HS2: Purchased Land

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Grocott]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have in respect of land already purchased for HS2 north of Birmingham.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government are thoroughly reviewing the position they have inherited before setting out more detailed plans in due course. This includes our position on HS2 phase 2 safeguarding and on the land that was previously acquired for HS2’s cancelled phases. Any land acquired for phase 2 that is no longer required will be sold in line with Treasury rules through a disposal programme.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, as my noble friend the Minister knows, when Rishi Sunak cancelled the northern leg of HS2, he did so in the full knowledge that substantial sums of money had already been spent. Can my noble friend tell me his estimate of precisely how much had been spent before the cancellation? Further, so that money is not entirely wasted, can he give the House a clear assurance, which I am not sure he gave in his Answer, that the Government will at least protect the route of the line to Manchester, including retaining land that has already been purchased? I am sure he would agree that, in so doing, he will make it much easier for any future Government—this one, I hope—to complete the project, which should never have been cancelled in the first place.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his supplementary question. As reported by the National Audit Office, by March 2024 £2.3 billion had been spent on phase 2 which, as he says, was cancelled by the previous Government. No property on the hastily cancelled phase 2a has yet been disposed of. The Government are carefully considering what to do. He will know as I do that railway infrastructure lasts 150 or more years, so the right thing is to have a considered long-term plan for the benefit of the economic growth, jobs and housing in this country.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

Unlike my Amendment A1, there are four areas which I believe should be addressed: timeliness, likely cancellations, passenger numbers and ticket costs. If there are not predicted improvements made on these benchmark tests, I do not see what the overall purpose is, never mind the possible decrease in service and increase in costs that may follow. While the current franchising system is far from perfect, it allows the Government to intervene and break a contract when it fails, and competition does drive standards, while there is not much clarity as to what would happen under the proposed changes. This amendment will also provide the public with a transparent analysis of their railways and what they can expect. Both amendments combined put the public where they should be—at the heart of improving their railway network. I beg to move.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be brief. As the focus of this is on passenger travel and the noble Lord’s desire to put that at the centre of the objective of the Bill—which is a laudable objective shared, I am sure, by the Government—I cannot help pointing out that one of the major decisions by the last Government, which will of course affect the capacity of the railway network to deliver first-class passenger transport, was their in my view crazy decision to truncate the HS2 programme.

That programme was introduced by a Labour Government, supported by the coalition Government and by Conservative Governments over a period of about 15 years in total and at two strokes—first, getting rid of the Leeds link and, secondly, getting rid of the Manchester link—so much planning, expenditure and work was wasted. I am sure my noble friend the Minister will agree with a lot of this. It means that, among other things, the service to passengers, which is at the heart of the noble Lord’s amendment, is bound to be diminished from what it could have been. The network was there to provide passenger transport, freeing up space on the west coast mainline, which is close to, if not beyond, capacity, and helping freight as well, of course, which is a very important part of what the rail network delivers. It would have enabled that by freeing up the west coast mainline, the old mainline, if you like, built by the Victorians and still doing remarkable work, and improving the network overall.

So, when he winds up, I really would like the noble Lord to take the opportunity to apologise on behalf of the Government he served for making those nihilistic decisions to scrap that section of the railway. Ironically, in an attempt to justify the action they took, they claimed that somehow several billion pounds would be saved and one of the ways the “saved” money would be spent—I think the figure was £9 billion—would be on filling potholes. Now I am strongly in favour of filling potholes, but it will not help passenger services on the railway—which the building of the two northern legs of HS2 would have done. So, as welcome, in many ways, as his emphasis is—I do not know whether it is on behalf of the Opposition or not—on supporting and improving passenger services, that has a long way to go to make up for the damage it did by the cancellation of HS2 north.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I rise along with the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, as someone who has worked closely with the new Minister. I congratulate him on his appointment. He knows more than almost anyone about our railway network—the problems, issues and challenges—and, while he may find himself on the other side of the political fence to me, he will be a great asset in trying to sort the challenges of our rail network.

