High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Brian Binley Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

We will have to see what the Committee delivers as the Bill goes through the Committee process. There are clearly issues to do with the High Speed 1 and High Speed 2 link, which has now been taken out of the Bill. Some of the issues that the Committee will consider will be debated more fully tomorrow.

A Bill of this size and importance will be controversial, and we must debate it properly. A project of this size will affect very many individuals and communities, and the environment. We must minimise the negative impacts wherever possible and deal with the utmost sensitivity with the people whose homes are affected.

On the capacity crunch, HS2 will deal with some of these constraints on our railways. Already, thousands of commuters are standing on packed rush hour trains into Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Euston. Last week’s figures from the Office of Rail Regulation showed that the number of rail journeys has more than doubled since 1996. This number will continue to rise, and by 2026 peak demand will be two and a half times the capacity at Euston, twice the capacity at Birmingham New Street, and nearly twice the capacity at Manchester Piccadilly. There is already more demand for train services than there are train paths available on the west coast main line, and by 2024 it will be running at full capacity.

This congestion will have a significant impact on the freight industry and its customers. The west coast main line is the key artery in the Rugby, Daventry and Northampton golden triangle for freight. Over the next decade, passenger constraints will become more serious on the east coast main line and the midland main line. Network Rail’s £38 billion investment programme for the next five years will deliver signalling improvements, platform extensions and some additional services, but those incremental changes will not deal with the looming capacity problem.

Labour Members know from our time in government that major infrastructure takes years to plan and to construct. Many right hon. and hon. Members will remember the Crossrail Bill, which Labour introduced in 2005 and which received Royal Assent in 2008. That railway will open in 2018. Labour in government identified the need for more capacity on London’s railways by the end of this decade, and we acted to deliver it. We must do the same now to build the infrastructure we need to mitigate the looming capacity crunch on our railways.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

Is the shadow Minister aware that we need 20 paths to take care of increased freight over the next 10 to 15 years, and that our current network cannot supply even one of those paths? Is not that a major reason for arguing for this Bill?

[Mary Creagh]

Yes, absolutely. Freight has been a Cinderella subject; the focus tends to be on passengers, and that is absolutely right. If we are to achieve the modal shift by getting HGVs off our roads and freight on to trains—that is key in the hon. Gentleman’s area—we have to make sure that freight is able to go on the west coast main line.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) on her very forceful speech. I am sure that her constituents will be delighted.

It might help if we first look at the problems that HS2 resolves in order to place the project in its full perspective. We already have an overcrowded network that is literally full to capacity on our most significant transport corridor. We have record traffic levels, with passenger growth at 5% per annum. Rail freight will double over the next 20 years. Yet an aged existing permanent way is decaying to the point of redundancy.

The Higgins review concluded that a make and mend upgrade of the west coast main line on its own simply will not meet future demand, no matter what we do with it. The capacity does not exist. Make and mend on its own would be futile, and would mean 20 years of major disruption, at a cost of more than £20 billion—virtually the same cost as phase 1 of HS2—and a further 14 years of weak and disruptive bus substitutions and longer journeys on a far greater scale than during the route modernisation completed a few years ago. I can tell the House that my constituents know what that means: they would be immensely frustrated for a length of time that they will simply not put up with.

Increasing capacity remains the sole answer. It will deliver 13,000 additional peak-hour seats to west coast destinations, compared with just 3,000 by conventional alternatives. None of the proposed alternatives would provide a single increase in freight paths, despite a projected doubling of demand, but HS2 will deliver another 20 paths by freeing up capacity. None of the range of economic returns cited takes into account the released capacity for towns such as Northampton, which feed into the west coast main line, and I can tell the House that those returns will be considerable.

Indeed, many of those who complain about disruption in their green and pleasant constituencies rarely think about major housing growth areas such as Northampton, which is expected to increase its population by 50% over the next 25 years to provide for the housing needs of the south-east and, in so doing, help to alleviate demand that might be placed on other constituencies. With respect, it is no wonder that some of my constituents think that that view is perhaps a little uncaring, to say the least. Furthermore, critics of HS2 must be clear about whether they prefer to forgo growth—that growth would be hampered by the maintenance of the status quo—and they must define their alternatives while remembering that none of those so far proposed would meet the increased projected demands to which I have referred.

Let me return to the important conclusions of the Higgins report. We need to integrate HS2 into the conventional network more effectively, as the hon. Member for West Ham and other hon. Members have said. We also need to accelerate the project’s timetable, especially in the north. Every business man will tell us that the sooner we get on with something, the more cost-effective it is, and Front Benchers ought to accept that message.

Finally, the Bill’s provisions are about the construction of a railway line in the 21st century, but our deliberations should more significantly reflect the ambitions for our country. The issue is wider than just a set of railway lines; it is about what we feel about competing in the world to come and what we are willing to leave both our children and our grandchildren. Had the Victorian railway entrepreneurs not taken the decisions they did when they did, we would be in a sorry state now. We need to emulate them, and I therefore commend the Bill, which I will support wholeheartedly this evening.