimate and business case, is subject to regular independent review from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority—

Train Operating Companies

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Lord raises an important point about the regulator. The regulator will remain the same as on other networks. On the issue of the pricing structure, again, that will feed into the development of this new working arrangement. Let me assure the noble Lord that on issues of health and safety, which the regulator also oversees, there shall be no compromise and the regulator will continue to have the same role.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my railway interests, as declared in the register. On the east-west route, the Oxford to Cambridge line, the Minister will know that it was the most inexplicable of all the post-Beeching closures. It was not even listed for closure in the Beeching report. It closed in 1967 at exactly the time that Milton Keynes was designated as a new city capable of taking 250,000 people. The East West Rail consortium has been campaigning for 47 years to reopen the line. Can he give an assurance that the announcement he has made today will not delay that a day longer than necessary.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Lord is right to point out the history behind this line. Indeed, it predates my life. Nevertheless, it is an important issue and today’s announcement underlines the Government’s commitment to ensuring delivery. We hope the new arrangement will, if anything, bring forward the construction that I have outlined today.