HS2 Funding Referendum Bill

Frank Dobson Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Generally speaking, I oppose referendums, but that opposition is slight by comparison with my opposition to the ludicrous High Speed 2 scheme, which is, it has to be said, both amateurish and grotesquely expensive.

It used to be fashionable to say that things had been formulated on the back of a cigarette packet; it sounds as though it will be possible to do that on the front of a cigarette packet fairly shortly. I gather, however, that it is more fashionable now to say that things have been drawn up on the back of an envelope—and in this case, it is a pretty poor envelope.

It is clear that HS2, and all the money it involves, is unpopular in every part of England and even more unpopular in Scotland and Wales. I can say without fear of contradiction that it is certainly unpopular in my constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, where it will involve the demolition of the homes of about 500 people and expose more than 5,000 people to living next door to Europe’s biggest demolition, engineering and building site for 12 to 15 years, without any compensation at all.

The boundaries of the compensation scheme are such that people can live 5 metres—in some cases, 5 centimetres —from the boundary and not get a penny. We have been told that the situation is not like in rural areas; urban areas, apparently, are used to noise—“people are used to railways, you know, in the Euston area.” Indeed they are, but they are not used to living next to a major engineering site for a dozen or 15 years.

The five minutes that I was given to speak, under the procedures of the House, on Second Reading of the current HS2 Bill were not sufficient for me to do justice to the insanity of the proposals. The original proposals were for a total demolition and rebuilding of Euston station and its extension 75 metres to the west. They also included a link to the channel tunnel line, running across the North London line, above ground, from Primrose Hill to the back of St Pancras station. That latter proposal was rubbish from the start. No one thought it was sensible apart from officials at High Speed 2 and officials at the Department for Transport, which, even before the proposal was published, had been warned by everyone, including me, that the North London line would in effect need to be destroyed and rebuilt in order to enable high-speed trains to run along it. They had also been warned by the Institution of Civil Engineers that it was not a good idea.

Then the original estimate of the costs nearly doubled. We had warned people of this. They said it was because of new factors, one of which, apparently—it is in a parliamentary answer—was the need to widen the route. If they did not realise that would be needed from the start, they ought not to be employed in such projects.

Fairly recently, the proposal for the connection to the channel tunnel link was abandoned, so there is now no longer any rail connection to the European network, as had been promised. We were told that passengers could get off at Euston and then that they, rather than the trains, would be able to get to St Pancras: they could walk there in the rain or possibly use a travelator going along Euston road, which is, in terms of air pollution, the filthiest road in Britain. Recently, Sir David Higgins, the great new boss who has been brought in, told people that they could walk across Euston station, go to Euston Square tube station, get the tube to King’s Cross St Pancras, and then walk to the international trains. I would have thought that most people would not fancy that if they were carrying a bit of luggage. Anyway, that is the latest fancy proposal.

Let us look at the original proposals for the full-scale redevelopment of Euston and the bringing in of the high-speed trains. The original estimate was £1.2 billion. Just eight months later, the geniuses at HS2 acknowledged that that estimate—or guesstimate, or back-of-a-fag-packet stuff—had gone up to £2 billion. An escalation in price of £100 million a month is not bad, really—you have to admit that they are quite impressive at spending other people’s money. Then that was felt to be too expensive and abandoned, and they came up with the proposal known as revised option 8, which would, roughly speaking, leave Euston as it is, with a fancy lean-to shed next to it in which the glories of High Speed 2 would be displayed.

Those propositions—the link and revised option 8—were in the Bill that was considered on Second Reading in this House. One of them has been abandoned, and we are told that the Euston proposition has also been abandoned, without any debate in this House. Now HS2 wants to go back to the full-scale redevelopment of Euston, which has never been put before Parliament. If Parliament is not doing its job properly, perhaps the people will need to do their job properly in a referendum.

I have been tabling questions asking, “When are you going to come up with the revised proposals for Euston?” Last year we were told that those revised proposals would be out for consultation in October last year. The most recent answer to parliamentary questions that I have is that it is hoped they will be available in September this year. However, these people still have no idea of what the cost will be, and they cannot work out a viable scheme for the rebuilding of the station. I personally believe that they have been unable to overcome a lot of the engineering problems that would be caused by major works in the area. Parliament has not been doing its job properly; it has not had the opportunity to do so because it has been denied information by the Government. That is why we need a referendum.

To say that this is an unpopular idea is an understatement. In March last year, polling by ComRes showed that 52% of the UK population generally were against it and 30% were in favour. Last autumn it got a bit worse, from the point of view of those who are in favour of this ridiculous scheme, because, in a YouGov poll, 53% were against it and its supporters had gone down to 25%. A breakdown of the figures shows that no group anywhere in the country is, on balance, in favour. Among all men and all women, more are against than for. People in every age group are more against than for. All social classes are more against than for.

