High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Morton]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and reminds us of the importance of investment. This investment will bring many new jobs and investments into the area, and that will bring benefits to local communities, local people and local businesses.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Wendy Morton]

I am going to make some progress, then I will take more interventions.

This hybrid Bill is the first one to deal with infrastructure in both England and Scotland. The Bill includes a new depot on the west coast main line in Dumfries and Galloway to ensure that HS2 trains can travel to and be maintained in Scotland. The environment will benefit greatly too. Rail is already the greenest form of public transport in this country, and the most sustainable, carbon-efficient way of moving people and goods quickly over long distances. HS2 will bring further significant reductions in emissions, with new trains and modern tracks helping us to move towards a net zero transport system. This Bill is going even further than previous transport hybrid Bills.

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[Wendy Morton]

The hon. Gentleman is a passionate campaigner for the electrification of that stretch of railway, and he is nothing if not persistent in using every opportunity to raise that issue.

The state-of-the-art HS2 train fleet, capable of up to 225 mph, will be designed and built by a Hitachi-Alstom joint venture located in Newton Aycliffe, Derby and Crewe. It is a truly national endeavour encompassing three regions, each with a proud engineering pedigree. The construction of HS2 is already supporting more than 26,000 jobs, and there will be many more jobs with the coming of this Bill. There will be more apprenticeships, which is great news as we build a workforce with transferable skills that are fit for the future.

Since the Oakervee review and the notice to proceed for phase 1, this Government have remained, and will continue to remain, relentlessly focused on controlling costs. We will ensure that this ambitious new railway delivers its wealth of benefits at value for money for the taxpayer. HS2 is within budget, and we expect to get the job done within budget.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I support what the Minister is saying about bringing HS2 in on budget and keeping a tight control on costs, but we also have to get best value for the taxpayer. On the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), the Piccadilly proposals are suboptimal. They will economically damage the growth potential around Piccadilly, and the interrelationship between HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail will be far worse than the Transport for Greater Manchester underground station option. [Interruption.] I see the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) shaking his head, but Greater Manchester is adamant. We want and need the best option at Piccadilly, and I hope Ministers will think again.

[Wendy Morton]

The hon. Gentleman’s suggestion is a suboptimal option, and I am sure my hon. Friend will have more to say about that. I reiterate that we have been working closely with Greater Manchester stakeholders for a long time, since 2013 I think.

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[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for being kind in taking a range of interventions.

I observe from their interventions that Opposition Members’ mindset might best be characterised as making the perfect the enemy of the good. Does the Minister agree that this £96 billion investment will transform Piccadilly station?

[Andrew Gwynne]

It won’t.

[Katherine Fletcher]

It doesn’t half sound like you are picking holes in it because you want to play politics. This is the best thing for the economy in the north of England.

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[Wendy Morton]

My hon. Friend makes an important point.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Does she?

[Wendy Morton]

Will the hon. Gentleman let me continue, instead of getting carried away on the Back Benches? If we were to pursue the underground option, it would result in a more than seven-year delay to the HS2 project reaching Manchester Piccadilly; a cost increase of around £5 billion compared with the surface station; and at least 130,000, but realistically up to 350,000, additional HGV journeys in and out of Manchester over the construction period due to much greater quantities of concrete and steel needing to be imported and surface material needing to be exported from the construction site. I hope the hon. Gentleman agrees that the impact on local residents and businesses would be quite unbearable.

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[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). Although I disagree with her analysis of HS2, she is absolutely right to raise her constituents’ concerns here on the Floor of the House of Commons. I hope that Ministers will listen to some of her constructive suggestions. I hope that HS2 goes forward, but with amendments that mean that the communities affected by the line’s construction get something in return.

I do not consider HS2 to be an out-of-date project. France and Germany have high speed rail; high speed rail is about the future and what country we want to be, and about improving the links between all regions and nations of the United Kingdom. For me, it is not about speed; it is precisely about ensuring that we have adequate rail capacity on the network. Speed happens to be a bonus of building a railway line to 21st-century standards, rather than to 19th-century standards, which nobody in their right mind would do with an infrastructure scheme such as the one proposed.

HS2 will also free up local transport slots on key parts of the current rail network. From my campaign to get more than one train a week on the Stockport to Stalybridge line, which is now part of a Restoring Your Railway study, I know that part of the issue is the crossover from that line on to the west coast main line to access slots at Stockport station. That is impossible at the moment because there are three trains an hour from Manchester to Euston, which take up a lot of the slots that would cross over at Heaton Norris junction. HS2 and a change of the configuration around Manchester would free up a lot of slots coming into and out of Stockport station. It also creates more capacity for freight, which we should also be supporting.

