High Speed Rail (London–West Midlands) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 12th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 17 is to do with the restriction of lorries and road use. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. The committee obviously spent a long time considering this, as it covers about 12 paragraphs in its report. Probably as a result of its questioning, HS2 has considerably improved its offer of the proportion of freight that will be taken by rail rather than by road, particularly in the Camden area.

My reason for putting this amendment down was to try to cover the whole of the route of phase 1 rather than just Camden. I point out that the reason we are in this situation is that HS2 did not start off the project by thinking, “It is clearly unacceptable to have 1,500 or 2,000 trucks a day going through Camden for several years, so how can we design a station and its approaches in such a way that you could use rail freight?”. In fact, Network Rail said that it did not want any rail freight into Euston, because it might delay the passenger trains. Since there are not any passenger trains at night, it is difficult to accept that that was a sensible argument. However, we are where we are.

HS2 has come some way at Euston. Given the pressure it has taken to get it this far, it would be a good idea if one could put some percentages in the Bill of what it would be required to do to move materials by means other than road. We are not just talking about spoil and demolition material; other materials can easily come in on rail and be trained off. Then there is the whole question of concrete, bringing in the aggregates and maybe the cement, and having a batching plant on-site. I remember saying to HS2, “Why don’t you put a batching plant there?”. I was told, “We’re going to put a generating station there”. I said, “But you could have thought of putting a batching plant there first”. “Well, we didn’t”. That was the kind of discussion that went on.

We can talk about this for a long period. HS2 is in discussions with the train operators now, and I hope that it has enough rolling stock to do it now. Again, we asked, “If you want to suddenly move all this material by rail, is there enough rolling stock in the country, or should somebody pre-order it?”. It did not want to pre-order it and influence what the contractors might say or do, and it will probably be all right. Outside London, it is unclear what could happen, so there is a strong argument for making sure that HS2 sticks to these percentages. We can debate whether they are the right ones, but we need to hold it to account. On Tuesday we heard about trucks in Wendover, and we heard about other places. We even heard, in the last amendment, that HS2 wanted to run trucks down the bus lanes in London because the trucks were more important than buses. It would be useful if some sort of legislative grip was taken on the provider as regards this serious and very important issue because otherwise we could still have 1,500 trucks a day going through Camden and a similar number going through other places that are equally congested and in need of protection. I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I start by referring to the excellent committee report which refers to this issue in detail, and I am delighted to support the amendment. The committee notes that some areas of Camden, along with other urban areas, suffer levels of air pollution that are in serious breach of EU limits. It calls the haulage by road of materials to and from the construction sites,

“one of the gravest problems of the project”.

As the project has developed, the Government have made a commitment over time to more and more tunnelling in order to alleviate the problems of noise for residents in other areas, but that in itself creates another environmental problem because the excavated soil will have to be moved over long distances. Add to that the cement, aggregates and steel for tunnels and bridges and so on, plus building materials for several new stations, and we are talking about very significant amounts.

The committee’s comments on Euston concentrate on the level of disruption over a period of more than a decade which involves the demolition of a large office block as well as other homes. It is critical—I urge noble Lords to read paragraph 178—of the impact on local people and is particularly critical about the idea of rebuilding Euston station in two stages. I am using this opportunity to urge the Minister to press his colleagues in government and HS2 to ensure that a co-ordinated approach is taken, and I also urge the Government to bring forward the funding so that planning and rebuilding can be done together to limit the problems for local residents. Both Camden Council and the Regent’s Park Estate tenants gave evidence to the committee, as did the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. It is noted that the shortest journey by road from Euston to the nearest landfill is 26 miles one way. In contrast, one train can move as much material as 124 HGVs, so to my mind there is absolutely no argument about the need to transport more materials by train—or indeed by river. Given the strong words of the committee, I was very disappointed that no clear recommendation was made about transporting the soil and that the committee simply resorted to exhorting HS2 to do better than the 28% of excavated soil and 17% of construction materials it guarantees to move by rail. Euston may, as has been stated, be a congested site, so I would argue that there is all the more reason to apply the highest standards.

It is also important to learn the lessons of the past. For both the Olympics and Crossrail, which in many respects were similarly congested sites, a political decision was taken to minimise transport by road and to set targets. As a result, some riverside wharves that would otherwise have been sold off for housing were retained to enable transport by river.