The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) talked about the views of people in the north. I have the polling figures here. In the north-east, 62% are against and 20% are in favour. In Yorkshire and Humberside, 48% are against and 37% are in favour. The nearest thing to majority support anywhere is in the north-west, where there has been a lot of banging the drum for the wondrous likely impact on Manchester. To be fair, though, it is still quite close, with 43% against and 39% in favour, and the majority are still against.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) talked about the west midlands, where 50% are against and 34% are in favour.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

My right hon. Friend mentioned disruption caused by this proposal. If it went ahead in Coventry, it would seriously affect some of the finer scientific measuring equipment that is used at the university of Warwick

[Frank Dobson]

Yes, indeed.

Apart from those who are paid supporters of the scheme, it has virtually no supporters. When I say “paid supporters”, I am including some of the civil engineering advisers and consultants who are producing reports in favour because they are paid to do so. There is a danger that they are damaging the reputation of British civil engineering consultants.

[Mrs Gillan]

People watching these proceedings will probably be remarking that there are not many MPs in the Chamber, but historically we do not get many people here on Friday morning for debates on private Members’ Bills. Is it not remarkable that so far there have been no interventions in support of this project on which £50 billion of taxpayers’ money, at the very minimum, is being spent? I am sure that the Front Benchers will support it, but no other voices have rushed here to do so.

[Frank Dobson]

That is so. I think that the right hon. Lady is probably regarded as being in the south-east, where 51% are against and 30% are in favour. In the London area, 48% are against and 34% are in favour. And so it goes on. The supporters of every political party are, on balance, against.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I was hoping that the right hon. Gentleman might give the figure for Somerset. I have a feeling the project is not enormously popular there, either.

[Frank Dobson]

I think that for these purposes Somerset is probably part of the south-west, where 60% are against and 25% are in favour. I should also add a late wire from the course: as of yesterday, a Daily Mirror poll showed that 80% are against and 20% are in favour.

There is something amiss if Parliament is not reflecting the views of the public, especially when they are so overwhelmingly in one direction. In the absence of Parliament reflecting those views, it seems to me that there is a case for a referendum, or possibly local referendums, on the proposals.

[Dan Byles]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, although we do not have referendums on infrastructure projects across the board, this is a unique infrastructure project, and that because every party capable of forming a Government is in favour of it, it is impossible for any party to claim a mandate for it?

[Frank Dobson]

There are mandates and there are mandates, are there not?

One of the problems is that as each argument in favour of this ludicrous proposition fails, the proponents come up with another. The first one was speed. Oh, it was wonderful! People would be able to speed to Birmingham —or speed from Birmingham to London, but that tended not to get mentioned too much. Time would also be saved for business people. The first calculations were based on time saved when using motorways, but people are not supposed to read when they are driving, so there is a considerable gain in getting from A to B as quickly as possible, whereas on a train they can do some work. The calculations were modified, but even then they were wrong.

The next argument was that the proposal was going to add to train capacity. The proponents then had to admit that sorting out two or three particular bottlenecks on the west coast main line, which they intended to do anyway, would add considerably to the line capacity. They have never done a calculation—this would be of interest to those who use the west coast main line—of the incapacity that the massive engineering works at Euston will force on the line. These works will result in a lot of interference to access to and egress from Euston. People’s journeys from the midlands and the north-west will be interfered with one way or another for the best part of 15 years, but that is not part of the capacity argument.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Although the situation in Coventry is not exactly the same as that in Euston, there will still be major effects on the traffic flow and major disruption in Coventry. That could go on for many years, and blighting is another issue we will have to address somewhere along the line.

[Frank Dobson]

The other problem is that the people behind the proposition live from hand to mouth. They said, “There’ll be a way around this, because we’ll be able to divert quite a lot of the local services that come into Euston to Old Oak Common and therefore relieve the pressure on Euston during the works period.” They have now admitted, however, that they cannot divert the local services to Old Oak Common to bring about that relief, so they are still lumbered with the fact that they will louse up access to Euston station for the next dozen to 15 years.

I am sure my hon. Friend will agree that an alternative option for improving the passenger service from London to Birmingham would be substantially to improve the performance of the Chiltern line and thus relieve a lot of passenger need on the west coast main line. All over the country, minor improvements to the track, signalling and electrification could bring about big improvements for passengers. As a lad originally from just outside York, I am always conscious of the fact that the east coast main line is electrified from King’s Cross to Leeds and from King’s Cross to Edinburgh, but that the link between York and Leeds is not electrified. Consequently, anyone who wants to go to Leeds from Edinburgh, Newcastle or Durham cannot do so on an electrified train; they have to change at York or find one of the trains that are still diesel.

