High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill: Select Committee

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

I will not pre-empt what I have to say when I move my amendment, but will the Minister clarify what he meant when he talked about passive provision and referred to Heathrow? Is he saying that passive provision is already in existence, or would it have to be made?

[Mr Goodwill]

The passive provision for the Heathrow spur is included in the first phase. That is because if the spur goes ahead—it is already part of the second phase that is being consulted on—breaking into the line to put in a link would be very expensive and disruptive. The spur—the passive provision for the Heathrow link—is part of the first phase. We are consulting on the second phase, part of which is the Heathrow spur.

I must point out that the first phase of HS2 includes a very good connection to Heathrow airport via Old Oak Common, with up to eight trains an hour and 11 or 12-minute journey times. That is a very good way of getting to Heathrow and to other stations served by Crossrail. Old Oak Common is currently a little-known backwater, but very soon, I promise, it will become as famous as Waterloo, St Pancras or Victoria stations and be an integral part of this country’s and this capital’s transport system.

[Ms Stuart]

May I make this clear? The passive provision for Heathrow is already in place, and passive provision to provide for a potential HS1-HS2 link could be put into the legislation as it is now. It would have to be put in because it is not there by virtue of the Heathrow passive provision, and it could not be added by dint of the Committee deciding to do so.

[Mr Goodwill]

Yes, I think the hon. Lady has got it right. There is an opportunity, should anyone wish to take it, to petition the Committee to put in some passive provision for a future connection. We have commissioned HS2 Ltd and Network Rail to look at options for better connecting the rail network to HS1, but any conclusions that require powers would not be taken forward in this Bill.

On the carry-over motion, hybrid Bills can be carried over Prorogations because Standing Order 80A does not apply. This is a completely standard part of the process for hybrid Bills, as they generally take longer than public Bills.

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[Mrs Gillan]

That is an interesting response because we have changed Standing Orders for this process and for HS2. I am sure the other place would have looked at it. If not, I would be very interested to see the paper trail and what was pursued. Perhaps we could ask the Minister to place that in the Libraries of both Houses, so that we can see what the problems were. Phase 2 and the route to Crewe is about to come up and we need to see whether there are ways we can facilitate the process. Otherwise, it could be very arduous for our people, and others, who are petitioning.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

When the Convention on the Future of Europe was set up, we did have a Joint Committee between the Commons and the Lords. New rules were found to make that possible.

[Mrs Gillan]

The hon. Lady has taken the very words out of my mouth. I was going to say that it has happened before and it would be interesting to consider that, because we need to learn for the future processes associated with this major infrastructure project.

Why do we have the carry-over motion here and now? To bind the next Parliament, assuming that all the Committee members are re-elected, and, in effect, to rule out the Committee stage having any chance of finishing before the general election, seems a bit short sighted. I think it is premature: we do not know what could happen between now and then. It would have been advisable to keep the carry-over motion for another day, when it became obvious what was going to happen. There must be an explanation, because the Minister is leaping to his feet.

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[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of amendment (e) to motion 4 on the Order Paper, which is tabled in my name and that of five other right hon. and hon. Members from the west midlands representing the three main political parties. It is quite useful to have learned that to be on the Committee that will consider the Bill requires not only persistence, but also continence—in every sense of the word.

In speaking to the amendment, I am trying to prove a theory, namely that the greater and more significant the issue under debate, the fewer words will be used to discuss it. Debates about £20 fees and the Committee’s quorum may take up more inches in Hansard than this amendment. The amendment is quite simple and tries to suggest that when planning massive investment that will last for decades, it is foolish to constrain the project unnecessarily. Some 12 years ago, I was in Birmingham to discuss the revamping of New Street station and a question was asked about high-speed rail. Everybody around the table said, “You’re never going to get high-speed rail so you might as well forget about it.” We decided, however, that we ought to keep the corridor, so that high-speed rail could happen should it ever be cleared. The amendment asks that although the Committee will not be permitted to hear any petition to the extent that it relates to the

“the spur from Old Oak Common to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link referred to in the Bill”,

it should not be

“prevented by this instruction from hearing any Petition”—

and this is important—

“relating to the need for the Bill to:

(a) include an alternative to the spur;

(b) facilitate the provision at a later date of the spur; or

(c) facilitate the provision at a later date of an alternative to the spur”.

