Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

I thought that the hon. Lady was going to celebrate the fact that her own station is receiving a £100 million upgrade. As she should know, there were more than 2,000 engineering sites over the holiday period. Two of them—particularly important ones—ran over time.

I want to address the points made by the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher) about comments I was alleged to have made in a column. Anyone who read that column over Christmas would have seen that I am far from pleased with railway performance. We must do better for passengers. Only a lowly headline writer at the Sunday People, an idiot or a politician who has no policies of his own would describe my words in such a way. This Government care about the railways. That lot think we are a bunch of trainspotters.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

4. What estimate he has made of the benefit-cost ratio of the High Speed 2 line north of Manchester.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

The Department has not estimated the case for the western leg of the Y-shaped route for High Speed 2 without the connection to the west coast main line north of Manchester. However, preliminary analysis undertaken by HS2 Ltd suggested that this section of the line is likely to provide revenue of about £600 million and wider benefits in the order of £1.2 billion.

[David Mowat]

The Minister will be aware that the recent HS2 route review stated that the Wigan spur was under review. Subsequently, HS2 leadership has stated that its recommendation is that the Wigan spur be dropped, saving £2 billion with no detrimental impact on the business case. When will there be an announcement that will clear all of this up?

[Mr Goodwill]

Certainly all those options are under review. Indeed, in Sir David Higgins’s report “HS2 Plus” he talked about the need to speed up phase 2 and get the Crewe section by 2027, not 2033, with that new integrated hub at Crewe. Connections to the east coast main line and west coast main line are important to ensure that people further north of Manchester and Leeds can benefit from HS2. Further announcements will be made in due course.