[Philip Davies]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Is it not the case that it takes almost as long on the train to get from Leeds to Liverpool as it does to get from Leeds to London? It is, therefore, bizarre that so much money is being spent to try to make it quicker to get from Leeds to London when many people would prefer it to be quicker to get across the north of England.

[Frank Dobson]

Indeed. When the capacity argument fell through—the proponents threw in the towel—they turned to economic growth. However, if they look at virtually all the foreign experience, they will see that when a high-speed line is put in to a capital city, that capital city sucks in business and jobs from the other places on the line. That is significant to those who live in smaller towns near the cities where HS2 stations are proposed, because there is considerable evidence that those smaller towns will lose business to them. If a station is built in Manchester, towns in Rochdale, Oldham and other surrounding areas could lose trade, jobs and prosperity to Manchester. That might be okay for Manchester, but it would not be too good for Greater Manchester.

Rail improvements are needed in the north of England. The time it takes to travel from York to Manchester and from Leeds to Liverpool is a disgrace. High Speed 3 is now being talked about, but I think there would be a bit more support for High Speed 3 if it became High Speed 2. A lot of local services in the north of England need to be improved, as well as the interconnections between the big cities.

People talk about the economic benefits that High Speed 2 will bring to cities in the midlands and the north. The cost will be £50 billion and it is intended that five cities will benefit: Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester. As I suggested in one debate, if that £50 billion were split between those cities, giving them £10 billion each, and the people of, say, Manchester and Sheffield were asked in a referendum what they would do with their £10 billion, the chances are that they would not say that the first thing they needed to do was to club together for a high-speed railway. That would be pretty unlikely. Perhaps there should be local referendums.

Some of us are decried for being neanderthal and opposed to progress. People say, “What about the wonderful progress that was made by the great railway entrepreneurs of the 19th century?” A lot of those projects in the 19th century were characterised by bankruptcy, fraud, deception, thieving from shareholders and God knows what else. George Hudson of the Great Northern railway invented the Ponzi scheme about 100 years before Ponzi was born.

Those entrepreneurs did get the things built—that is a fair point—but if we want to rely on 19th-century examples, and if High Speed 2 is such a good idea that it could be put to a referendum and people would agree to it, surely we should be asking why the private sector is not desperate to build this new railway. Why should the taxpayer have to find the money, when historically in this country it is not the taxpayer who has done so? There seems to be no rush to come up with the dosh privately to invest in this scheme. Perhaps that is because outfits such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Institute of Directors—not organisations I usually quote, I freely admit—think that it is a total waste of time. Broadly speaking, they think it is crackers.

That brings me to the most recent report of the Public Accounts Committee, to which the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) referred. To say that it is a lukewarm endorsement of High Speed 2 is to wildly exaggerate the Committee’s enthusiasm for it. I need my glasses to give you the full benefit of the report, Madam Deputy Speaker. It says:

“The Department for Transport is responsible for a number of ambitious, expensive transport infrastructure programmes including the planned High Speed 2 programme. We are not convinced that these programmes are part of a clear strategic approach to investment in the rail network… The Department told us it will deliver the full High Speed 2 programme within its overall funding envelope of £50 billion.”

For a start, it is not £50 billion, because HS2 admits that if the scheme were to work, Euston station would not be able to cope with the extra passengers and would be overwhelmed. Crossrail 2 would then be needed, at an additional cost of £20 billion. If the scheme were to work—if all the optimistic prognostications of those who are in favour of it came to be—it would require a further £20 billion. Quite frankly, it is deceptive of the Government and High Speed 2 to talk about £50 billion. Usually, they do not even like to talk about £50 billion: they talk about £43 billion and then reluctantly admit that they need another £7 billion for the locomotives—it was perhaps going to be a train-free railway at one time—and we have to bear that point in mind.

I want to express my own views and those of the people who live in my constituency. Crossrail 1 is causing a bit of trouble here and there, but, broadly speaking, people have been willing to go along with it. Originally, the proposal for the channel tunnel link was that it should come into a huge concrete box under King’s Cross station. The sort of people who are now proposing HS2 said, “This is the only way to do it. There is no possible alternative. We are the experts. We know everything.” They ended up having to admit to a Committee of this House that was considering the Bill that their concrete box was too short for the proposed train. That was the quality of thought that went into the proposal.