We need the Government to aim high. I believe that exhorting HS2 to do better will not maximise the use of rail for transport in this regard or, indeed, encourage it to consider river transport either. We need to set targets and there needs to be a political decision on this. This is all the more important because of the protracted nature of the plans for Euston. I take this opportunity to ask whether the Minister can confirm the rumours circulating in the Euston area that HS2 is considering moving the portals of the tunnel from which the proposed new HS2 line will emerge to the west of Euston station about one kilometre nearer to the station. Local residents would be very supportive of that because they believe that it would reduce the disruption caused by the removal of materials. Therefore, if that rumour is accurate, we will be pleased.

As regards whether it is appropriate to set targets for this issue, obviously some sites will be more difficult than others in terms of removing spoil by road. It is not practical to address this on a completely comprehensive basis but it is entirely reasonable to tell HS2 that it should have overall targets so that it achieves an overall picture.

As I said, from time to time the Government have acceded to requests for tunnelling and increased compensation, particularly in rural areas. That is laudable and we appreciate that responsiveness. However, the committee itself suggests that some aspects of the compensation schemes are unbalanced, favour rural areas and do not pay sufficient attention to the disruption caused by the construction process. Therefore, as well as addressing the issue of fairness in the compensation arrangements, I urge the Government to take a much more fundamental approach by reducing the disruption altogether. Transporting as much material as possible by rail would reduce that disruption.

In conclusion, although I have emphasised Camden and Euston, this issue applies throughout the length of the project, particularly in other urban areas as well.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for their contributions. I say at the outset that I fully appreciate the intent behind their amendment in terms of maximising the use of rail for the transportation of material in relation to HS2. Both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness rightly focused on the concerns that have been raised, particularly in the London Borough of Camden and in Euston. However, the majority of construction sites for HS2 phase 1 are in rural areas and, practically speaking, do not have ready access to an existing rail network. Put simply, imposing the limits proposed in the amendment would mean that it would not be possible to construct HS2. However, it is important to take on board some of the points that have been made and answer them directly.

I of course share the concerns about the impacts of HS2 construction on the road network, as do the Government. As noble Lords may be aware, the Government have already made commitments with similar intentions. We have committed to maximise the volume of excavated and construction material to be brought in and removed by rail. This will need to be done while balancing the wider environmental impacts on the local community and on passenger services.

Specifically on the point of spoil by rail, the noble Lord and the noble Baroness talked about targets, and the Lords Select Committee was mentioned in the noble Baroness’s remarks. I am sure that noble Lords have also reflected on the committee’s note. Again, I thank the committee once again for its exhaustive work in this respect. Paragraph 411 of its report says:

“We are satisfied that HS2 is taking this responsibility seriously”,

and the report goes on to say that it saw,

“no useful purpose to be served by attempting to set fixed targets. It would be little more than plucking aspirational figures out of the air”.

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[Lord Berkeley]

The noble Lord is tempting me to get on to the issue of guards, which I shall not do. The answer is yes—but it is not for the guard but for other things. But there are not many left.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I recall the old luggage vans, although the Minister is far too young to remember things like that. I was travelling on a train in Australia a couple of years ago which still had a luggage van, and it was used for two things. First, it was used for people to put long-distance small packages on. They were not travelling on the train themselves; they were simply sending their package. That might be a company or a private individual. It was also used in the same way as we check our luggage on to an aeroplane—you checked your luggage on to the train. It transformed the experience of sitting on a crammed carriage with people jockeying for position with their luggage. I fully accept that that model is probably not acceptable or appropriate in the UK, but we need to move on from our fatal tendency to cram as many seats into the space as possible while ignoring the requirements for luggage space. I am sure that your Lordships will all have sat on a so-called express train to an airport—by definition in a scenario where you are likely to have quite a lot of luggage—and seen people sitting with large suitcases on their laps because there is absolutely no space left in the tiny amount of room allocated for luggage on those trains.

I support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, because I think that we need to be more far-sighted on this. His suggestion on flip-down seats is extremely interesting and a useful compromise, because it provides seats where they are needed, when flexible space is not needed, allowing for change in future. Buggies are not going to go away. People are going to go on having children and using buggies and needing to put them on trains.