Yes, HS2 creates jobs and brings economic development, which is the bonus of a massive economic infrastructure scheme, but it also creates long-term jobs with the economic development that it brings along the route. That is why I passionately want the Government to get this scheme right—to get it right for the country, but, given my own personal self-interest as a Greater Manchester MP, to get it right for my city region as well.

This is a once-in-a-century opportunity to massively improve the accessibility to Greater Manchester, through Greater Manchester and around Greater Manchester, and I welcome such an opportunity. That is why I really urge the Minister to look again at the issue of Piccadilly station. I know the argument she put forward following the interventions made earlier, and I get that, but the fact is that Piccadilly, if we get this right, will have a huge growth opportunity for Manchester, both in connectivity and economic development in that part of the city centre.

I am really concerned about the blight that the Piccadilly station, as currently proposed, will inflict on the approach into Piccadilly. As the Minister will know, the proposal is to bring the tracks out of the ground near Ardwick and into the new Piccadilly station with a concrete platform on stilts. That will blight about half a million square metres of city centre land, and restrict the economic development around the south of Piccadilly. That is a travesty. Worse than that, it will create the situation that, almost from day one, the new Piccadilly station will be at capacity. If we are planning for the next century, let us get the infrastructure right for the next century, and that means getting Piccadilly station right.

We also have to have better connectivity between Metrolink, HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail—I hope with Northern Powerhouse Rail in its fullest design at some stage in the future. That does mean having the connectivity of the through route under Piccadilly station. Without it, I think the opportunities for Manchester would be greatly missed.

[Christian Matheson]

My hon. Friend is giving a fantastic exposition of the effects in Manchester, but does he agree that this is largely a regional issue as well? I cannot get more trains to Manchester for my constituents because of the congestion that exists, particularly around Manchester Piccadilly and on the line through Castlefield. If he is talking about more capacity, that would also benefit my constituents.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Oh, it absolutely would. We are in a Second Reading debate on HS2 and I appreciate that we can veer away from the subject, so it is very tempting to go into a rant about the lack of capacity through Deansgate, Oxford Road and into the current Piccadilly station. That is a huge issue that this does not resolve.

However, what will be resolved is that some of the east-west links, if they can be tunnelled under Manchester into the new Piccadilly station and beyond into Yorkshire, will free up some capacity in the rail network around Manchester, although it does not fundamentally solve the problem between Deansgate and the existing Piccadilly station, despite lots of promises we have had over a very long period of time that we would increase capacity through the Piccadilly corridor.

[Graham Stringer]

On my hon. Friend’s final point, only platforms 15 and 16 at Piccadilly will deal with that issue. On the major thrust of his arguments, he will not be surprised to know that I agree with him. We are often told by Ministers about the success of the regeneration at King’s Cross, where the land next to King’s Cross was used to bring enormous economic benefits to that part of London. Does he agree that what is happening at Manchester Piccadilly is that Manchester is being denied those benefits because of blight caused by ill-thought-through proposals?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I will let the House know that we both went on a walk around Piccadilly, with Transport for Greater Manchester officers and combined authority officers, to have a look at what is being proposed and what could be developed there—indeed, the hon. Member for High Peak (Robert Largan) attended the tour as well—and the tour was illuminating.

For a start, keeping the ugly monstrosity of Gateway House on Station Approach in its place means that when people come out of the new Piccadilly station, as proposed by the Government and HS2, they will be at the delivery bay of Greggs. It is just not the welcome we want for Manchester. It is not even the shopfront of Greggs; it is the back door, with the bins and the ovens. Let us have a bit of vision here, and let us free up the front. Let us have a nice piazza, and a nice welcome to Manchester.

More than that, let us get the economic development in place behind Piccadilly station, and do not just take my word for it. Business leaders in the Financial Times today are urging Ministers to revise what they call—not my words—a “hugely shortsighted” design. They say—not me—that the economic development around Piccadilly would bring in the equivalent of £333 million a year of additional economic benefit if we get this right. That is why I do say to Ministers: let us look again at getting a better solution for Manchester and a better solution for the north to Piccadilly station.

[Katherine Fletcher]

I have spent many an hour in the environs of Piccadilly station that the hon. Member mentions. Can he remind the House which political party was in control when that socialist concrete monstrosity was constructed, and can he also remind the House what powers the current Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has over streetscaping and investment in the town centre?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I would caution the hon. Lady about making a silly political point, because I think Gateway House was probably built in the late 1960s. I certainly know that, for a period of time before local government reorganisation, Manchester City Council was actually a Conservative-controlled council, so she may well find that Gateway House was built under her party’s watch, if she is not too careful. [Interruption.] As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), who was the leader of Manchester City Council for a very long time, says, for four years Manchester, in the 1960s, was indeed a Conservative council. That is a silly point about a building built over 40 or 50 years ago, but it needs to go.