When I first suggested to the planners that the best thing to do would be to use St Pancras station, which was grotesquely underused, I was treated like a total idiot: “Pathetic! How could he possibly come up with such a silly idea when our concrete box under King’s Cross is a masterstroke?” They eventually abandoned the masterstroke and we now use St Pancras station. I am pleased that if someone gets a train from St Pancras to the Gare du Nord, they really know that Britain is best, because the Gare du Nord is horrible and St Pancras is a credit to everybody except the railway planners, because they were not in favour of using it originally.

Similarly, despite the problems that have been caused in my area, there has been, broadly speaking, full support from nearly everyone there, including myself, for the massive improvements at King’s Cross station, all of which were started under the Labour Government, with the support of myself and local people.

I believe that it is necessary to say to Parliament, “Look, you are letting people down.” The proposals are a disgrace: they are amateurish and grotesquely expensive. Parliament has not been doing its job properly. I mean no criticism of the people who are serving on the legislative Devil’s island that is the Committee stage of the hybrid Bill. Those people should, at the very least, receive double salaries and free passes on the railways for ever. Our procedures let people down and do not reflect the views of people in this country.

[Mrs Gillan]

Would the right hon. Gentleman also like to mention in dispatches the excellent Clerk, who is doing a first-class job for that Committee and has gone a long way to ensuring that people feel that they have been or will be listened to?

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[Frank Dobson]

Yes, I endorse that. Everyone who has had dealings with the Clerk, and with the other Clerks who have been involved from time to time, pays tribute to the help that they have been given in making their representations and getting their representations in order. However, try as they might, our procedures in relation to such matters are ridiculous.

In the absence of proper parliamentary scrutiny, one of our own Committees, the Public Accounts Committee, is saying of the Department for Transport—I will put my glasses on again:

“The Department still lacks a clear strategic plan for the rail network, and it is unclear how the Department makes decisions about which programmes to prioritise for investment… We remain concerned about the Department’s ability to deliver on time and budget… We are sceptical about whether the Department can deliver value for money for the taxpayer on High Speed 2… There is a risk that industry does not have the capacity to deliver all current and proposed programmes… The Department has a long way to go to prove that it is being more active in realising benefits from major programmes.”

Surprise surprise, all sorts of benefits were supposedly to result from the station at Ebbsfleet and the channel tunnel link, but—lo and behold—they have not been realised. That might be because they were unrealisable from the start and were basically a bit of fantasy infrastructure dreaming, but that is also what this proposal is. Parliament is letting down the people of this country and we should let them have a say with a national and local referendum.

I want economic growth and development in the great northern cities, and the towns and villages that surround them, which have contributed so much in the past to our economic strength. In future, we cannot possibly compete in the world as the cheapest on price because we will always be undercut. All we can do is compete with the best on quality and economic initiative. For example, graphene was developed at Manchester university and is the strongest material the world has ever known. I think it would be better for Manchester if we put £1 billion into developing applications of graphene, rather than putting the money into this railway. Because I am a Yorkshireman I will also mention Rotherham, which is famous for its special steels and still does great work developing them. It would probably be a good idea to put money into graphene in and around Rotherham, so that the development of the strongest material in the world is done in league with the steel industry and does not try to replace it. We should invest in those sorts of things, not throw money away on this railway.

We should allow the people of this country to have their say, but not in a general election in which everybody has—allegedly—signed up to the project. Indeed, I suspect that if there was a secret referendum in the Cabinet and shadow Cabinet, the vote would probably be 80% against HS2 and 20% in favour, because lots and lots of people recognise just how stupid this project is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Gillan]

I do apologise; I meant no disrespect. If my right hon. Friend realised how unpopular this project was, he might not make the speech he is about to make. I recall that while I was driving—I think I was listening to “Any Questions”,—one of the questions involved HS2. The audience on the radio booed, and I thought, “Well there’s a popular project for the Government to pursue, particularly in the light of its so-called limited cost.” This project has not captured imaginations up and down the country, and it is certainly not held dear by the people I talk to, including those way beyond being affected directly by the line.

The trouble is that HS2 is slipping under the radar in many ways. The organisation led by Buckinghamshire county council is an amalgam of many other organisations and, as I said earlier, it has called itself “51m”, because the equivalent cost of HS2 at the moment, if spread among our constituencies, would give each Member £51 million to spend in those constituencies. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras said that if we gave £10 billion to the five cities, they would not immediately club together and want to build HS2. In the same way, if constituencies up and down the country received £51 million, they would not immediately club together to build HS2.

Like the right hon. Gentleman, I wanted to find out what people thought about HS2, so I went along to the Institute of Directors. In Transport questions last March, I raised that issue because the IOD—the very business people to whom the project is supposed to appeal—surveyed more than 13,000 directors for its spring report last year to get their views on HS2. More than half those directors thought that HS2 was poor value for money, and more than 60% thought that the budget earmarked for the project would provide a better return if it were used to improve existing road and rail networks. Frankly, when our business community comes out against a project to that extent, I do not understand why the Government do not listen. I am not afraid of asking people what they think, and neither are most of my colleagues in the House. I therefore believe that the proposal for a referendum is well made and should be put, not least so that the business community can express its views.

