High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, this is my last contribution at this stage of the Bill. Although I had originally intended to take part in the debate on the next group, there are more than enough committed Members of the House to speak to those amendments, so I will listen and cheer them on.

I will take this opportunity to thank my noble friend the Minister most sincerely for her patience in dealing with my concerns and for writing to me with various points of clarification.

I will not detain your Lordships for long on this amendment. Perhaps I should say at the outset that I do not propose to divide the House; rather, this is another of my attempts to draw attention to how HS2 Ltd should look at how it conducts itself to avoid the mistakes that have been made previously, and indeed are still being made. Those mistakes have seriously alienated many local residents along the line and I would not want them to be repeated on the phase of the project that is the subject of this Bill. My proposed new clause would clarify who was responsible for security and public safety. More than that, it would make the Secretary of State publish quarterly reports on the security provision and public safety around the scheduled works.

I do not condone unlawful protests, and I often think that such campaigns do more harm than good, although I admit that I did once say that I would stand in the path of the bulldozers if a third Heathrow runway was built—a line repeated by my successor in the Uxbridge constituency with, I believe, more controversy than I ever engendered. However, in the scheme of things, I am always more of a suffragist than a suffragette.

However, lawful protest is something else. Because of several incidents that have occurred, I would want to ensure that, however frustrating such protests might be for those doing the construction, legal protests were allowed and dealt with appropriately. Noble Lords might have seen recent reports, and indeed video footage, of a security guard who seemed to place his knee on the neck of one such protester. I do not know the full circumstances of the incident, but I do not need to emphasise the sensitivity of such action in these days. My honourable friend Michael Fabricant, the MP for Lichfield, has, rightly, raised this with a Minister in the other place.

There have been a number of other examples of excessive use of force on protesters, which, in my layman’s eyes, seem very close to assault. I believe that training is given but I am not sure that it is always observed. I am also rather concerned that one or two individuals, given a uniform of sorts, feel that they are above the law.

Another area of concern that I hope will not be repeated in this phase of HS2—it should not be, as it relates to the pandemic—is where HS2 construction workers at the height of the lockdown were entering local food shops and other places along the line of transport while completely ignoring social distancing.

There is also of course a need to ensure that the boundaries of the project are secure, so that not only protesters but inquisitive young people cannot enter the site. I recognise that the issue of public safety goes both ways. I therefore feel that HS2 must be properly accountable both in theory and, more importantly, in practice. I ask my noble friend—who, as I said, has been very patient in dealing with this particular Grumpy, as opposed to Swampy—where the public can go to register their concerns, as I am afraid that our confidence in HS2 is at rock bottom. I hope that this will be rectified without the need for my new clause.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, safety levels in industry in general in the UK are very high. These days, we take rail safety more or less for granted, but that was not the case two decades or so ago. Last year, we had a harsh reminder that we should not take it for granted, with the tragic accident in south Wales.

The noble Lord is right to raise this issue. I put my name down to speak because I was curious to see whether it was a general concern about safety or a specific issue that sparked the amendment. It is clear from what he has said today that his interest centres on the behaviour of employees towards residents and protesters.

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[Lord Carrington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a landowner, as set out in the register. I am also directly affected by HS2 south of Birmingham. I had not intended to speak on these amendments, but the groupings changed at some point, and my name seems to have been retained. Now, on further research, I think it worth making some basic observations.

HS2 claims that only 43 out of 52,000 ancient woodlands will be affected, and 80% of the 43 will remain intact. Therefore, we are talking about just 0.005% of ancient woodlands. We should also remember that, as we heard last week, some of these ancient woodlands are far from being ancient. I happen to own and manage such a designated wood. It was owned by the Forestry Commission, which felled and replanted it almost entirely with Corsican pine shortly after the last war. The wood failed: Corsican pine was the wrong tree to grow on heavy Oxford clay. I have replanted it with hardwood, and it is thriving, together with all the flora and fauna. I did not need a special report to do this—I just got on with it. HS2 will have a similar responsibility and opportunity.

My real comment is that although these amendments are well intentioned and harmless, they are unnecessary and a further bureaucratic exercise, something that most woodland owners and managers dread. The compilers and others involved in these suggested reports would be better occupied in actually managing these woodlands on the ground with planting, weeding, pruning and pest control. Erecting hides to help manage the barking deer population as well as removing squirrel dreys with poles and setting humane traps for this worst of pests would be a more constructive use of everyone’s time.

