High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill (Instruction) (No. 3)
Debate between Mark Hendrick and Nigel Evans(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Sir Mark Hendrick
I declare an interest, in that I was a director of Manchester airport as well, some years back, as a Salford city councillor appointed to that position. Many in the House—although not the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton)—will remember phase 1of HS2, and I sat on that Committee for the best part of a year and a half. The whole process was very elongated—I will try not to make my intervention too elongated—but what it boiled down to was that when members of that Committee, particularly those on the Government side, had constituency interests, they tended to be far more accommodating, and the costs spiralled because there were tunnels going here, there and everywhere instead of going direct. That inflated the price. The reason we are in this mess now is that the Government have realised that we are close to an election and they want to spend £12 billion of the £37 billion that should have been spent on phase 2. They are now scattering it around certain places in the north of England in the hope that they can use that promise to get more—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. This is a very elongated intervention.
Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill
Debate between Mark Hendrick and Nigel EvansTuesday 6th September 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Act 2023 View all Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman is putting a very brave face on this. Many commentators in the agricultural communities in this country see it far more negatively than he does. I take his point about the 15 years. The agreement will be phased in over 15 years. Many of them see this as a car crash in slow motion. If the hon. Gentleman had argued that the agreement was good for free trade reasons, fine. The minuscule GDP gain from it has been accepted. I see the most positive thing about it as access to the CPTPP, which will be coming on stream. Britain aims in the longer future to join that organisation, which I am sure he will agree is a good thing in itself. That begs the question that, if we can do that why not—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Interventions, by their very nature, should be short.