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

Caroline Spelman Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Gillan]

I understand that. I cannot say that I would want the Committee to conclude it work before the general election, but to rule it out at this early stage and give the impression that the Government have given up on it, is not a particularly good tactic.

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

This gave rise to an animated conversation in the Tea Room yesterday from some of the proposed Committee members, who thought that the carry-over might be some form of endorsement for the outcome of the general election—that it was tantamount to a commitment not to stand candidates against them.

[Mrs Gillan]

I think that such a commitment should be reserved for Mr Speaker. Unfortunately, I did not manage to get to the Tea Room yesterday, but that is a good thought. I would, of course, hope all six members are returned safe and sound to the House after the next general election to serve under a good Conservative Government.

I am drawing my remarks to a close, Mr Speaker. I heard the Minister say that the process should enable the appropriate people who are affected by this project to have their say. That is very important. We may not have been able to stop the project being approved by this House, but we must ensure that the best possible mitigation to our environment, and the best possible compensation for our people, is obtained. I have always endorsed this twin-track approach. I meant what I said at the end of my speech yesterday: Members must follow the process inch by inch to ensure that fairness pertains, that people receive a good hearing and that this House does not put unnecessary barriers in the way of the people who will be pleading for their properties, their life and their environment.

I hope that not moving the amendments to a vote will provide the opportunity for those on the Front Bench, the whole House and the proposed members of the Committee to take on board my remarks. I hope some of the measures put forward in the amendments, which are supported by other people, will be incorporated. They may make the process just a little easier.

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[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

The contrast between yesterday and today is huge. Yesterday the Chamber was packed, there was a five-minute limit on speeches and we had no real opportunity to say what we had come here to say, whereas today we are considering the detailed instructions that we shall give to the new Select Committee. Yesterday I, at least, talked about the failure to organise a strategic environmental assessment of the Bill, whereas today we are considering the detailed aspects, and carrying out the equivalent of an environmental impact assessment. What Parliament does today will be very important, and I hope the Government will respond to the debate in a much more relaxed way.

My amendment gives me an opportunity to flag up issues relating to how HS2 Ltd will ensure that some of the worst environmental effects are mitigated. I see that the Minister is nodding. It is essential that we have robust procedures that Ministers and HS2 Ltd will follow, but given that—as was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson)—it seems impossible for anyone entirely to understand the strange creature that is a hybrid Bill, we should establish how it will work and what the role of the Select Committee will be.

The purpose of my amendment is to establish how we will deal with the environmental consequences of the Bill. It is not intended to be a wrecking amendment. My aim is to challenge the Government—and, for that matter, Opposition Front Benchers—regarding measures to mitigate the effects and to provide compensation. I should make it clear that mitigation and compensation are two very separate things. The Government must also be accountable to themselves, if not to the House, given that they set themselves up as the “greenest Government ever”. Again, the Minister nods, but to what extent is that put into practice?

The right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), who is a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, has done tremendous work on natural capital, both in the Committee and in the natural environment White Paper. She has spoken of a huge ambition for the Government: the achievement not just of no net loss of biodiversity, but, where appropriate, biodiversity gain. The Bill needs to reflect that.

[Mrs Spelman]

In fact, the HS2 project will be the first and largest of the major infrastructure projects to which the relatively new concept of biodiversity offsetting will need to be applied. DEFRA has consulted on biodiversity offsetting, but we should not miss the opportunity to do something really good and significant in regenerating degraded parts of the environment.

[Joan Walley]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right, and she did a great deal to advance exactly that thinking when she was Secretary of State at DEFRA. This project involves the biggest infrastructure investment that our generation is likely to see, and I do not think it is too much to expect that the environmental aspects be given equal importance to the transport infrastructure and investment ambitions.

It is not only the work that came out of DEFRA that is important; so is the work the Government did on the national planning policy framework. That set out clearly not just that there should be no net loss in biodiversity, but that there should be—although I accept with some qualification—where possible, a net gain. My amendment seeks to explore how that objective, which I think we share on both sides of the House—that was certainly the case with the Climate Change Act—can be put into practice as we go forward on the HS2 journey we are now all embarked upon. That issue has not been given sufficient attention so far, and perhaps the Minister can set out today how the concerns reflected in my amendment can and will be addressed. To do that, he must also address the detailed recommendations in the 13th report of the Environmental Audit Committee.

