High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I have been an MP for four years, and this is the fourth debate on HS2 in which I have participated. I have spoken in support of the project in all of them and I will do so again tonight, although it would be fair to say that if we were debating the current phase 2 route, which is out to consultation—I have high hopes of changes, particularly to the part north of Manchester, for which there is no business case—I would have difficulty supporting it, but I do support the Bill before us today.

Before I set out the reasons for my support, however, I will state four reasons why we should not go ahead with the project. We should not go ahead with it simply because it has been 120 years since we built a railway line north of Manchester. That, in itself, is a silly reason. We should not proceed with it simply because our infrastructure investment over the past two or three decades has been massively skewed towards London. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who talked about the diversion of resources away from other projects that HS2 could cause—an anxiety that did not appear to apply for Crossrail 1 or Crossrail 2, which together would cost about the same as HS2. In any event, we should not go ahead with the wrong project just because we previously spent too much in London. Nor should we do it because other countries done it more than we have: Turkey might have 1,500 miles, but perhaps the Turks and everyone else is wrong and perhaps our way is the right way.

We should proceed if and only if three things apply. The first is that the business case must be robust and solid.

[Andrew Bridgen]

It is not.

[David Mowat]

I have a sense of déjà vu. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) and I have had this dialogue before. The cost-benefit ratio is 2.4, higher than it was for the Jubilee line when that project started and higher than it currently is for Crossrail. We should go ahead only if the cash flow can be afforded without diverting resources away from other activities. Roughly speaking, the cash flow for HS2 is £2 billion a year, and it kicks in as Crossrail comes to an end and HS2 picks it up. That is reasonable. There is no evidence that HS2 is starving other projects and activities of investment. I believe that HS2 involves something in the order of 20% of total rail investment over the next two decades.

The third condition is that there must be transformational benefits from the project. We do not have time to go into them in detail, but there is a great deal of evidence, from the councils and the chambers of commerce of the north, that the regions will be transformed. Whether we are talking about the Greengauge 21 report or the Peat Marwick report, 40,000 jobs at a minimum will be generated in the north-west, and my constituents will get many of them.

All in all, whether HS2 goes ahead boils down to whether we believe that there is a capacity crunch. If we do not think that there will be one because we will all miraculously be using video conferencing over the next 10, 20, 30 or 40 years, it would probably be wrong to go ahead with the project. The fact is, however, that over the last 15 years, the requirement for long-distance train journeys in the UK has increased by roughly 5% a year. The HS2 business case assumes that that will decrease to 1.6% a year—a conservative estimate in many ways. I believe that the capacity crunch is the main reason for proceeding. My right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr O'Brien), who is not in his place, made a perfectly reasonable point about double-decker trains. My understanding is that the changes to the west coast main line to make that happen would be so restrictive as well as expensive that the line would not work in the meantime. We know how difficult it was during the last upgrade from Rugby to the north.

I want the Minister to give some thought to the reservation about phase 2 that I expressed earlier, which would have made it difficult—in fact, impossible—for me to support the Bill. I refer to the absurdity of building 40 miles of track north of Manchester apparently for no other reason than to get to a depot in Wigan. The cost is £1 billion without contingency, and I could find not one benefit in the business case that would contribute to that cost. I hope that people from HS2 are listening to me. There is a phrase, “value engineering”, which means that one engineers and designs where the value will come from. It has manifestly not occurred in respect of the Wigan link. I hope, believe and trust that that will be looked at.