He will know, very much more than anybody else, what the challenges are. He will also know, therefore, that sorting out our railways is not simply about changing the ownership structure. He knows full well, for example, that many of the issues that passengers have experienced in recent years have been laid at the foot of Network Rail—the company he chaired, although it was not his fault, of course—and rightly so. However, all of us involved bear the scars from the difficult times in 2018 with the timetable change. The noble Baroness, Lady Blake, knew well the challenges then, particularly in her role in the north. In the north, they were caused most immediately by Network Rail’s failure to deliver an electrification programme in the timetable that had been committed to, which had a dramatic knock-on effect on the rest of the railway.

Therefore, I am not clear, and it is why I have a lot of sympathy with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, why a move of ownership is going to deliver a transformation for the passenger. I hope that the Minister, with his experience, will be able to talk a bit about that as he responds to the debate. Fundamentally, on both sides of the House, we are all about improvement for the passenger, and simply transferring ownership from public to private and private to public does not solve the challenges. Ironically, I was reading at the weekend—and I am sure it is true—that the Government are looking at bringing the private sector in to run Euston station, at the same time it is planning to take the private sector out of the railway to run the trains that go into it.

So I would be grateful if the Minister could set out why he thinks this change will deliver improvement for passengers and why, therefore, the amendment being proposed by my noble friend is wrong.

Mail Carriage by Rail

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My understanding is that the Mode Shift Revenue Support scheme, which has a budget of £18 million for 2024-25, has been effective. The current scheme expires on 31 March 2025, but my current understanding is that it does not apply to the carriage of mail by rail.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Can the Minister, whose appointment I also welcome, confirm that one of the arguments for HS2 to Birmingham was very much to free up capacity on the existing west coast main line by an additional route from London to Birmingham? In that connection, does he agree that one of the many disastrous decisions made by the previous Government was to scrap the HS2 project north of Birmingham? What assurance can he give us that the current Government, among the many changes they have planned, will change that particularly bad decision?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question but it moves quite a long way from the carriage of mail by rail. I think there might be more appropriate times at which to consider the railway infrastructure of Great Britain and the future infrastructure plans of this Government.

Lower Thames Crossing: Development Consent

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I am very conscious of the issue around the Hammersmith Bridge, but it is of course an issue that concerns the local authorities; it is a matter for them to resolve.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister reflect on a more recent history lesson relating to the present Question—the experience of HS2? The planning application was delivered, the parliamentary procedures were concluded and considerable—if not vast—expenditure was made on the purchase of properties and costs involved in the route. Yet this Government—at a minute to midnight of the project’s completion—pulled the plug, on a Prime Minister’s whim. What hope is there for any other major infrastructure policy being completed under this Government when that lesson has not been learned?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I note the noble Lord’s frustration over planning, but HS2 is outside the scope of this Question.

Rail Manufacturing: Job Losses

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

No, I do not agree that the Government have a gap in their industrial policy. Rail manufacturing plays a very important role in growing the UK economy and there is a strong pipeline of future orders for UK rail manufacturers, including upcoming procurements in the market being run by Northern, Chiltern, TransPennine and South- eastern. That competition process is open for all manufacturers to bid, including of course Alstom. The department is also working with His Majesty’s Treasury to set out a pipeline for expected rolling stock orders, to provide the sector with further clarity over the near term.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I think it was significant that there was no reference at all in the Minister’s Statement in the Commons to what I consider to be the inevitable consequences of the cancellation of the Crewe and Manchester sections of HS2: it is obvious that that was significant in terms of job losses. We already know about the losses that have occurred from money spent on both those projects that is now wasted because the line is not being built. What is the Government’s estimate of the loss of jobs in construction and manufacturing—which the Minister has focused on so far—as a direct result of the cancellation of those legs of HS2?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I cannot comment on the construction side, but Alstom is part a contract with Hitachi to design, build and maintain the HS2 trains for phase 1 only—that is 54 trains. Phase 1 of HS2, between Birmingham and London, will continue, with, as I have said before, a rescoped Euston station. HS2 Ltd has written to the joint venture confirming that the original order for those 54 trains for phase 1 remains unchanged.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I can only repeat what I have just said. The Government are working very hard to make sure the company remains at the location. New competitions have recently commenced for rolling stock on Northern, Southeastern, TransPennine and Chiltern railway lines, as well as procurements for fleet upgrades on East Midlands, Chiltern and CrossCountry. Alstom is very capable, and able to compete for this work.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Perhaps I could ask for a specific answer on this. The Minister referred to the rolling stock that has already been ordered in respect of London to Birmingham, but he cannot give an estimate of job losses following the cancellation. There clearly must be consequences for rolling stock when you do not build a railway to Crewe and Manchester that you planned to build. So can the Minister at least tell us how much rolling stock in total is not now going to be required and constructed as a result of the closure of the new railway?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I cannot give the noble Lord that figure at the moment, but I will certainly look into it and come back to him.