I want to use this opportunity to explore the issue of wheelchair space. By legislation, there will be such a space, but the Minister will remember that we had the discussion on the Bus Services Bill about what happens when two people in wheelchairs wish to travel together. Wheelchair spaces are very often a solitary allowance, so flexible space would allow additional space for wheelchair users. HS2 will be an absolute boon for wheelchair users; the current railway system is often difficult for people in wheelchairs to navigate, if not impossible. Air travel is very difficult for them. Many people in wheelchairs simply cannot drive a car. So this will be a huge opportunity for wheelchair users to undertake long-distance travel in comfort, and we need to ensure that the trains are designed in such a way that they are flexible enough to accommodate more than one wheelchair user at a time in a carriage.

Given that there has been so much publicity lately about the availability of toilet facilities for people with disabilities—noble Lords will recall the very distressing story of one of our Paralympic athletes who was put in a very undignified position by the fact that the sole disabled toilet on the train was not functioning—can the Minister clarify that these trains will have a modern and respectable level of toilet facilities for disabled people? I would like to feel that all the toilets were accessible for disabled people. By the time it is built, it will be the middle of the 21st century, and we really cannot have only a single available toilet on a train.

[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley are well taken, particularly in respect of facilities for the disabled, flexible space for carrying light freight and proper facilities for families and those looking after young children. There has been a tendency on the part of the railways to move in the Japanese direction of regarding freight and luggage as a bad thing and making it almost impossible for passengers to carry such items in comfort. I do not think that that is a direction in which we want to go.

However, the area where I am more doubtful is about facilities on high-speed trains or the next generation of trains in general for the carrying of bicycles. It is not that there should not perhaps be some facility at the margin for doing so—though I am not sure, even with the great wisdom and expertise of your Lordships’ House, that trying to design a train by committee is a good idea, so the figure of 10% that my noble friend Lord Berkeley has specified might be a bit too precise. If there is spare luggage space on a train that is suitable for carrying bikes, then that is fine. But the real issue in terms of encouraging much more bicycle use in relation to trains—which is out of all proportion more important than the capacity to carry bikes on trains themselves, which will only ever be marginal, particularly with very busy trains loading and unloading hundreds of people at a time—is decent cycle storage and rental facilities at stations, so that passengers do not need to convey bikes on the train in the first place. With the best will in the world, you are only ever going to be able to carry a handful of bikes on trains, but you can have thousands of bicycles, either privately owned or for rental, provided for at stations. By and large, our mainline stations, which were not designed for bicycles or indeed anything else modern, including in most cases decent retail facilities, have lamentable facilities for storing bikes. It is a telling indication of the big problems that we have in managing bicycles, even with all the improvements in London, that the cycle rental scheme does not embrace most London termini, because how to deal with the big issues of location and of shipping bikes backwards and forwards has not yet been worked out.

The contrast with best European practice in this area could not be more stark. I shall never forget visiting Amsterdam station and other major stations in Holland. Where you come out of the station, you have huge areas reserved for bikes, including rental schemes, along with bike workshops, so that you can get repairs done, and proper supervised bike facilities. It is a completely different situation from the one we have here. We are not yet at the stage of detailed station design plans for HS2 but I hope that, when it comes to the design of these hugely forward-looking stations that we want to see at Euston, Old Oak Common, Birmingham Curzon Street and other locations going north, there will be exemplary facilities for cyclists with significant space made available for cycle storage, repairs and rental schemes. In terms of a path-breaking approach to integrating cycling with railway use, seeing that there are state-of-the-art and capacious cycle facilities at stations is far more important than any provision that it might be possible to make in respect of the trains.

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[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, we need something to deal with this issue, whatever form that “something” takes, and we need it to be independent and to have a responsibility to provide reports and analysis of the issues and problems as they occur.

The committee’s report is very critical of the record of HS2 so far. The committee said:

“The promoter has attracted a good deal of criticism from some petitioners for lack of engagement”.

