High-speed Rail

Debate between Brian Binley and Susan Elan Jones

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Susan Elan Jones]

It is a shame. The hon. Gentleman should have known that I would have said exactly the same had it been in his seat. I am reluctant to take back my earlier compliments for his interventions.

Having overcome the environmental argument, what about the costs of building during the recession? Let us look at the figures. HS2 will cost £2 billion a year during the building phase, which I believe is roughly the same as Crossrail. Construction will start at roughly the same time as Crossrail finishes, meaning that the overall transport budget will stay quite steady, but HS2 will spread jobs and benefits much more widely than Crossrail. Initial estimates predict the creation of 40,000 jobs. Some of those jobs will be in London and the south-east, but many will be spread along the line. Several thousand will be non-permanent construction jobs, but many will be permanent. At a time when the construction industry is struggling, I, for one, would welcome that.

Even if the budget has to stretch to pay for the build, which I do not believe it will, the figures all show that we can expect a return of £2 for every £1 invested in the project. If we think long term, and we should, that is an attractive proposition. If aliens from Mars turned up and heard about a project set to create 40,000 jobs, to link north and south, and to boost our national profile, they might well guess that the Government had decided to subsidise such a project for the public good. I am sure they would be shocked to hear that it was being opposed, despite being set to earn double the original investment. The cost is not a barrier to HS2; the investment is sound. Only the most blinkered, short-term thinking can conclude anything else—the costs add up.

What about the suitability of the UK for a high-speed line? Detractors say that the UK is too small to benefit from high speed, that our country is densely populated and already well-served by lots of railways. However, the distances between our major cities are very similar to those with successful high-speed rail abroad. Frankfurt and Cologne are 110 miles apart, which is the same distance as London to Birmingham. Tokyo and Osaka are 325 miles apart—roughly the same distance as London to Edinburgh.

While it is true that we already have railways, our lines are full. On capacity, fares are going up and up as demand increases, a point raised earlier by the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti). The cost of some season tickets in the south-east rose by almost 13% this year. Anyone who says that HS2 fares will be too high should consider the situation with our existing network. Sir Roy McNulty’s review of fares, published in May, suggested that off-peak fares should rise by 30% “to manage capacity”, as thousands of people pack on to trains with cheaper fares. We are actually having to price people off our trains to prevent them from bursting. That cannot be the right approach. We want to encourage public transport use, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) said earlier, not suppress it.

We need more trains, and our existing network cannot provide them. For example, management at the west coast main line, which has recently had a major £10 billion upgrade that caused huge disruption to passengers, has announced that it will be at full capacity again within six to 10 years, even if extra carriages are added. It is not possible just to run more trains: there simply is not enough space. Even though there is the demand for more fast, direct trains up the west coast, the local commuter services and freight trains that use the lines do not leave extra space for the extra trains. We need more capacity. Network Rail has acknowledged that, and it spells it out very simply:

“HS2 solves the capacity problem”.

HS2 not only allows the existing network to operate at full capacity during its construction; it is the only option that will release real, significant extra capacity when in operation. Current services would continue to run on the existing lines, but the high-speed routes would no longer be hemmed in by them. Instead, they would have a free run on the new lines. Towns without HS2 stations will benefit as space for more trains is freed up on existing lines, with less crowding and more services. It is a win-win situation.

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

Does the hon. Lady agree that for towns such as Northampton, which are not directly on the route but feed into it at Milton Keynes, the issue of capacity is vital, specifically when we recognise that population will increase by 120,000 by 2026? If HS2 does not happen, we will have serious problems, and I thank her for making that point.

[Susan Elan Jones]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful contribution—many thanks.

Finally, let me deal with the so-called Rail Plan 2, which could apparently solve our capacity problems for a fraction of the price of HS2. That plan contains such major flaws that even its supporters are having to modify it as they go along. I have already heard of Rail Plan 2a, for example, which is supposed to be more “sympathetic”. RP2 basically involves doing almost nothing, maintaining and improving our existing tracks in a hotch-potch manner, and improving capacity a little bit here and a little bit there. Of course it is cheaper—it has not achieved anything that we would not have done as a matter of routine upkeep. Of course, it is quicker as well. It will have to be quick, because rebuilding a line that is still in use as the main line route will cause massive disruption. I wonder whether the cost of that massive disruption has been taken into account in these very low cost estimates for RP2, let alone that the horrible experience of using a line which is half dug up may put a lot of people off rail travel for life.

If we want a top-class railway system, it is not enough just to fiddle around little by little. High-speed rail is the way forward. It has worked in other countries and is backed by all the key figures around the UK. Of course, we can and should improve our existing network as well. I have already said that I hope that the north Wales main line, referred to by the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), will be electrified soon. However, such a piecemeal investment project will have no wider economic benefits and create no draw for inward investors, and it will create such chaos on the railways while being built that it could make the whole idea of inter-city travel less attractive altogether. If we never begin a long-term project, we will never finish it, either.