I was not born in this country. I was born in a city called Munich, which, when it was awarded the Olympic games, was synonymous with traffic jams. London transport engineers moved to Munich and managed to design an integrated transport system that is still serving its purpose 50 years later. The main thing was that Munich had planning laws that allowed for big decisions to be made. We should not have a high-speed rail line that has speed and ease of access, both national and international, as its whole purpose and that then asks passengers to get out of one train halfway through the journey, move across London and then go somewhere else. That may be how it is done in Paris, but it is still not a good idea. I want Ministers to consider the matter, because it is not just the Mayor of London who thinks that it is a bad idea. Birmingham city council’s view is that it is important not only for the region, but also for its provisions and planning for Curzon Street station and the international link.

Accepting the amendment or elaborating on what the Minister means by passive provisions would not close the door on something that it is so essential to the success of high-speed rail. I urge the Minister to ask himself why we are spending massive amounts of money so far into the future. We want to increase not only capacity, but also interconnectivity, both within the United Kingdom and with the rest of Europe. The Minister should consider the amendment with great care. If he can come back with some proposal that proves that the door has not been closed on what is an enormously important debate, I will be happy not to press the amendment to a Division, but he must be quite specific about what he means by passive provisions and how the link will be considered. That does not mean a specific link; it means linking HS1 and HS2 in a meaningful manner. If we do not do that, the whole purpose will be defeated.

[Frank Dobson]

As I hope I have already explained to my hon. Friend, I would happily accept paragraphs (a) and (c) in the amendment, but were the proposal to

“facilitate the provision at a later date of the spur”

accepted, we would create a situation in which people would be able to petition in favour of the abandoned spur, but the people affected by it would not be able to petition against it.

[Ms Stuart]

I fully accept that that is an argument. The main thing, however, is that I do not want the decision not to consider a link simply to be in the hands of the Secretary of State and Sir David Higgins; I want the decision to be made in a democratic way. I therefore want the doors to be kept open for the Committee to consider petitions to provide such a link. That is really the only point that I wanted to make today.

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[Mrs Spelman]

I think that is a very valuable outcome, because it helps Members to understand that we can assist individuals and groups in our constituencies who are blighted by the construction works but ineligible for compensation in preparing a petition to which we can lend our names. Although we cannot petition as MPs, we can lend our support to such petitions. I think that everyone affected by the project has learned something important today.

That brings me to an important remark made by the Minister’s predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), when he took through the paving Bill. He frequently stated that compensation would be fair and generous. With regard to construction compounds, at the moment no fair or generous compensation is available. I hope that the House will understand why I lent my name to amendment (b) to motion 4.

The next amendment to which I shall speak briefly as a member of the Environmental Audit Committee is the important one that takes the recommendations of the inquiry by the Select Committee and turns them into an instruction to the Select Committee when it takes the hybrid Bill through Parliament to pay close attention to the environmental consequences and to the Government’s stated aspiration to be the greenest ever, and to give expression to that through something new in law—biodiversity offsetting. The key words in amendment (d) to motion 4 are

“alternative or additional environmental protections”,

because there is more than one way of providing environmental protection, and we should seek to do that to the highest possible standard. That aspiration is shared by the National Trust.

In the natural environment White Paper published during my time as Secretary of State, we set down a clear commitment to achieve net gain. Overall, we are going backwards in terms of loss of species and loss of habitats. Inevitably, this large infrastructure project will result in the loss of habitats, because it will be necessary to dig up green spaces and displace species, some of them vulnerable, from those areas. I urge the Minister to take seriously the exhortations of my friend, the Chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), and to give the House an undertaking that should something come up during the Select Committee stage which pertains to environmental protections, the Government will make time on Third Reading to enable us all to debate those significant points. I hope the Minister will be able to give me that undertaking later today.

Finally, I shall speak in support of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who has led the charge from the west midlands over the importance of not precluding the link between High Speed 1 and High Speed 2, which is all-important for the west midlands and regions outside London. The regions—not just the west midlands, but the east midlands, the north-west and the north-east—were all led to believe when High Speed 2 was first mooted in 2010 that there would be through-trains. That is undoubtedly what other non-London-based Members such as me will have mentioned to our constituents at the time, as part of the expectation of what HS2 will deliver. There is not a little disappointment about the fact that that is to be precluded from inclusion in the hybrid Bill as it stands.

