High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Debate between Lord Haselhurst and Lord Bradshaw

Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report stage
Monday 30th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I have an entirely different point to make, which I believe the Minister will need to take into account as HS2 progresses: the question of the stations at the northern end, be they at Leeds or Manchester. I believe it has now been decided that the Manchester station should be capable of dealing with through-trains. At Leeds—I now speak in the name of the late Lord Shutt of Greetland, who was very strong on this issue—the idea of a terminal station that is a dead end is anathema to most railwaymen.

In order to get connectivity through a system, it is ideal to have platforms that allow through-trains to serve the larger stations because these are not the terminal points to which people want to go; they want to connect on further, and, in the case of Leeds, it will obviously be a desire to go on to Newcastle, York and, possibly, Scotland. I imagine that, when you get to Manchester, you will want to go on to Bradford and then to Leeds in the end.

In supporting this amendment, my plea is not about the small issues of connectivity, to which the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has referred in his remarks, but about developing a network that is able to connect through to other places itself so that we maximise the possibility of HS2 and of it connecting with tram and express-bus systems, which are really needed to provide the integrated transport network that many people want.

[Lord Haselhurst (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the only comment I wish to make on this amendment is to express surprise that some of the issues were not brought to the attention of the Select Committee by one means or another. We carried out a visit and saw some of the nature of the problems that could arise so far as road traffic was concerned, but it seemed to us, as the report indicates, that these were things that were being actively examined by HS2. We also felt that the lead on getting what was felt to be necessary for the benefit of local people should be taken by the local authorities. We were disposed to believe that they had some slack to take up in relation to addressing the real needs.

On extra stations, I think that, while it is inevitable that some people will say, “Well, if we have got this splendid new railway, can we not connect to it?”, every connection will add to journey time, of course, unless the extra stations should really be serving the lines that are being freed of the traffic by the construction of HS2. The idea that we should report to Parliament with the kind of frequency suggested means that people will be spending an awful lot of time doing that rather than, perhaps, getting on with negotiations to try to achieve the maximum amount of local understanding and support.