HS2 Ltd has now made a commitment to put in place a strategy for community engagement, including for vulnerable residents, and has employed someone to deal with community engagement and complaints. However, it has a lot of ground to make up in terms of public trust. Indeed, the final amendment that the Minister put forward in our previous debate, which was a last-minute change of approach in terms of traffic regulation, does not inspire one with confidence that the Government are looking ahead at what they need, or if they are looking ahead, that they have raised the issue in time for full consultation on it. I am not sure which of those two scenarios is the more disturbing. As I say, HS2 has ground to make up. Throughout the project residents have a right to expect a good, simple, straightforward and independent process when concerns arise and they have complaints. I believe that a similar process was followed in relation to Crossrail. However it is done, we need intelligent mediation on this.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being present at Tuesday’s Committee debate due to private reasons. I have subsequently read the report of the proceedings and very much appreciate the contributions made by my noble friends Lady Mallalieu, Lady Young and Lord Rosser. I particularly appreciate the Minister’s contribution as he covered some of the points I would have made had I been present, and did so very well. Of course, now that he has declared that he is a would-be train driver, I am sure that he will be disqualified from any future activities with regard to transport, but while we have him, we should cherish him.

I declare my interest as a resident of Little Missenden in the Chilterns AONB. I have also been involved in some of the campaigns associated with Little Missenden. My private interests were dealt with during a sitting of the Select Committee in your Lordships’ House. However, I think that, to the extent to which they were able to help, those matters are extinguished. Therefore, I am not dealing here with private interests but with the fallout from the issues that occur to me as a Member of your Lordships’ House in relation to some of the processes that I have been able to observe from a variety of positions.

I am speaking to Amendment 30, dealing with a complaints commissioner; to Amendment 31, in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding; and to the associated amendments relating to those. Amendments 30 and 31 relate to issues that stem from some of the processes that have been established to try to progress the Bill through a hybrid arrangement. The noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, made a very good speech in which she tried to identify where the gaps occur from a local perspective. I should have mentioned in my opening remarks that I thank her for speaking on Tuesday on another amendment. Noble Lords may not be aware that she rushed here, almost straight from the airport, and had not even unpacked before she arrived, and yet she was still able to give a very substantial speech, and I thank her for that.

The process we have been through reveals the need for either a complaints commissioner or an adjudicator. I absolutely agree with the points made by my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on these issues. During the Select Committee phase, the focus is on the personal interests of those who are directly affected by the Bill. The problem is that, even if you are trying to argue a more general public interest case, what you can do is narrowed down by the fact that the opening position and arrangements against which those presentations are made relate to your residence and propinquity to the line.

I am conscious that there are members of the Select Committee here today, and I do not in any sense want to do anything to suggest that I do not hold them in the highest regard or do not think that the report was an excellent summary of the work that they did. However, I found it a very difficult experience, and I am not an inexperienced public speaker. If I found it difficult, it is fair to say that other petitioners will have found it the same. It is a very adversarial process, focusing on private interests, and therefore mitigation, rather than on the broader issues that exist. There is no equality of arms because the process is done in a court-like setting with very highly trained, and presumably quite expensive, advocates against you.

The particularity of the situation in the Lords was that the committee, for reasons that I understand, had decided that it would not hear cases that involved alternative provisions. That meant that most of those who wished to speak, certainly those from the Chilterns, felt that they could not raise all the issues they wanted to. I could go on—I could mention that the lack of action groups and the reliance on parish councils was reflected, but I do not wish to get into that area. I just want that to be noted as the background. Looking back at the process, it seems to me that important issues have fallen by the side. It is not clear to me how those can be picked up, except through this process. This process is dealing with the public aspects of the Bill, but it engages with issues that could be regarded as private, even though they are germane.

I appreciate that this is quite a difficult point to get across and I have no doubt that I will be attacked for it. However, there is a gap around the need to regard what local expertise and understanding can bring to the broader picture. That is not the same as private interests. The issues faced by those trying to petition the Select Committee were no different from the issues faced by those arguing more generally against the Bill.

The Bill will go through—there is no question but that the Government will get their Bill. Therefore, it is now a question of how best to improve it for the future for all people. However, in the absence of the ability to get direct cost information about what is involved, we were constantly frustrated. How could it be that decisions were being reached that balanced the direct costs of building part of the railway and the adverse costs that would occur if the environment were destroyed? This obviously applies to the Chilterns, but there are other areas in which this is also a responsibility. We could not get that cost information: we lacked the ability to do so through the private sector and we have not been able to do it in any public way. That is a problem. I am not saying that were the information to be made available it would change anything, but we cannot get it and the decision is not transparent. There is no information available in the public sector about the trade-off that needs to be made—as I understand it, through the legislative process—between the responsibilities the Government have to maintain AONBs and the need to have the infrastructure of a railway. I have come to terms with the fact that there will be a railway and it will go through the Chilterns. However, I do not have the information to understand better the mechanics of how a decision was reached that it was too expensive to continue the tunnel past Wendover, for example.