To me it is unacceptable that in the 21st century an American passenger can land at Birmingham international airport, clear customs, get on a high-speed train by which they aspire to arrive on the continent, have to get off on the east side of Euston station and schlep their luggage in our rather indifferent weather to St Pancras station, pass immigration control again, and board another train to the continent. I am convinced that in the 21st century we can do better than that.

Inextricably linked to the question of the link is the Euston problem. Euston is a problem, but it was clear from the paving Bill that there is more than one model for solving the problem. In defence of the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), the difficulty for his constituents is that every time we publicly change that model, more and more properties are blighted by that effect.

We in the west midlands are keen to see a through link. For us that is integral to the project. As I mentioned yesterday, Birmingham airport will be 31 minutes from London on High Speed 2. If there is a stop at Old Oak Common, as the Prime Minister observed on visiting Birmingham international airport and opening its extended runway, he could get to Birmingham airport from Notting Hill as quickly as he could get to Heathrow. The under-utilised runway at Birmingham would become competitive given that faster running time, but much of the competitive benefit is lost if the interchange to a high-speed service by train to the continent is not achievable. I urge the Government to heed this very important point, which is not just about the west midlands.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

The right hon. Lady reminds me of an anecdote that Birmingham city council told us when Deutsche Bank was negotiating about its relocation. The board members went back home, some to London and others to Frankfurt, and the ones who went back to Frankfurt got home quicker than the ones who went back to London.

[Mrs Spelman]

That is a very telling point. Deutsche Bahn aspires to run through trains from Frankfurt to London, and we should have the same aspiration to run through trains from Birmingham to Paris. In the 21st century, that should not be beyond the wit of man. At the same time, it would resolve the serious problems that beset the constituency of the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras. It would also address the salient issue raised by Camden council at the time of the paving Bill—that back in the 19th century the local community was severed by the west coast main line. A remodelling of Euston and a linking of High Speed 1 and High Speed 2 has the potential to heal that fractured community if it is done in the right way.

I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to reconsider the exclusion of considerations on the link as part of this hybrid Bill. After all, the link is integral to the project for all of us who live outside London.

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[Mr Goodwill]

The Committee already has the budget before it. I do not want to add anything to what I have said already.

My right hon. Friend talked about further instructions to the Committee. It is the case that further instructions to the Committee can be made only by a motion in the House. The Government believe that these instructions are correct and we have no plans to change them.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

The Minister is on weak ground if he does not make the MPA report available to Committee members and if the Committee does not have access to something so significant. Virtually every Select Committee I have ever been on has, at some stage or other, talked to Ministers and been shown confidential documents.

[Mr Goodwill]

I am sure that were the Committee to make a request for either this type of report or commercially confidential material it will be considered at that time, but at this stage the Committee has not been formed and no such request has been made.

The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), as we heard from his contribution, is a man ahead of his time. His predictions have come to pass—at least the ones that he referred to; he may have made other predictions that have not. I would be keen to have dinner with him at one of the restaurants at Euston and see the problem first hand. Maybe I should go incognito; I suspect he is so well known he could not go incognito. As a fellow Yorkshireman, I suspect that there may be a problem at the end of the meal when we have to decide who is going to pay.

[Mr Goodwill]

How could I refuse such an invitation?

The right hon. Gentleman asked whether we could confirm that any new Euston proposals would require a new environmental statement, consultation and petitioning period. The answer is yes. A consultation would be required by Standing Order 224A. The change would then be subject to a new petitioning period.

The right hon. Gentleman also talked about petitioning by business associations. I think I can go further than I did in my intervention. A business is defined in the terms of this measure as an organisation that exists to make money for its owners. A business association would not seem to meet this definition and so would have the longer deadline. I suspect that if he found a different lawyer he would probably get a different result, but that is the position of this Government at this Dispatch Box and I hope those associations will be reassured by that.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) talked about the green belt. The Bill includes powers for local authorities to approve plans and specifications for the railway, which should ensure that any structures in the green belt are designed sympathetically.

This debate has been an important stage in the progress of this Bill for phase 1. I hope I have explained why many of the amendments are superfluous to the effective operation of the Committee.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

I may have missed the Minister’s—very brief—response to my amendment.

[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Lady’s amendment was about the link. I made the point that it would be possible to petition to ensure that a link was not obviated, but the link itself, whichever route it might take, was not covered. Therefore, in the same way that we have provision for the Heathrow spur in phase 1, it would be possible to petition to ensure that the construction of phase 1 would not rule out any future link. I thought that was one of the very first points I made—if the hon. Lady was paying attention then.