Network North

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 14th February 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Grocott]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what proportion of the £36 billion transport investment plan ‘Network North’ will be allocated to schemes outside the Northern region.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)]

My Lords, £36 billion of funding redirected from HS2 will see improvements to transport throughout the country. Every penny of the £19.8 billion committed to the northern leg of HS2 will be reinvested in the north, every penny of the £9.6 billion committed to the Midlands leg will be reinvested in the Midlands, and the £6.5 billion saved through our rescoped approach at Euston will be spread across every other region of the country.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister knows that this document, Network North, is supposed to compensate the Midlands and the north for the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham by providing lots of other rail schemes more quickly. Will the Minister publish a list of these new schemes, which does not seem to be available at the moment, with estimates of the cost of each one and when they are likely to be operational? Will he tell us how he calculates the £36 billion that he says will be saved by the cancellation of HS2 north, bearing in mind that millions—possibly billions—have already been spent and now wasted? Finally, how can a document called Network North include among its proposals the promise of a new station at Tavistock?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his Question. I will have to look at his point on the calculation and come back with an answer; I do not have the figures broken down in front of me. Network North will deliver a wide range of rail infrastructure investments across the country. While I have already given the exact figures for what we will spend on the northern leg of HS2 and have committed to the Midlands leg, we are also building a brand-new station and line connection in Bradford, with journey times reduced from 56 to 30 minutes to Manchester via Huddersfield. We are better connecting major cities across the north, with more frequent trains, increased capacity and faster journeys, expanding the network. We will upgrade connections between Manchester and Sheffield, Leeds and Sheffield, Leeds and Hull, and Hull and Sheffield. We will fully fund the Midlands rail hub, increasing investment to £1.75 billion and connecting more than 50 stations. We will upgrade the rail links between Newark and Nottingham, halving journey times between Nottingham and Leeds. I could go on, but I am very happy to write to the noble Lord with more detail.

Refurbishing Trains: Contracts

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not think the Minister answered properly the question about HS2. It was, in my view, a disastrous decision made by the Government to cancel the Derby and Manchester links, so can he tell us how many trains were required, had those links still been about to be built, and how many trains are now required, so we can work out the deficit for ourselves? While he is about it, will he please answer a question which his department has repeatedly been unable to answer for me as a Written Question: precisely how much money has been lost—wasted—as a result of the cancellations to which I have referred?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

The noble Lord asks two very fair questions. I do not have those details to hand, but I will ensure that he gets them in written form.

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

It is a 20 mph zone because the Mayor of London has decided that it should be.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I am biased but the question from my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, on the emission levels associated with a 20 mph limit and a 30 mph limit, was splendid. I did not catch whether the Minister answered that question, which is presumably a pretty precise one, on which there can be scientific evidence. Can she try to answer it now?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am not aware of any research in that area but I will take that question back to the department and write to the noble Lord.

Driving Licences

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned age. I am sure I am right in saying that a big proportion of people taking the test are age 17, 18 and 19, and many of them will need a driving licence to find employment, or at least it will be very helpful to them when they have one. What alarms me, among other things, about this long waiting list—the Minister has already told us that more than half of the people taking tests have to do it twice at least—is just how much the average cost is to a 17, 18 or 19 year-old, with top-up lessons if it is a prolonged period waiting for a test. Just how much does it cost? It is really alarming if there is a barrier to people simply on the basis of not being able to afford to do it.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I accept that there is a cost to driving, to car ownership and to ensuring that one is safe on the roads in respect of one’s responsibility to other people. We believe that the time taken to ensure that one is fully trained is important. That is why the second piece of research that we are doing is around a graduated learning scheme where we have asked the Driving Instructors Association to explore whether we can introduce a modular approach to learning. That will help all candidates go through the process and become safe drivers, and it may help them to minimise the costs as they learn the right skills at the right time.