It is all very well for the companies that are already earning highly from the project. I was amazed at some of the sums that have already gone to potential advisers and contractors on this project, all of which have been printed in Hansard in response to questions—I will not go into the details of the companies, but they are there if people want to look at them. Those companies are in favour of the project, as are Manchester and Birmingham, which see vast swathes of taxpayers’ money coming in their direction. Sir Albert Bore and Sir Richard Leese will be absolutely delighted and will put pressure on Labour Front Benchers to go along with the proposals, because taxpayers’ money will go into those Labour-controlled authorities, but what does that say to the rest of us?

[Frank Dobson]

Even in Birmingham there are doubts. There is a site called Washwood Heath. Everybody in Birmingham ranging from the far-left Trots to the chamber of commerce was in favour of redeveloping it with about 3,000 modern jobs in IT and bio-engineering, but—lo and behold—HS2 says, “Tough. We need it for some sidings. Total employees: 30.”

[Mrs Gillan]

The right hon. Gentleman is right. A constituent of mine who owns a business in the Birmingham area will be adversely affected by the project. He will have to re-site a profitable factory, which will involve losses and a great deal of interruption to the business.

It is five years since the announcement of the project. Its genesis has been well documented by other hon. Members, including in this debate. We are five years in and we do not know what the costs are. Inevitably, those costs are rising. In 2009, the costs for HS2 were identified as £16 billion. A year later, they went up to £29 billion. By 2010, they were £32 billion. As everybody knows, the costs now stand at £50 billion, particularly if we want the luxury of a few trains running up and down the lines.

What worries me is that I do not believe the costs will stop there. First, there is the unknown quantity of Euston and the implications, which could run into millions, nay billions, of pounds if the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras is to be believed—and he is to be believed.

There are unforeseen costs after that. For example, I am not convinced that the countries that make up the United Kingdom will not press for Barnett consequentials on that spend, not least because, as I know, there was a dispute with Wales on whether Barnett consequentials would be applied on the transport elements of the Olympics and the Olympics project. It was decided that the transport spend elements would be Barnettised, and therefore extra funds had to be found to pass to Wales and Scotland and so on. The first phase of HS2 is Birmingham to London. There is a powerful argument to make, and there is no reason to think that more funds will not have to be found to deliver those Barnett consequentials to the other countries that make up the United Kingdom.

Naturally, the costs have risen. As I mentioned, the costs quoted are at 2011 prices. I sit on the Select Committee on Public Administration. Last week, the Treasury permanent secretary was before us. During the course of our investigation, I asked him about the costs of HS2 and pointed out that we were dealing in 2011 prices. I have asked him for an up-to-date costing of the project, which I believe he has agreed to provide by means of a letter to the Committee. I hope that, very shortly, the House will be better informed as to the real costs—the costs as of today’s date. It is hard for people to understand the full implications of the costs of the project if we do not keep pace with current prices.

The assumptions that have been made about the benefits of the project are grossly overestimated. The benefit-cost ratio for phase 1 of HS2 has dropped to 1.4 from 2.4, as it was when the first business case was issued. For phase 2, the ratio stands at 2.3, which is down from 4. One thing is not highlighted: the business case includes an £8.3 billion cut to existing inter-city services. When HS2 was first announced, my colleague the Foreign Secretary, who was Secretary of State for Transport, said it would be necessary to “seriously review the viability” if the BCR dropped below 1.5. That has happened, but as far as I know there has been no review. The reliability of the assumptions are widely questioned, but in a project of that size that will cost the taxpayer so much, we need to be certain before we press ahead.

If we strip out from the assumptions the questionable elements—for example, the overvalued benefits of the reduction in journey times, which are questionable because people do valuable work on trains—we calculate that the more realistic BCR is 0.5. If that is the case, the project will be one of the poorest value for money projects that this country has ever seen. It compares unfavourably with many other infrastructure projects. Many road improvements have BCRs of as much as 10. The optimised alternative to HS2 originally proposed by “51m”, the group of councils that have lobbied against HS2, had a BCR of 5.

