High Speed 2

Lord Snape Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for allowing us the opportunity for this debate, and I congratulate him on what he said in opening the debate. It is the first time in the decade or so that I have been here—I do not know whether he will be pleased about this or not—that I have agreed with every word that he said. Perhaps he will not be, but it happens to be true.

There was one thing he did not say that he might have done. He talked about the west coast main line being full, as have other noble Lords on both sides. We ought to recognise that the west coast main line, particularly the southern section, is not just full, it is in a pretty poor condition too, despite all the money that has been spent on it. The recent £9 billion overhaul has held off some of the decay on that route, but the last stretch in particular, from Watford to Euston is in a pretty poor state, as was revealed earlier this year. A report was published in the railway industry’s in-house magazine, Rail News, about an inquiry led by Virgin Trains’ chief operating officer, Chris Gibb, who had been seconded to Network Rail, about the state of the track, particularly that stretch from Watford to London. Chris Gibb reported to a joint board chaired by Sir David Higgins, then chairman of Network Rail, about whom many complimentary comments have been made during the course of the debate. Mr Gibb’s report says that,

“trying to gain access to maintain and repair a railway built 175 years ago, largely through open countryside then but which now passes through many developed and densely-populated areas”,

is extremely difficult. Yet opponents of HS2 appear to believe that by declassifying a couple of coaches on Pendolino trains and adding a few more trains, a junction here and a flyover there, we can somehow cope with the projected increase in traffic which will take place on the west coast main line if HS2 is not built.

I fear that life is not like that. Chris Gibb’s final recommendation is that the line from Bushey, just south of Watford, into Euston should be closed every Saturday and Sunday night for between five and 10 years in order that all the infrastructure can be renewed. That is a pretty unlikely prospect, but I have to say to those who oppose the building of HS2 that we cannot go on, in David Higgins’s words, pounding the west coast main line. He said that by the time the first stage of HS2 is due to open in 2026 the route will be—his exact word—“trashed”.

We cannot go on pretending that we can increase the number of trains out of London to some of our major cities on the existing infrastructure network. I listened carefully to what my noble friend Lord Stevenson had to say. I must say that I was not too impressed by some of the people whom he prayed in aid in support of his opposition. I do not regard the Institute of Economic Affairs as a particularly credible organisation, nor, although I will be careful out of deference to some of my near neighbours, could I bring myself to be too complimentary about the Countryside Alliance. Both my noble friends might like to read a document produced by Centro, the passenger transport authority in the West Midlands, explaining why the West Midlands needs HS2. I will leave it on the board for both of them if they like; whether they find that any more credible than the two organisations they cited remains to be seen. The fact remains that Centro believes that 50,000 more jobs could be created in our part of the world and a £4 billion economic boost would be given to the West Midlands if the project goes ahead.

If HS2 does not go ahead, what happens to the growth in traffic forecast by all sectors to occur on our railway system? Presumably, it will go by road. My noble friend spoke emotively about the Chilterns. We are not talking about the four horsemen of the apocalypse going through the Chilterns, we are talking about a two-track railway. What happens to the M40 motorway? Do we extend and widen that to cater for the extra traffic which we all know will come? If the traffic does not travel by train, it travels by road.

Earlier in my undistinguished career, I served on no less than three committees on the Channel Tunnel: the first abortive Select Committee in the 1970s, the Select Committee that gave the go-ahead in the 1980s and the Standing Committee that prepared the legislation. All the arguments that we are hearing today about HS2 were used then about HS1. The garden of England was going to be destroyed. The phrase “cutting a swathe” was one I heard from many a high-paid lawyer as I sat on the committee when they were talking about what was likely to happen in Kent. As the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said, Kent has not been destroyed. Indeed, many of the previously peripheral towns in Kent have been enormously boosted economically by HS1, and there is no reason to suppose that the same effect would not happen when HS2 is completed.

Fifty years ago, I was a signalman on the west coast main line, so I have some experience of what happened when trying to run trains when the line is being modernised. At least we had many alternatives in the 1960s. For example, Manchester trains ran from St Pancras to Manchester Central. The line from Matlock to Manchester Central was closed in their wisdom—by, I suspect, a Labour Government, I must say—in the 1960s. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, talked about trains to Liverpool. They went up the great western line from Paddington to Birkenhead. That is not available to us any more. As my noble friend Lord Grocott said, there was always the great central line, which ran to Leicester, Nottingham and on to Manchester, which could also be used as a diversion. None of those lines are available to us today. There are neither locomotives nor rolling stock. It must come as a surprise to my noble friend Lord Mandelson to find that loco hauled trains are very rare in most parts of the country and guards vans do not exist at all. He must have missed that during his sojourn in Brussels, but the railway has changed somewhat. Pendolino trains will not run anywhere else. If there is no 25 kilovolt overhead wire, they will not get out of the depot, so they are no alternative. It is not often that I pray in aid the late Baroness Thatcher, but there really is no alternative.