I want to go on a bit of a detour, if I may, because I think this issue is important. I was a Member of the last Parliament, when we had the Wright reforms, which looked at ways in which Parliament as well as Government could be more accountable. We are always looking at the role of Parliament and how people outside see us, and that is about not just what happens at Prime Minister’s Question Time, but the sort of detailed discussions we are having now. The Wright reforms set out that Select Committees should have a greater input into policy making and that Parliament itself should have a greater role, and that was in part about Select Committees having greater input into legislation. I very much support the Liaison Committee proposal that, where Select Committees have, on the all-party basis that we operate under, looked authoritatively at a matter in detail, and having taken expert evidence, they should be able to play a procedural part in the legislation in question going forward. I greatly regret the fact that the Government have not so far accepted the Liaison Committee’s recommendations.

All Select Committees have to report on how well we are scrutinising legislation. The Environmental Audit Committee produced a report entitled “HS2 and the environment” at great speed. We took a huge amount of evidence, including from Ministers, non-governmental organisations and HS2, and we came up with what we believe is an authoritative set of recommendations. For example, if what the Government and HS2 are doing does not match up with the work of the Select Committee to be appointed today by Parliament, the danger is that we will not cover to the necessary extent the environmental concerns we set out in our report. That is why our report made those recommendations, and I am happy that members of our Committee have added their names to the amendment.

Paragraph 86 of our report states the Government should

“not overly constrain the ‘principles’ of the Bill approved at Second Reading”,

and that, through the motion, we should do what can be done to

“avoid, reduce or remedy environmental damage”

through the environmental impact assessment process, or look at

“potential modifications to the route and its infrastructure and consequential environmental protections that might result”.

The real issue is that today we are appointing the new Select Committee and establishing its remit, but we have not yet had the Government’s response to the Environmental Audit Committee report. I understand that the Government will say, “Well, actually we have already taken account of such concerns.” If they are going to quote Standing Order 27A which requires an environmental statement, and Standing Order 224A, which requires an independent assessor to produce a report on the consultation on the environmental statement, that will not address the question of how the new Select Committee should consider the environmental issues. What instructions will there be? How narrow or wide will the Committee’s brief be?

I believe that the Standing Orders I have just referred to came about as a result of the Crossrail Bill, although I am sure other Members will have far more information on that issue than I do. As far as I can see, the Government’s advice relates just to Second Reading, so in effect, the role that arises from the instructions in these two Standing Orders applies only up to Second Reading, and not to what subsequently takes place, which includes the new Select Committee.

[Mrs Spelman]

To support the hon. Lady’s point, the significance of a hybrid Bill is that it incorporates the planning process into the legislative process, which strengthens the democratic element of the way we go about this. Therefore, it is completely in keeping with the logic of the recommendations of the Environmental Audit Committee that we should be giving the communities that stand to lose biodiversity a greater say in how we offset that biodiversity loss. They would have an opportunity to do that if the Select Committee proposed in the motion were able to adopt the recommendations of the Environmental Audit Committee.

[Joan Walley]

Once again the right hon. Lady is absolutely right and I value the work she does on the Environmental Audit Committee. When the Government have the report of the Select Committee that has been appointed today, they will bring forward environmental proposals on Third Reading. There is ample time for the Government to take account of how we can have something in place that makes up for the lack of strategic environmental assessment—we have not had that—and which could still look at the detail of the environmental impact assessments that we need. In the evidence that we received from many NGOs—from the wildlife trusts, the WWF and a host of other organisations—they all said how much they wanted to work in collaboration to find ways of having the mitigation that is needed, and also to look at implementing offsetting in ways that could be truly transformational. There are all kinds of implications for the detail of the engineering works on the route as well. If there is no way for all that to be brought together and taken on board, I think Parliament will be accused of having total disregard for the environmental aspects that should have been included and still need to be.

Finally, I want to refer to the Supreme Court. It made it clear that it is for Parliament, not the Government, to decide the parliamentary procedure for the hybrid Bill, and therefore for Parliament to decide what is reasonable and practicable when it comes to environmental protection, mitigation and compensation measures. It is entirely appropriate that the Select Committee should have the instruction to ensure that it is able properly to consider environmental issues and not leave what is “reasonable and practicable” to HS2 to decide, which in my book would be likely to mean a much lower level of environmental protection being applied than is required.

The cost of such environmental protections is a necessary cost if such a scheme is to go ahead. We heard about the huge ambition of HS2. That ambition needs to be equalled by environmental ambition. We should be doing everything to avoid impacts first, before we mitigate or compensate for them.

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[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I rise to speak to the amendments to motion 4 to which I have lent my name as I have some particular local and regional reasons to support them.

Although I did not lend my name to amendment (a), it contains a regional aspect that is important in my constituency. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) seeks

“to provide complete protection to any areas of outstanding natural beauty”

and areas of special scientific interest. The first interchange station outside London is proposed on green-belt land in my constituency at the juncture with Birmingham international airport. It is perhaps not an area of outstanding natural beauty, but the Meriden gap is the green land that holds the cities of Birmingham and Coventry apart. Throughout my 17 years as an MP, there has been constant pressure to build in that gap, which is only 5 miles wide at its narrowest point but contains a lot of transport infrastructure.