Basically, by anybody’s reckoning, the project is based on dodgy assumptions. We do not know the real costs. It is five years in, but we do not have the final route and the final plans. We do not know what the risks entail. It bears repeating that the Major Projects Authority was set up to identify the risks of such projects. As far as I was aware, it was supposed to be transparent. As I understood it, we were going to be one of the most transparent Governments ever. Those reports, which we know are classified as amber/red, have not been released. I repeat that it is not right or proper that the House can be said to have scrutinised the project properly on behalf of our constituents and the taxpayers if the Committee that considers the project Bill in detail does not have access to the clearly identified risks laid out by the Major Projects Authority. If Members of the House are not allowed to have them, members of the Committee at least should have them. If the project is to be done, it needs to be done properly. People need to see that each of those risks has been addressed by the Government, and by HS2 Ltd or whatever organisation delivers the project.

[Mrs Gillan]

As far as I am concerned, it is “Don’t do as I do, do as I say.” We are always dictating to the banks and corporations that they must have transparency in their dealings, but we are not doing it ourselves. I find it rather disturbing, and it is certainly not fair on my constituency and the other constituencies that are going to pay the ultimate price for the delivery of this project if it goes ahead.

If one is going to put in a piece of infrastructure that disrupts an area of outstanding natural beauty—that is, an area of the country that has been nationally designated as something that is precious—it is not right that it should only be half protected. I am very grateful to my colleagues, because following my representations I was able to increase the tunnelling that protects my constituency. It was originally to come out in the middle of a football field at the back of old Amersham. I was able to persuade the then Secretary of State for Transport that we needed more tunnelling. I envisaged that that tunnelling would carry on to the end of the area of outstanding natural beauty, but it was moved to a place called Mantles Wood. There is no logic for why it should come out at Mantles Wood. If we are going to spend this money, I think it should go to the end of the AONB, so that that nationally designated area of the country is fully protected.

[Frank Dobson]

I think the right hon. Lady will confirm that she was present when our colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), asked Sir David Higgins about the fact that they were going to tear through two bits of ancient woodland in her constituency. He reassured her that it was all right, because they would replant it!

[Mrs Gillan]

The depth of ignorance knows no bounds in some instances. I am very depressed by the fact that people actually believe that one can replace ancient woodland. I have worked with the Woodland Trust. When I was first elected, Penn Wood in my constituency was one of the first major woods that the trust purchased and saved for posterity. The complexity of ancient woodland, with its soil and the way in which it is made up, cannot be replaced. We can have substitute woods put somewhere else, but they can never be replaced. Once they are gone, they are gone for ever. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention.

If one is going to spend £50 billion and disrupt the lives, businesses and homes of a number of people, money ought to be spent fully on compensation, as well as on protection of the environment. If one cannot afford to compensate people properly, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield said, it is a crying shame, because they are paying not once through their taxes but twice with the blight. It is unfair that the burden should fall disproportionately on those nearest to the ultimate route.

Another aspect that worries me, and which the Bill plays to in putting a referendum on this project before the people, is that I do not feel new technology and developments have been taken into account fully. I put a question to the Department for Transport on whether the impact of driverless cars had been taken into account when looking at the future development of the railways and other forms of transport. The written answer came back that they had not been taken into account, but that a study was going to be carried out. One cannot go ahead with a costly project over such a long period of time without looking at the impact of new technology. When I first came into the House, my secretary worked on a golf ball typewriter. I now carry with me an iPad on which I can FaceTime the world—all my e-mails come in and I can go on Twitter. The change in technology over 20 years has been absolutely phenomenal. That is the time scale of HS2. There will be all sorts of developments, not least if we can finally get good, first- class, rapid broadband into all parts of Buckinghamshire and all points north, east, south and west. There are going to be changes to business patterns, patterns of travel and style of travel. It is important that we look at horizon planning holistically before we commit to this sort of expenditure, and that we give people the chance to say what they want through a referendum, as envisaged in the Bill.

The Public Accounts Committee report was quoted extensively by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras. He produced the summary, which is exactly the part I had underlined to read out to myself. What struck me is that the Department takes a piecemeal approach to rail investment. That is one of the most damning aspects of the report. It is important for the Department to go back to the drawing board and do some real horizon planning across the whole piece, looking at all our methods of transport, interoperability and connectivity. Otherwise, the white elephant that has been adopted as a sign by the anti-HS2 campaigners, will come to fruition. The PAC and the National Audit Office have consistently criticised the project, and that counts for a great deal. The NAO and the PAC are set up to scrutinise the type of expenditure envisaged here, and to tell it warts and all. The PAC is a cross-party Committee, so there is no political bias. Once again, it is not being listened to seriously at the highest levels of Government.

I will not go on for much longer, but I will leave the last words to my constituents. I have received literally hundreds of e-mails about the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has been mentioned in dispatches many times. E-mails have come not just from my constituents; they have come from around the country. Many people would like the Bill to come to fruition, although I know that at this time of the electoral cycle we do not have much hope of it going any further. I will leave it to my hon. Friend to decide what he wants to do with it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in the debate, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for bringing the matter before the House. It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), who eloquently outlined many of the arguments and concerns. I share those concerns 100% and I do not propose to repeat the arguments, merely to endorse them, and I will not take up much of the House’s time today.