Having said this, I would certainly not oppose Amendment 13 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, but I believe that Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, is a little over the top.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, because he picked up on an issue that I raised in the previous debate on this. Ancient woodland does not necessarily mean ancient trees—they are of variable quality. However, of course, they include a number of fine pieces of woodland that have rich ecosystems because they have been on that site for a very long time.

I am pleased that the Minister has indicated that she will accept Amendment 13. The previous debate was characterised by very vigorous discussion between Members of this House with a considerable knowledge of environmental issues. There was an obvious level of disagreement among the experts and, therefore, Amendment 13 enables this not to become the subject of the debate. One assumes that the reports concerned will follow on from expert advice.

I hope that these annual reports will not be yet another bureaucratic process but a mechanism to enable public scrutiny of how HS2 is performing in practice and to ensure that there is progress and improvement in standards of land and woodland management as the project progresses. This is a massive project and there is no excuse for getting anything other than the most expert advice on woodland issues. In financial terms, the cost of woodland replanting and improvement is very small indeed in comparison with the costs of the engineering aspects of the project.

I will repeat a question I have asked before and come back to a topic I have dealt with before. Our rich environments—areas of outstanding environmental importance—are not just limited to ancient woodlands: wetlands and meadows can be every bit as important in terms of environmental and ecological significance.

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[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I want to speak to the principle behind the amendment rather than its exact terminology.

There was a time when NDAs were exceptional, but well over 300 of them for HS2 show that we have moved a long way from that in terms of commercial procedure. Why do we have FoI questions and FoI legislation? In many cases, processes such as NDAs were being used to hide inconvenient pieces of information. Information is power; it always has been and always will be.

My noble friend Lady Kramer excellently outlined the complex issues associated with this, particularly on proscribed people. That picks up on the Minister’s response when we discussed in Committee the issue of the number of people coming forward as whistleblowers.

However, the issue goes far wider than HS2 and will, I am sure, be aired in this House on other occasions. The Grenfell inquiry is totally separate, but that public inquiry has revealed how important the detail of commercial arrangements is and what motivation there may be for such hiding that detail. There is commercial realism, but nevertheless, there is a balance to be struck. When individuals sign these agreements they often do so without fully appreciating the complexity of what they are signing up to.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I too attended the Zoom session on this issue. I thank the Minister and those present for organising it.

I can see that NDAs were necessary in the consultation stage, but there is a question mark, which is difficult to debate, over whether they were necessary in such volume. More importantly, was there possible misuse to suppress whistleblowers? We were given some assurances about that, which, once again, I found at least partially convincing. I hope that the Minister will repeat those assurances for the record.

There is a more general point as to whether NDAs are overly used in public procurement. I believe that there may be a case for more transparency and that the Government should consider launching a general investigation into transparency in public procurement. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that that is a bigger issue and it would be inappropriate to pursue it further at this point.

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[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has withdrawn, so we now turn to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for his sterling efforts to help us poor lay men understand the complexity of the topic involved in these amendments. I have a rather unfashionable approach to experts; I tend to think that we should listen to them. On this occasion, I also urge the Government to do so.

Having reread the Minister’s response to the last debate on this, I did not gather from that a good, clear reason why the well-established practice is being abandoned. It is clear that the 1996 Act is well established and has worked well, and it seems strange to replace a consensual approach to a problem with an adversarial system. In my experience, adversarial systems always cost more in the end. They can also prove very unfair to those who do not have the nature or the money to embark on an adversarial fight, which can often last months and years, and who therefore decline to press their case when indeed they should be doing so. I urge the Minister to ensure that HS2 is approaching this in a sensible manner for the next phase of the development.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have a lot of sympathy with the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. It seems that the 1996 Act covers these issues, and I am very suspicious of why HS2 needs such a significant change to the provisions of that Act for its project. I am not convinced that it needs these powers. I believe that, with modest alterations, good management should be able to overcome any problems. However, one faces the classic dilemma of a specialist area in an important Act, which is that I cannot know that I am right because we have not been able to listen to various points of view other than the expert knowledge of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and it is possible that the project needs these powers. As I understand it, there are likely to be few party walls in this phase of the project. He may be right that a dispute might significantly delay the project. Hence, I am unwilling at this stage to support the amendment if there is a Division.