High Speed 2 (Economic Affairs Committee Report)

Debate between Lord Framlingham and Lord Monks

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, as a former member of the Economic Affairs Committee, I continue to appreciate its work. It has been a forensic and challenging commentator on HS2 in recent years. This report, like its predecessor, shines a pretty sharp light on the many questions that continue to dog the HS2 project. To emphasise the point that the chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made, it does not call for the abolition of the project; it calls for a reassessment of certain aspects of it. That is an important distinction that may have got lost in some of the debate recently.

From my point of view, we are where we are. HS2 has started: the first phase is under way and 9,000 jobs are supported by the project. Early works are under way at the London terminals and elsewhere on the HS2 line to Birmingham. Billions have been spent and more are committed, so to scrap it now, as many are arguing, would represent a failure of epic proportions. This is not a white-elephant project, as some have suggested; it is not Concorde, or something relevant to only a tiny proportion of the population. This is a great north-south railway that could last 100 years or more, just as the Victorian railway network has done, and be a great national asset. To look just at what the project is costing now without looking at its lifespan seems very foolish.

It is not an alternative to investment in northern and Midland rail links. We have heard some interesting remarks about their limitations. As a Mancunian, I am only too well aware of the bottleneck at the Oxford Road/Piccadilly station. But, as the four metropolitan mayors said in the Sunday Times last week:

“Modern railways such as HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail are the single biggest means to transform jobs and opportunities for people in the Midlands and the north.”


The danger is that the reviews and debates will go on and on, and that the political will is going to fade, which in time will lead to the cancellation of the project. That is a real danger as we undertake this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, is right in one respect: he senses that the political wind may be blowing his way at present.

Can we do major infrastructure projects in this country or can we not? HS2 is a test of whether we can—and, like the committee, I am very concerned about spiralling costs. I can well understand that this is eating into public support for the project.

[Lord Framlingham]

I want to dispel the idea that I am in any way against large infrastructure projects. I am just against nonsenses.

[Lord Monks]

That is where we disagree. We are all against nonsenses, by the way—on that we agree—but a railway open to all, going from the north of England to the south, seems to me anything but nonsense. It is a great national asset and I would have thought that the noble Lord would recognise that.

When we look at costs, I know that France is a larger and less populous country than us, with less opposition. But the advocates of HS2 have a real question to answer: why can France do these things so much more cheaply than we can? One thing I wonder about is the labour market that surrounds these projects. It is populated by armies of consultants and self-employed workers. The main contractors have very few directly employed people working for them for years, in a loyal and determined way. It seems that when we undertake these kinds of projects, it is well worth looking at the labour force and how it is organised.

I want to emphasise, however, that people in the northern sections should not be treated as second-class citizens. If there is an idea, as is rumoured in the current review, that we will get away with a cheaper, mixed, existing mainline hybrid scheme north of Birmingham, that would be very much resented in the northern parts of this country. They would feel it very strongly.

As I mentioned, the UK’s record on large-scale infrastructure management is not good. The Olympics were a conspicuous exception; on the other hand, Crossrail is a nightmarish example of the kind of problems that we have. But if we do not attempt these things, and if we do not seek to improve and learn from the way others do them, we will never do better—and we will not do better by cancellation or dithering or perpetual review. We must get away from that.

It is important to emphasise to those who have raised environmental concerns that the new line would be, on balance, a great environmental advantage over the years. I know that there are problems with the route and woodlands, but taking things off the roads and away from the air seems to me to be important. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has reminded us previously that HS2 would free up the existing lines to run more local and freight services. The Government have made many promises to the north about fresh infrastructure investment. If HS2 is collapsed, who in the north or Midlands is going to believe any of these promises? The Government need to keep their word, hold their nerve and complete HS2—all of it—as soon as possible.