High Speed 2 (Economic Affairs Committee Report)

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Greaves

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on this. I pay tribute to him because he has at least stirred up a lot of very interesting debate about where investment in the railways—a huge amount of it—is now required.

Various noble Lords, starting with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, said that the priority is for the north of England. There are two questions there. Can you build the northern half of HS2 and not bother with the southern half, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, suggested? All you would end up with is high-speed services from perhaps Crewe to Birmingham, or Leeds to Mansfield, with passengers then wanting to get on to the existing main lines to London, which are already full. It is nonsense.

However, I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that when I set off on Monday to drive to the station, I saw a train coming over the viaduct in Colne, which is at the end of the worst branch line in the north of England—that must be true because I keep saying it—and it was a Pacer. On the other hand, the Pacers are about to go. There are loads of new trains and carriages in the north of England. The problem is that the infrastructure that these new trains will run on is often inadequate and, in some cases, rubbish. Therefore, the timetables cannot make proper use of them.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am sure the noble Lord does not mean to misrepresent the report. Our report does not suggest that HS2 should be cancelled. It suggests that the cost overruns could be addressed by lowering the speed and leaving the link to Euston, and that the priority should be to ensure that the infrastructure improvements are made in the north.

[Lord Greaves]

I do not disagree with that at all. I am grateful to the noble Lord but there is a general undercurrent implying that if we could get rid of HS2, even at this late stage, people would be happy.

I have a confession to make: I like Euston station, and there are two reasons for that. First, it is where I go when I go back north, and therefore a nice place to go; secondly, it is efficient. The problem when Euston was built was that civic engineers and architects in this country had lost the great Victorian ability to combine efficiency and beauty, which I think we are learning again.

The people challenging the existing programme for HS2, who want it to be slowed down or stopped, or whatever, really have to answer the almost unanimous civic and economic leadership in the north of England, who all say that they want to get on with it. That means the mayors, council leaders, councils generally, businesspeople and everybody else. To say that it is only because they are businessmen and MPs who want to get to London quicker is just derisory. There is a general belief in the north of England that it is a good thing and needs to be got on with now. This is not least because if it were to be cancelled, or deferred for another three or four years for more inquiries et cetera, the idea that a lot of activity would suddenly start up in the north of England as a result, and have lots of money allocated to it, is just cloud-cuckoo-land. It is a complete pipedream. The problem is that people see defects in the system for developing infrastructure in this country, of which HS2 is a good example, then transfer that to the scheme itself. The problem is the system, not the actual scheme.

People have talked about northern powerhouse rail but I am not clear what that is or whether there is consensus on what it means. For Transport for the North, which has produced a strategic transport plan that includes the railways, northern powerhouse rail is the line between Liverpool and Hull, particularly the part between Manchester and Leeds. The Prime Minister seems to think that it is from Manchester to Leeds; that also seems to be what the Conservative manifesto said. I consider it ludicrous that priority now should be given to spending a large sum of money—I am not quite sure what this includes or where it comes from but if the figure of £39 billion is bandied about now, it will be £60 billion or £70 billion before long, as we know—when it seems to be simply a high-speed railway line between Manchester and Leeds, which stops at Bradford. Whether all the trains will stop at Bradford, I do not know. I am in favour of them stopping there, as a Bradfordian, but it does not seem a priority to me. All the towns in between—Halifax, Huddersfield, Oldham and Rochdale on the other side, and so on—will get no benefit at all. If you live in Huddersfield and want to go on this railway, you will have to get the train to Bradford, then turn around to go back over the Pennines.

This is a vanity scheme that does not mean much. If it is meant to be part of a wider network of high-speed lines in the north of England and their connecting lines, including to Liverpool, Hull and Sheffield, then it requires HS2 to be built. This is because it is intended that the northern powerhouse rail network in the north of England, apart from the section between Manchester and Leeds, will include a substantial part of the stuff built for HS2, as the noble Lord across the Chamber said. Therefore, if it is a sensible strategy to significantly increase the amount of pretty high-speed trains between the main cities in the north of England, or at least the main cities in Lancashire and Yorkshire, simply building 40 miles of fast track between Manchester and Leeds does not seem sensible. I do not think that is a priority at all. The single main rail project in the next five years of improvements will be improving the existing trans-Pennine line between Leeds, Huddersfield, Oldham and Manchester, the Standedge route over the Pennines through the Standedge tunnel. That has been downgraded. It needs electrifying throughout and to be made four-track throughout as it goes over the Pennines, opening up the old tunnels. That is the priority, because it is something that can be done in five or six years.

Building a new railway line between Leeds and Manchester to high-speed standards, requiring a parliamentary Bill and all the rest, will mean that our successors in your Lordships’ House will be discussing it in 10 years’ time and it still will not have started. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that less ambitious schemes—although many are ambitious—covering the whole of the north of England should be the goal. The north of England is not like London—which has a centre, with everybody commuting in—but a constellation of cities and big, medium-sized and small towns, many of which have railway lines between them, and some of which need railway lines reinstating. We should look at the whole of the north of England, because that is what is needed.