[Robert Largan]

I think the hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. The point about having a lovely piazza and welcoming people into Manchester is a very good one. Would he agree with me that we also want to see long-awaited improvements at Piccadilly Gardens? We would love to see Manchester City Council pull its finger out and sort out what really lets down my home city. It is an amazing city, and if that is fixed as well, it could make the welcome to Manchester even better.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Again, I am straying far off the issue of High Speed 2, but I actually agree with the hon. Gentleman. I think the current Piccadilly Gardens do nothing to enhance the vision of Manchester, and—as a small-c conservative, I suppose—I would actually like to go back to the old sunken gardens with flowers, as we used to have in those pictures Lowry painted, but we are where we are. Absolutely, I want to see Piccadilly being the gateway to the great city of Manchester, with the kind of street scene we are now seeing around Albert Square and the town hall, which is absolutely what can be done with really good streetscaping and landscaping.

To return to HS2, as I say, business leaders in the FT do not accept the £4 billion extra cost that HS2 has put in. Look, I was a local councillor, so I know what officers do when they do not want to do something—they give you a million and one reasons why you cannot do it rather than one reason why you should—and I am sure that it is the same with civil servants and those in the Department for Transport. They will give Ministers a million and one reasons why they should not do the right thing by Manchester. We need someone to stand up to them and say, “Think again. There is a better way forwards.”

I turn to one of the unintended consequences of HS2’s construction. It would be remiss of me not to mention the closure of the Ashton-under-Lyne Metrolink line for a period of at least two years while HS2 is developed around Piccadilly. For those who are not aware, that Metrolink line is an essential piece of transport infrastructure for people right across Tameside. It connects communities from Ashton-under-Lyne through to Audenshaw in my constituency, east Manchester and right into Piccadilly, where it connects with the rest of the Metrolink network through the city centre to Eccles via MediaCityUK. It provides transport links to the 60,000-capacity Etihad stadium at Sportcity and the massive Co-op Live arena currently being built at the Etihad campus.

I find it unacceptable that the Bill plans to mothball the Ashton line and fob off residents with replacement bus services. The Ashton New Road route is already well served by double-decker buses, and people who want to use buses are using them. The beauty of the Metrolink system is that it has attracted people who would not use buses out of their cars and on to public transport, and my fear is that they will go back into their motor cars for the period when the line is mothballed.

I will give a logistical argument. Three double-decker buses are required to give the same capacity as one tram, and to replace a Metrolink service of 10 trams an hour between Ashton and Piccadilly—a tram every six minutes, which by London standards is appalling but by northern standards is remarkable—needs an awful lot of extra double-decker buses in addition to those already using that route. Some of the infrastructure in place—the tracks, the overhead lines and the island stations—may have to be taken out temporarily, at great cost to the public purse, to give extra road capacity. I will give the example of Droylsden, which the Minister will be aware of, because his family’s solicitor’s office is there. The Droylsden tram stop, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), is a pinch point because it is slap-bang in the middle of a busy road at a crossroad junction in Droylsden town centre and the vehicular part of the road is pinched down to one lane only. It queues back now. If we put all those extra buses along that route without taking out the tram stop altogether, we will have traffic chaos through Droylsden. That is why we will not be fobbed off with a replacement bus service.

I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me last month to discuss my concerns and those of Transport for Greater Manchester, Tameside council and Manchester City Council. However, I am afraid to say that he and the Department for Transport fundamentally underestimate the extent of the damage that the suspension will cause and are stubbornly refusing to explore any alternative solutions.

In addition to massively inconveniencing residents, there are three areas where the Government’s plan to suspend the line falls short. First, we have decarbonisation and green investment. Suspending the Ashton Metrolink line will, as I said, increase congestion from buses in an already urbanised part of Greater Manchester, incentivise individuals to travel by private car rather than by zero-emission Metrolink trams, and undermine the Government’s own transport decarbonisation plan.

The second area of concern is economic. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority, alongside Tameside council, recently identified the Ashton mayoral development zone as one of its priority areas to deliver growth in the region. The combined authority has clear and bold ambitions for Ashton and surrounding areas. Tameside council has significantly invested in Ashton town centre, having delivered the new Ashton interchange, learning facilities and new council head offices. Ashton Moss, which is in my constituency, has been identified as a major strategic employment site, with a significant scale of employment and residential growth expected to accelerate the area’s economic development. Transport connectivity is essential for that development to succeed, and the suspension of the line would wholly undermine that.

The third area of concern relates to long-term planning. Transport for Greater Manchester has a simple approach to infrastructure and a mantra that I hope the Minister will take on board for HS2: build it once and build it right. The suspension would ride roughshod over that principle. The Government are planning to commit taxpayer money to temporary mitigation works instead of contributing to a permanent solution that would benefit the people of Tameside and east Manchester for generations to come.

