High Speed 2

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the business case for High Speed 2.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, in my first debate as a Back Bencher in more than five years. I am delighted to have this opportunity to discuss one of the biggest concerns for many of my constituents, and to outline why I believe that the business case for High Speed 2 must be urgently reviewed by the Government.

I first became aware of HS2 when it was proposed in 2009 by the then Labour Government. Investment in infrastructure, creating jobs and growth, improving travel times between our major cities, and closing the north-south divide were all put forward as reasons in favour of the UK’s second high-speed train line. However, those supposed benefits unravelled one by one, and it quickly became apparent that HS2 is not the right infrastructure project, will not improve point-to-point travel times, and will not close the north-south divide. It will create jobs, yes, but at an eye-wateringly expensive rate, far beyond what we might expect from a similar project.

Those of us who expressed concerns about HS2 even while it was still in consultation were dismissed by others as nimbys and told that we were flat wrong about the wider benefits that HS2 would bring to the north. I was then and continue to be willing to be proved wrong, but with the delay to the notice to proceed, growing concerns about the project’s spiralling costs, ongoing engineering and design difficulties and, even now, the rumours that the line past Birmingham might never be built, it is high time for the project to be thoroughly reviewed to ensure that it will actually deliver for taxpayers.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to hear the right hon. Lady speaking in a debate, rather than her listening to me asking for one. Does she recall the number of times that I have said in the Chamber of the House of Commons that HS2 will cost much more? Every time I said it, £10 billion more, and going past that. Now, it is accepted that it will cost £100 billion. Does she agree with that figure?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman has raised the issue a number of times, and it is true to say that many think the costs will overrun. I will come back to that.

For me, both as a concerned constituency MP and as someone with 25 years of experience in finance, including project finance, I am alarmed at just how much the business case for HS2 has changed since the project was initially proposed. The business case that HS2 relies on now bears little resemblance to what Parliament was told at the start of the process—if I cast my mind back to when I first became an MP in 2010—nor to what we voted on when the enabling legislation was passed, which I voted against, or when the subsequent main legislation was enacted.

First, we were told that HS2 was about reducing journey times and improving the economy by bringing businesses and workers from the south to the north to spread economic prosperity around the country. Then we were told it was about capacity constraints on the west coast main line, and managing the continual growth in annual passenger numbers. Both arguments no longer stack up.

On improved journey times and associated productivity gains, the underlying assumption built into the business case for HS2 was that any time spent travelling for business purposes was wasted time, and that business travellers undertake no productive work while travelling. In the 21st century, technological advances such as mobile devices and improved wireless internet connections clearly mean that work and leisure activities are increasingly mobile, and increasingly affordable and accessible for rail passengers. Such advances are expected to continue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—we certainly need to invest in our rail infrastructure—but my question is whether HS2 is the right piece of infrastructure.

The argument for the business case around journey times and productivity quickly collapsed, and HS2 Ltd turned to arguing for capacity instead. That capacity argument has been questioned almost since it was first made, and most recently by the Lords Economic Affairs Committee in its report of May this year, “Rethinking High Speed 2”.

The original business case for HS2 was put forward at a time of strong and continued growth in passenger numbers in the preceding years, and the expectation was always that this growth would continue unabated. That is not the case. I made that point in 2011, when I led an HS2 debate on the Floor of the House. As I said then, HS2’s forecasts were “heroic” when compared with Network Rail’s numbers over the same period. According to the Commons Library, across the entire rail network, annual passenger growth peaked in 2011 at about 8%, and growth has been on a downward trend since then. Passenger growth between London and the west midlands has now fallen to 2% growth per annum, against a decadal average of 6%.

It is true to say that the west coast main line is the busiest mixed-use rail corridor in Europe, with 15 fast trains coming into Euston in most peak hours of the week and little to no availability in that period for additional train paths. However, capacity on the trains themselves is a different matter. As anyone who travels at rush hour between Euston and Milton Keynes—as I do frequently—will know that there is always high capacity pressure on any of the trains during that peak period: about 95% of all available seats on morning peak arrivals into Euston are occupied, with many trains cramped and uncomfortable. Again according to the House of Commons Library, across the entire day only about 60% of all available seats into Euston are in use. For the other major cities on the line of route—Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield—across the entire day, all of those stations operate at less than half their passenger capacity in terms of seat availability.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Andrea Leadsom]

Very briefly.