Right at the centre of the gap is something known as the golden triangle, which comes under the auspices of the Solihull planning authority. Great concern has been expressed by the Campaign to Protect Rural England that the imperative of this infrastructure may lead to the loss of green-belt land in that triangle without due consideration. My local authority, which supports high-speed rail in principle, with certain conditions attached, very much wants me to put on the record that it wants to maintain control of carefully planning what comes into that most sensitive of green spaces. In respect of amendment (a), the Select Committee needs carefully to consider what happens when green-belt land is at stake.

I put my name to amendment (b) to motion 4 specifically because I want the Committee to consider the statutory and non-statutory provision for compensation. As I said yesterday, I welcome the fact that the Government have produced a revised compensation package. To be perfectly clear, it is a significant step forward from the statutory compensation currently available, because constituents really get compensation only one year after a project is finished. Considering that this project is expected to end in 2026, folks would be waiting an awfully long time without the revised package, which successive Secretaries of State have worked towards.

However, the revised compensation package contains an important omission: compensation for people affected by construction works. The revised package represents a step forward, because the area of eligibility has been extended beyond 120 metres from the tracks to a taper of 300 metres in rural areas, but construction compounds and sites might not be adjacent to the tracks, so they slip through the net of the revised compensation package.

Significant parts of the route, at both the London and the west midlands ends, will see many years of extensive construction work. The environmental statement highlights that around the interchange station at Birmingham airport we can expect construction work to continue for over five years. People are every bit as blighted by being opposite a construction compound or next to a spoil heap as they are by being 60 metres from the tracks. That is why I have put my name to the amendment.

[Mrs Gillan]

It has been a great pleasure working with my right hon. Friend on this subject, and I think that, together, we have made some progress. The situation she describes also applies in Buckinghamshire. In the course of preparing for yesterday’s debate, I discussed it with colleagues in Buckinghamshire, including the right hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who told me that he had a group of houses near a construction site where no anti-HS2 campaign was active, and the residents did not realise until recently that they would be so badly affected. In fact, HS2 Ltd had not contracted them. If that can happen in the fairly immediate past, we must be very careful about who will be affected.

[Mrs Spelman]

I agree, and I hope that when the Minister responds to the debate he will mention the impact of construction works.

[Frank Dobson]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that one of HS2 Ltd’s favourite words is “temporary”? It only meets the ultimate dictionary definition of “not permanent.” The temporary use of a depot next to a school, for example, would last longer than the average time a child is at the school. If it is next to a quiet, little garden where old people like to sit, most of them will not be alive at the end of the temporary period.

[Mrs Spelman]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. In fact, the blight applies from the moment people are made aware that construction sites will be located next to their properties. Since March 2010, people have been waiting for over four years and are unable to sell, so we know that construction works have exactly the same impact on the need to get on with their lives.

[Mr Goodwill]

I hope that I can allay some of my right hon. Friend’s fears by explaining how the Committee can address issues about the compensation package. Let me state for the record that anyone “directly and specially”—the wording used in the Bill—affected who feels that the available compensation does not address the impact on them is free to petition the Committee and ask for additional compensation. The purpose of the Committee is to hear these petitions, but not to review the national compensation code.

[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]

Obviously, within the limitations of the resources made available by the House to the Committee, it can enlist whatever expert advice it wants, just as the hon. Lady’s Committee will have advisors who give it expert and scientific advice and so on. That is a matter for the Committee, but I hope it will enlist the best advice to assist it in its work. Indeed, many of the environmental NGOs that produce petitions might themselves be providing what they consider to be expert advice, and it will be up to the Committee to consider how much weight to give it.

We must also comply with directives such as the habitats directive. As a Member for five years of the European Parliament’s environment committee, I was involved in many such directives. Even if some aspects of the project do not come within the scope of the petitions, we must comply with environmental protections that we have agreed at European level.

[Mrs Spelman]

The Minister mentioned that there would be an independent assessor. Who will that be, and will the Government make use of agencies such as Natural England to provide the kind of advice that the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee suggested would assist the Bill Select Committee in its work?

[Mr Goodwill]

I am not aware that an assessor has been appointed, and neither do we need to appoint one at this stage. Therefore, I am not able to tell my right hon. Friend who it would be, but under the definition of the word “independent” it would be a person not connected to any vested interest.

When we started this debate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) touched on the Major Projects Authority report. As we have heard many times from the Dispatch Box, the MPA does not routinely publish its reports on the major projects it scrutinises, and a founding block of the effective function of the MPA is the confidential nature of the reports it produces and the way it can be used as a tool within government to ensure that projects are delivered efficiently.