High-Speed Rail

Debate between Charles Walker and Christopher Pincher

Thursday 31st March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

I shall adhere to your injunction to be brief, Mr Walker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) for securing the debate, and also my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant)—who is not in his place—for leading the charge to secure an inquiry from the Transport Committee into HS2.

I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) that I shall not invite him to any of my supper clubs in the near future. My constituents are not nimbys. I have spoken to several hundred of them over the past months, and I saw about 80 last Saturday. They tell me that if it can be demonstrably proven that the business case stacks up, if there are proper mitigations in place in their vicinity, and if they get fair and reasonable compensation for the loss they suffer, they will, through gritted teeth, accept the proposal. The trouble, as we have heard today, is that the business case has not been proven, mitigations are not yet known—the route was announced last December but in the Tamworth area we are still waiting for a roadshow, which we will not get until June—and, although we have had hints about compensation for blight, we still do not know anything about what we might get. People are understandably very concerned.

I will not dwell on the value side of the business case and the holes that have been found in it during the debate, because my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire has already done that very eloquently, as have other Members. However, let me say this about it: the net value ratio, which has been significantly reduced by HS2 Ltd—so it accepts that it is wrong—still uses as its basis for generating demand the Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook, version 4.1, which Sir Rod Eddington has said is out of date, uses incorrect views on saturation of demand, future technological advances and competition that might affect demand, and that we should be using version 5.0. I look forward to my right hon. Friend the Minister’s making it clear in her remarks that that particular handbook will be used to generate demand, and that HS2 Ltd will be directed to do its sums again.

I want to focus on the cost side of the business case. Other Members have pointed out that one should never believe a Government when they talk about how much they will spend on capital infrastructure projects. Phase 1 of HS2 has been identified as costing £17.1 billion, but phase 2, the Y-shaped link, adds a further £13 billion or so, taking the total cost to more than £30 billion. We have heard that those figures might be right—they might be wrong—but the fact of the matter is that some figures that do not appear in the cost side should be included.

One of those key figures is the cost of blight. From Eversholt Street down by Euston all the way up to Whittington, businesses and properties are blighted by the proposed railway. They are blighted now, because if people in those places manage to sell their properties, they will lose 30%, 40% or even 50% of the value, and stamp duty accruing to the Treasury will fall. That is not costed in the business case, but it means that estate agents and solicitors will do less business, and vendors’ buying power will be reduced. None of that is in the cost side of the business case, and it ought to be.

Then we come to compensation. We have heard, and I have it in a letter—which I do not have in front of me, so I will not put words into his mouth—that the Secretary of State has indicated that the Government will look at innovative ways of providing some form of compensation. That needs to go into the business case, so that we know the true cost of the proposition, which I think could run into several hundred million pounds, further reducing the proposed net benefit ratio and further undermining HS2 Ltd’s case for building the railway.

I shall end here, as I am conscious that other Members wish to speak. I call upon the Minister to look again at the business case proposed by HS2 Ltd, and again, and more carefully, at Rail Package 2. There is still time for her to change her mind, and I hope that she considers doing so.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

We have 30 minutes before I call the Front-Bench spokespeople and we have eight colleagues who want to speak, so do the mathematics.