I endorse the comments made earlier about the Clerk to the Committee. Many of my constituents have come down to petition the Committee directly, as did I, and the Clerk has been extremely helpful to my constituents and to everybody who has taken part in what can be a daunting process for those who are not used to the somewhat arcane workings of this place.

My views on this project are well known and I have voted against it in this House at every opportunity. I am opposed to it on three levels: nationally, as I do not believe that there is any argument that stands up to scrutiny that shows this is the right way for the nation to spend some £50 billion; regionally, as I have deep concerns about its impact, thanks to strong evidence from around the world that smaller regional economies linked to larger regional economies suffer what is known as a negative agglomeration effect, whereby economic activity is not pushed out from the centre but is sucked in, and as Birmingham and the west midlands are the closest regional economic centre to London to be linked by high-speed rail, I am deeply concerned that potential investment that might have come to Birmingham and the west midlands will instead be pulled into London; and locally, as my constituency of North Warwickshire is almost certainly the worst affected constituency outside London—I add that caveat—as we have phase 1, phase 2, the delta junction and the Y junction as well as an enormous railhead close to Kingsbury. Although that railhead is technically a temporary structure, it will be there for a minimum of 15 years. The idea that people living next to the structure will not qualify for compensation because it is temporary, even though it will be there for 15 years, is staggering.

As I mentioned earlier, the economic analysis used for the case is woefully simplistic. It seems as though those who support the project believe it to be self-evidently good, given the woeful lack of sophistication in the economic analysis used to demonstrate that it is good. During the later stages of the argument, when the earlier bits of the case started to fall apart, the question of whether HS2 would help resolve the north-south divide started to be elevated as a key argument, even though it was not mentioned at the beginning. The north-south divide suddenly became a major selling point, and I remember the Select Committee on Transport’s ringing endorsement that

“only time will tell whether or not HS2 will…help…reduce the north-south divide.”

What a ringing endorsement of what has become a key plank in the project!

When the budget miraculously increased significantly, I noted that in order to maintain some semblance of a benefit-cost ratio that worked, the benefits had to be increased significantly almost overnight. I recall watching a Transport Minister—I will not mention which one, although I hasten to add that it was not the one who is sitting on the Front Bench now, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State—struggling on “Newsnight” to explain how they had suddenly found billions in additional benefit almost out of their back pocket in order to maintain some semblance of a benefit-cost ratio that looked right, given the costs that had been added to the budget.

[Frank Dobson]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept, as I am afraid I do, that the economic arguments from those in favour and those against are pretty thin and are based on guesswork about who might be using a train and why in the year 2040?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

It is not out of fear that I resist this proposal; it is out of courage. I am courageous enough to believe in the power, wisdom and efficacy of this place. I am not one of those politicians who is prepared to give ground to that destructive modern insecurity—that guilt-ridden doubt about our ability to originate, to invent, to inspire and to enthral—that so many of the governing class are said to feel. I believe that politicians can make a difference, and that they can take big decisions and be ambitious for what they can achieve for the country. So it is not fear that drives my resistance to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch’s argument; it is courage, and the willingness to be bold and to have confidence in the decisions taken by this House. I emphasise the point about the decisions being taken by this House, because this kind of project can succeed only on the basis of consensus.

[Frank Dobson]

rose—

[Mr Hayes]

I am coming to Euston in a moment, but I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman in anticipation of that.

[Frank Dobson]

Lots of people pull into Euston, and they want to continue to do so without being interrupted for the next 15 years by the works on HS2. In relation to the impact on my constituency, surely the point is that although all the proposals in the Bill—which the House has apparently seriously considered—have been abandoned, the work around Euston has not. There are no proposals for the people or for this House to consider at the moment, and no such proposals are expected until September, even though they were originally promised for last October.

[Mr Hayes]

The people of Holborn and St Pancras, in their wisdom, have chosen the right hon. Gentleman—for whom I have a great deal of respect, as he well knows—to speak for them. Members of this House are elected to voice the concerns of their constituents. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) finished her speech by saying that she would give way to her constituents and allow them to have the final word on this matter. Other Members have argued that they speak boldly for their constituents. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) said the concerns of those who have doubts about HS2 were being disregarded because they were seen solely as concerns about the constituency. I do not disregard them on that basis; those Members are doing their duty and their job in making the case for the people they serve, and they do so in the spirit—the Burkeian spirit, dare I say—that should drive all of us who believe in representative democracy and the role of Parliament.

