High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill

Anne Main Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

Some of these will be less expensive—indeed, that is one of the purposes of some of the changes we have suggested—and other changes will be within the budget that we have outlined, so there will be no need to have an overall increase in the budget. HS2 Ltd did, however, make provision, when planning for this project, for some changes that it expected the Select Committee may propose. I might expand on that a little later in my comments.

It should also be recognised that the changes set out in the additional provision are only a fraction of those that we have made to the scheme to address petitioner concerns. Many changes can be made within the existing Bill powers and so do not require an additional provision. Those include changes such as improved noise mitigation at Wendover and mitigations of the impacts on Bechstein’s bats—a species of vesper bats—in Sheephouse Wood in Buckinghamshire. The Bechstein bat is a particularly at-risk species and it is important that we protect the woodland habitat it uses.

The overall phase 1 budget is not expected to increase as a result of those changes, including the Euston proposals. Many of the changes come at no additional cost, some actually produce small savings and others are absorbed by the contingency set aside at the outset specifically for the purpose of addressing petitioner issues. If this motion is successfully passed, both these additional provisions will go through the same process, although the timings will be different for each. The relevant additional provision, an environmental statement describing the likely significant environmental effects of these changes and a supplementary environmental statement describing any new or different significant environmental effects of other proposed changes that do not require a change to Bill powers will be deposited in Parliament, council offices and libraries in affected areas. For the additional provision affecting Camden, these documents start to be deposited tomorrow. For the additional provision affecting other areas of the route, these documents will be deposited from 12 October.

A public consultation on the environmental statement will be held. The responses to the consultation will be analysed by Parliament’s independent assessor and the assessor’s report will be tabled in the House ahead of Third Reading. For the additional provision affecting Camden, the consultation will run from tomorrow until 6 November, and for the other additional provision, the consultation will run from mid-October.

There will also be a petitioning period for those directly and specially—to use that term again—affected by the changes in this additional provision to submit petitions against them. The petitioning period will run as usual for four weeks. For the additional provision affecting Camden, it will begin on Friday 25 September and end on Friday 23 October for all petitioners. For the other additional provision, the petitioning period will begin in mid-October for all petitioners. Newspaper notices will be published in national and local newspapers over two consecutive weeks following the deposit of each additional provision alerting the public to the changes and to the opportunity to feed into the process by petitioning or responding to the consultation as appropriate.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

To ensure that enough people are aware of the additional petitioning process, will my hon. Friend explain how people who are visually impaired or who might not have access to the local and national newspapers will get the information about these new changes?

[Mr Goodwill]

I will look into what we can do to ensure that people who are visually impaired can access the information. For the vast majority of people affected by the changes, they will be no surprise. In many cases, we have made them in negotiation with the landowner or other interested parties, including local authorities. Indeed, some of them respond to petitions so there will be delight that the changes have been proposed, although other people who might be affected might well want to petition about them.

Taken as a whole, these two additional provisions mark a major step towards completion of the hybrid Bill’s progress through the Select Committee. They demonstrate the Government’s willingness to seize the opportunity that a redeveloped Euston station offers not only to the local area but to the nation as a whole. They also demonstrate our willingness to respond to the concerns of petitioners and the Select Committee to make beneficial changes to the project, and I therefore commend them to the House.