There are some difficulties here. It may be that the review which is to be carried out on how we deal with these issues and how lines are to be built will pick up on the point, although I certainly understand that it is probably too late to look at this particular railway. But I want to put on the record that, from my experience, there are difficulties here.

My real point is one I mentioned earlier. It is about the way in which local experience about the problems and the pinch points cannot be built into the process. Some very good examples were given to the Committee in the sitting on Tuesday. The noble Viscount, Lord Astor, in what was a series of powerful and appropriate contributions, talked about the tunnelling at Wendover and the issues that have arisen from knowledge about a cheaper version which simply is not being discussed, along with the issues at Doddershall and Quainton. As the noble Viscount explained, these are all extremely pertinent in the local context, but there are wider issues about whether they are the better solution to the problems being faced by the proprietor in putting forward the railway. Like the noble Viscount, I do not understand how it is that these decisions are taken in the absence of information and in the absence of a process under which better interrogation could take place.

I shall mention two or three other matters although I do not wish to go into any detail and I am not looking to the Minister to make a response to them. However, I have been copied into correspondence from people living near Savay Lake and Savay Farm, which I know the committee heard about at length. As I say, I do not wish to go into the detail, but it seems that there may be a miscarriage here which is of an extent that might require, for instance, an independent adjudicator to take some interest in further down the line. That is why I support the proposal. The question about the haul road in Great Missenden for which there seemed a solution brokered outside the Select Committee in order to ensure that there would be a programme to mitigate the damage to Great Missenden collapsed and there seems to be no way to retrieve it because the system simply does not provide an opportunity to do so.

All these issues—there are others; I could mention the question of more issues closer to Great Missenden at Hyde Heath and further up the line as referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Astor—show that the detail is not needed to make the general point that there is no body, no person, likely to be able to take account of redress where there is environmental impact as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, or impacts on communities which occur after the Act is passed but during the process and before the line is opened. That is because the system does not seem to permit it. It will be, as it were, cast in concrete as soon as the Bill gets through. That seems wrong and therefore I agree absolutely with the idea that there should be some form of complaints commission. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, made the right point when she said that we need something with teeth, and therefore her proposal for an independent adjudicator may be the right way forward.

Before I close on this perhaps I may mention a point that was raised by my noble friend Lord Rosser on Tuesday. Many of the complaints that arose in the original hearings and in both Select Committees were about compensation. I think we have all had experience of how difficult that can be to apply. There is a proposal which I would commend to the Minister to take on board. I do not think that it could necessarily be available on this project, but it might be appropriate for phase 2. It could be of more general interest and I would ask him to take it away because I am not looking for a response today. It stems from a Private Member’s Bill tabled around 18 months ago in the other place. The idea is a property bond approach through a substantial fund that would be controlled by a mutual on the basis that where a person has a property which is affected by some form of infrastructure arrangement, it would not be necessary for the promoters of the scheme to provide a direct contribution towards the replacement costs should that property be required. There is too much detail for me to go through at this point in the proceedings, but I would like to leave the proposal with the Minister and I am happy to write to him and attend meetings if he feels that it is worth following up.

The difficulty that has bedevilled all the compensation schemes in the Chilterns has been around propensity to the line. Setting an arbitrary figure of so many metres before someone can qualify for one or other of the various arrangements was always going to cause problems, and that is a general observation rather than applying just to this line. If it could be possible to arrange matters, perhaps through some form of mutual obligation on all property owners, so that anyone affected by waterworks activity, electricity, railways and roads is covered for the diminution in the value of their property because of the works, that would lift a huge weight from those who are affected by infrastructure arrangements and, I think, it would help the Government to gain support for their projects. The proposal comes under the general idea of a property bond, but it is really related to the blighting effect of infrastructure projects. I commend it to those who might be interested and I will be happy to follow it up later.