The intervention by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) brings me to the matter of Euston, about which he spoke at considerable length—understandably, given his long association with that place. He will know that part of the advantage of the HS2 project is that it involves the redevelopment of Euston. He will also know that that will, in turn, involve the rebuilding of the Euston arch. There are those in Warwickshire, and in Chesham and Amersham, who might say that their local concerns are far greater than any consideration of what might happen at Euston, but I say that the emblematic significance of rebuilding the Euston arch will send a signal out across the whole nation that the Government are doing the right thing.

[Frank Dobson]

The Euston arch could be rebuilt tomorrow. We do not need a huge engineering project to justify it. We could simply dig the stones out of the canal and rebuild the arch where it used to stand, and we could do that tomorrow.

[Mr Hayes]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the rebuilding of the Euston arch is associated with the redevelopment of Euston station, which is at the very heart of the HS2 project. Of all the London stations, perhaps the one that demands redevelopment most of all is Euston. I know that he would not eschew the opportunity to see the benefits of that regeneration not only for rail travellers but for the whole of that part of his constituency. I know that he was not dismissing the redevelopment of Euston or the rebuilding of the Euston arch. I think that, at heart, he is something of an aesthete. Surely he knows, however, that if the project does not go ahead, Euston will not be redeveloped in the way that it could be.

[Frank Dobson]

I fear that the right hon. Gentleman has been very badly briefed by his officials, because he ought to know—his officials certainly ought to know this, although they probably do not, if my experience is anything to go by—that there were outline proposals for the redevelopment of Euston station that virtually everyone in the locality approved of. They would like that particular redevelopment to go ahead, because it would not involve a vast amount of redevelopment around the station. Sir David Higgins appears to believe, based on his experience with the Olympics in east London, that the area around Euston is a brownfield site, but it is not. It is full of people, and they want to be left alone.

[Mr Hayes]

I want to say two things about that. First, the right hon. Gentleman knows that those redevelopment plans have been given life only as a result of this project. Secondly, I concede that it is important that any redevelopment should take full account of the interests and wishes of the people in the immediate vicinity. He made a strong case for them in his speech. It is critical that the communities that will be directly affected by that development should be integrally involved in what takes place there. He has been making this argument for some time and, as a result of the overtures that he has made today, I will commit the Government to engaging with those communities, to ensuring that what is done matches the local interest, and to involving him in that process. I am more than happy to have further discussion on the detail of the development of Euston, given what he has offered this debate today. In that spirit, I say to him that its development can be a good and indeed glorious thing; it does not have to be bad news for him, his constituents or the people in that vicinity.

[Mr Hayes]

Let me tell hon. Members what I think about the redevelopment of Euston. This will perhaps come as news to my right hon. Friend and others, but I am absolutely determined that the development of Euston should be ambitious and bold in the way she described. I am absolutely determined that we should end with something that takes its inspiration from the arch. We do not want some vile, low-budget, modern monstrosity. We want a building that is grand and fit for the future, that is a landmark destination and that is as glorious as the new redevelopment of St Pancras or the addition to King’s Cross. We have a good recent record on what can be done at these large London stations. Let us do nothing less than that at Euston—indeed, let us try to do more. So, I will not be constrained in my ambitions in the way she says, and I could hardly be so, given that I claimed earlier to believe that politicians in this place should be bold, courageous, ambitious and inventive. I want a neoclassical building on a grand scale at Euston, and it does not take a lot of working out to realise that the inspiration—the genesis for that—should come from the redeveloped arch.

The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras was saying that although he understands that there will be a totemic significance to that building, we also need to consider its environs. I have pledged to him that we will engage with the local community, with local representatives and with him to make sure that the views and representations of the people in the surrounding area are built in to our thinking. I do not think we can say fairer than that.

[Frank Dobson]

The sort of thing the Minister is now saying is what HS2 has been saying endlessly to people and then ignoring them. The people in the area—not just their MP but the people themselves—were promised that the revised proposals for Euston would be made public for consultation in October last year and are now being told that these things may be available in September this year. That shows the quality of the consultation that has been going on—it has been listen and ignore.

[Mr Hayes]

The right hon. Gentleman understands that those are not matters for which I was responsible, but I am here today and I can seize the responsibility for saying to him that we will make those proposals available for local consideration and consultation, and I do not think it is unreasonable to say that we should do that by September. What I do not want to get to is a further statement in September saying that they have been further delayed. He is a very distinguished and experienced local representative. The way these things work best is when draft ideas—plans—are put forward, to which people can then add, and they then develop incrementally. That cannot be done until the conversation is started in the way he describes. So I think we need to move ahead with greater alacrity than he suggests has been the case so far.