[Mr Sheerman]

As the right hon. Lady knows, I am a very experienced traveller between Wakefield and London, and know the routes well. May I ask her to pay attention to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), from Manchester, because he is wrong? All the research in France and other places shows that having super-speed or high-speed trains sucks power away from the regions. What has happened in France? More power to Paris, and less to the provincial cities.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I fear that I am very much aware of what the hon. Gentleman says, and I agree with him.

Clearly, therefore, much of the capacity constraint on the west coast main line is spatially and temporally specific, being focused on the peak rush hours, and only in Euston and Birmingham. The biggest issue is crowding on individual trains at those times, rather than crowding throughout the day.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing this important debate, and on her excellent speech, with which I strongly agree.

I state categorically that I believe passionately in our railways; I have been a daily commuter for 50 years and I have always believed in their future. I continue to support strong investment in our railways, but not in HS2. The alleged business case for HS2 has two essential components: cost and need. The costs have been ballooning, dwarfing the claims of £50 billion by multiples. Even the rumoured likely costs now are way below what an eventual bill would be. With more time, I could give some explanations as to why, but I wish to focus on the supposed need and the likely passenger demand for HS2.

The business case is based on a frequency of 18 trains an hour leaving and reaching London. HS2 has grudgingly agreed that a figure of perhaps 16 trains an hour in off-peak periods might be appropriate. The trains would be some 400 metres long, probably with 16 carriages; they would be rather similar to Eurostar trains, which are 20 cars long, and capable of seating 80 passengers per carriage. That is well over 1,000 passenger seats on each train. With 18 trains an hour over the day, that would mean in excess of 200,000 passenger seats going to and from London. That is a significant proportion of the total population of Birmingham; it is complete nonsense. In any case, 18 trains an hour is just not possible. At a meeting of the Select Committee on Transport in 2011, SNCF witnesses from France with some knowledge of high-speed TGVs were astonished at the 18 trains an hour figure, saying it was impossible, and that 12 trains an hour was the absolute maximum.

HS2 has been in a mess and a panic for some time about costs. It asked if it would be possible to terminate trains at Old Oak Common and avoid the horrendously expensive costs of tunnelling through to Euston. The idea would be to transfer passengers to Crossrail at Old Oak Common. That would be impractical because of the vast numbers involved. Up to 20,000 extra passengers on Crossrail every hour is not a serious proposition. All this is just not credible. If HS2 goes ahead, we will surely see expensive trains on a very expensive track rattling around the country with very few passengers on them.

I want to end on a positive note. There are some serious and much-needed alternatives to HS2, and I have written a paper setting out some of them. I submitted my paper, prepared with the advice of a range of friends in the railway industry, to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee for its inquiry into HS2. I also submitted it to the recent Great British transport competition, supported by the TaxPayers Alliance, and was pleased that one of my proposals was selected as one of the winning schemes.

Most significantly, there is the GB freight route, with which I am involved and to which the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire referred. This would be a freight priority line from the channel tunnel to Glasgow, built to a large-loading gauge and almost entirely on railway land, capable of accommodating full-sized lorry trailers on the trains. It would take some millions of lorry journeys off our roads every year, with immense benefits. It would link all the majority economic regions of Britain to each other, and to the continent of Europe, and Asia beyond.

There are several serious rail schemes that should be adopted and, if HS2 does not go ahead, all the schemes paused and abandoned by Government in recent times could simply be readopted. Electrifying the whole rail network, with massive improvements to railways in the north in particular, where rail has been disgracefully neglected, could and should go ahead. These schemes could provide many thousands of jobs very quickly, with track work ready to go. This would be money well spent in every sense.

We should reflect on the sensible Eddington report, which recommended rail investment in and around our major cities and conurbations, where real passenger need is most concentrated.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does the hon. Gentleman not realise—I think he does—that those of us in the north of England just want reliable and reasonably speedy connections between the towns of the north, and would love this sort of investment, sooner rather than later?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman; absolutely. Even within the northern region there are some dreadful train services. There are old charabancs on rail tracks that are a disgrace and should have been replaced, and the lines have not been electrified. They should have been.