I want to be clear that we in Greater Manchester want improved connectivity and investment in transport infrastructure. However, that must be done right and in consultation with the local authorities and Transport for Greater Manchester. Fobbing us off with paper-thin replacement bus services is not going to crack it.

There is a solution—the Minister knows this—because Transport for Greater Manchester has a plan that would allow for the development of HS2 without penalising the people of Tameside and east Manchester. TfGM has proposed the operation of a Metrolink shuttle service from Ashton to New Islington—the station before Piccadilly —during the period of construction. That would necessitate the development of a depot at Ashton Moss to accommodate the fleet as well as the addition of a crossover at the New Islington Metrolink stop. The Minister has cited a cost of £200 million for that work. That is a figure that I dispute and that TfGM and Tameside council strongly dispute. I remind him that construction of the entire Metrolink line from Piccadilly to Ashton-under-Lyne, including the moving of all the public utilities out of the road and into the pavement, the construction of the line and the stations, and the procurement of the trams to run on the line and to the stations, cost less than what he says a depot would cost.

The Minister also cited as a reason for the cost being extortionate that a high-pressure gas main would need to be relocated. That very same gas main was relocated when the Metrolink line was built and that was included in the overall cost that I just cited—and, 120 metres or so from where the depot would be built, the tramline crosses over that gas main. If it does not seem to be an issue 120 metres away, it should not be an issue for the depot.

In closing, I say to the Minister that, please, we have a solution, and that solution has a legacy benefit. If we built that depot on Ashton Moss, not only could we keep a shuttle service to Manchester going on the Metrolink line, but, in future, tram-train operations in eastern Greater Manchester could make use of that same depot, given that the railway line to Stockport via Denton and Reddish South, which I have been campaigning for, runs alongside Ashton Moss and the depot, so it could be used for generations to come.

The best outcome can be achieved only if the Government agree to implement Transport for Greater Manchester’s recommendations in full, and work collaboratively with local leaders to ensure that we get this right. I fear that we will be in petition mode, and that there will be a petition from Greater Manchester if the Government do not change tack. I hope not, because I do not want this massive infrastructure upgrade for my city region to be delayed. Let’s crack on, let’s get it right, and let’s build it right first time round.

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[Andrew Stephenson]

I thank the hon. Member for that point. We did not believe that the Bechtel report was convincing, but I was happy to do further work and have done further work since then. I will briefly mention the further study I commissioned at the request of the Mayor and others, because I believe that is important information, and then we can perhaps talk about a way forward.

In June 2020, I commissioned HS2 to investigate. By September 2020, HS2 Ltd, the Department for Transport, Transport for the North, Transport for Greater Manchester and Manchester City Council had agreed the scope for the work to look at a like-for-like comparison between a surface station and an underground alternative. In summer 2021, HS2 Ltd was commissioned to undertake that like-for-like study to compare the underground station alternatives to the surface station. HS2 looked at not only one alternative, but three possible alternative solutions for an underground station. HS2 Ltd worked closely with Transport for Greater Manchester, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Transport for the North at every stage of the study. From developing the scope of the work to selecting the underground options they considered, they ensured that they represented the best alternative underground designs. That study concluded in August 2021. It recommended that the Government proceed with the surface station for the HS2 Crewe to Manchester scheme. We confirmed our intention for a six-platform surface station when we deposited the Bill in January.

Based on the report’s findings, I am absolutely confident that a surface station design will deliver what Manchester needs at a lower cost and with a lower construction impact than underground alternatives. The study has been shared with Manchester stakeholders. The Government intend to publish the report shortly, to allow everyone to have sight of the work undertaken and compare the alternative underground design options with the surface station. My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton asked whether I could put a copy in the Library; I am more than happy to commit to doing so.

[Andrew Gwynne]

We are at an impasse here, because Greater Manchester MPs disagree fundamentally with the Minister, the Greater Manchester Mayor disagrees fundamentally with the Minister, and the 10 councils of Greater Manchester disagree fundamentally with the Minister. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) suggested a meeting to try to break the impasse. Will the Minister agree to that meeting?

[Andrew Stephenson]

I am more than happy to agree to that meeting. I am sure that the Select Committee will also want to look at all the options for Piccadilly and the proposals put forward by stakeholders. I am more than happy to meet, but I am sure that this debate will continue. Given the shortness of time, I will jump over the hon. Member’s contribution about Metrolink, but we have met several times and I am happy to continue to work with him to ensure that we deliver this in a sensible fashion.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) made some incredibly supportive comments about the Bill. He can be especially proud that the historic railway works in his constituency will help to deliver the HS2 rolling stock contract.

I thank the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) for his support and for speaking so eloquently in favour of more investment in rail infrastructure. We are learning lessons from Crossrail about project management and various other things; one of the first meetings that I had in the Department was with the outgoing chairman of Crossrail.