High Speed 2

Debate between Stephen Hammond and Andrea Leadsom

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I would like to make some progress, if I may.

There is no hard evidence that this project will reduce unemployment in the north. HS2’s own estimate of 30,000 new jobs—

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

The estimate is 40,000.

[Andrea Leadsom]

The figure is 40,000, my hon. Friend says from a sedentary position, but some 73% of those jobs will be generated in and around London, not in the north. Moreover, every one of those jobs will be associated with £300,000 in costs, which is about five times more than the cost of job creation in other infrastructure projects.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrea Leadsom]

I will not give way again. I am sorry, but lots of people want to speak.

I am no rail expert, but there are lots of people who are, and they have put forward a broad range of different options that the Government and the Department for Transport should consider as alternatives that would offer more jobs, and faster and greater capacity while improving our existing rail infrastructure. I want to mention a few. We could lengthen existing trains from nine carriages to 12, and we could convert more from first class to standard.

[Stephen Hammond]

rose—

[Andrea Leadsom]

I will not give way again.

We could consider solving the bottlenecks and pinch points that are so frequent along routes that slow down the system and give us less capacity. We could consider reopening old branch lines, particularly those that would enable passengers to switch between the east coast and west coast main lines and the Chiltern line. That would solve part of the problem in the firewall argument. We could consider solving the artificial peaks in demand generated by our appalling fare structure. We could even consider a new line just between London Euston and Milton Keynes so that the west coast main line could be dedicated to taking passengers to the north of England far faster and on a far more frequent service.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrea Leadsom]

Does my hon. Friend accept that if we are going to make the case for “not only but also”, as he described it, the case for HS2 needs be made after the “not only”? In other words, if we are trying to make an economic argument, we have to add on the incremental improvements to be made and then justify HS2 expense on top of that.

[Stephen Hammond]

There is one fallacy with my hon. Friend’s argument. Simply speeding up the current network and alleviating some minor problems is no substitution for high-speed rail. It is clear that high-speed rail would at least double capacity, and on certain parts of the route, the capacity increase would be significantly more than that.

The Y-shaped high-speed network across the UK would bring a benefit-cost ratio of about 2:6. For the London to Birmingham section, the ratio would be 2:0. That shows that the case for going further north becomes more compelling and adds to the economic benefit. The proposals in “A Better Railway for Britain” would have a benefit-cost ratio of 1:4. Those ratios prove that high-speed rail is significantly better than some of these hotch-potch alternatives in “A Better Railway for Britain”.