Public Transport in Towns and Cities

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I happily add my thanks to our two chairs; to our secretariat, who have been splendid over the period of the production of this report; and to my colleagues on the committee, who came from varied backgrounds. What a pleasure it is to follow the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst. I never thought that I would hear the 60 year-old report of Lord Redcliffe-Maud referred to but, like the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, I can remember it. It was a splendid report.

The possible scope of this report was enormous. It could have ranged—it has to a degree—from e-scooters to HS2. I will just concentrate on two things. One is London versus the rest, if I can put it in those terms, and the other is the variety of provision in cities of similar size and with similar challenges, in many respects.

On London versus the rest, the Government kindly referred us to the significance of this comparison in their response to our report. They said that, in their levelling-up White Paper,

“the Government set itself the mission of, by 2030, bringing standards of local public transport connectivity across the country closer to those of London”.

I give them full marks for ambition, but we need to test how they cope as they go along. Of course, we all recognise that London has unique characteristics in the provision of public transport, the size and reach of the area and so on, but still, these figures need to be put on the record.

The expenditure-per-head figures for 2019-20 are as follows—they are pre-pandemic, so perhaps not distorted by some of the pandemic factors. For London, it was £882 per head. The next largest region was the south-east, with more than £500 per head. The lowest was the east Midlands, at £300 per head. The average for all regions outside London was £489, which means that London is spending nearly double the amount of any other region in the country. Work that one out, Sherlock. It is not difficult to deduce from that that services in London are better than elsewhere.

What a civic or regional leader would give to have their expenditure availability for public transport doubled—it would have something of an impact, however competent or otherwise the leaders or the regions may be. I simply must ask the Government: how is their ambition progressing towards the deadline of 2030? Is it their intention to reduce the disparity on spending per capita? Do they regard spending per capita as a significant measure of how well the various regions are doing, or are likely to be able to do? Are they progressing towards any comparability at all with London?

The other issue, of the variety of services that apply in cities outside London, strikes me—I hope I am not the only one—as quite a significant factor. We know that all cities are different, that there are big contrasts and so on, but you would expect that large, urban areas in a fairly small geographic country such as ours would have some obvious similarities in the way that they tackle the common problems of urban transport. To give just one example of the contrasts that exist: Nottingham, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and a number of others have light rail systems, yet Leeds, Liverpool and Southampton are among the largest urban centres in Europe without a light rail system. There might be good reasons for that, but I am not aware of them, and I am not quite sure who would be able to tell me.

In our report, we looked at three particular types of urban transport. We looked at light rail. We looked at very light rail and, like the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, I am very keen to see how the Coventry experiment develops. It is scheduled to start in 2025, I think, and if it works as a very light rail system—with the advantages of light rail but without the huge costs of establishing the system and then maintaining it—it may be a model that is of value to everyone else. The third system that we looked at was a bus transit system, which has some of the advantages of light rail but cannot quite match it in terms of reliability, predictability and so on.

We made recommendations in our report which flow from this fact that I have tried to establish about the big variation across the country. One recommendation was that we should try to eliminate some of the disadvantages that exist in the funding system at present; the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, dealt with that, so I will not repeat what has been said. We make the case in our report for a block grant system, which would make life easier for people making the applications and make life more predictable for the local authorities or regional governments that exist. It is something that the Government should consider.

Perhaps most important in this particular area is that discussion and evaluation of the schemes that exist is absolutely fundamental. We are not talking about huge sums of money here, just the common sense of recognising that there are different systems in roughly comparable areas but no proper evaluation of how they are all working. With this, I am in fact suggesting something to the Minister that does not cost large amounts of money—though I fear that my suggestion that the regions should do as well as London would cost large amounts of money. This is why I would particularly like to hear her response on that point.