High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Frank Dobson Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

I want to talk about the compensation package a little later and indeed about the fact that I announced a new compensation package before the House rose for Easter, but that matter is out for consultation.

Before I took those interventions, I was talking about the improvements in the great western main line. We will also see improvement in east-west links, with faster electric trains between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle and a reopened railway between Oxford and Bedford. In London, we will see the Crossrail and Thameslink upgrades, which between them will cost £21 billion—about the same amount that is being spent on the first phase of High Speed 2. It is the scale of spending on London that has brought about amazing transformations at places such as St Pancras and King’s Cross stations. In the 20 years that I have been using those stations, they have become places that people wish to visit, destinations in their own right and places of which we can be proud. However, that necessary investment in London should not come at the expense of the rest of the country. Demand for travel is growing everywhere.

Twice as many people travel by train every day as they did 20 years ago. More people drive and fly, too, and that is because our horizons broaden in a better-connected world. Digital links do not replace travel; they fuel it. Smartphones and broadband are not an alternative to things such as HS2; they are part of the same growing links between people and businesses, and that pressure is felt acutely on our north-south rail corridors.

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

I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s praise for the two brilliant stations in my constituency, one of which was started and finished under the Labour Government and the other of which was started under the Labour Government. Will he confirm that according to the documents of HS2 and his Department, Euston will be able to provide extra capacity only if there is investment in Crossrail 2, at a cost of an extra £15 billion to £20 billion?

[Mr McLoughlin]

The documents about Crossrail 2 have been put out by the Mayor of London. We shall see the completion of Crossrail 1 in 2018, which will make a massive difference to London overall. I know that the right hon. Gentleman feels very strongly about this matter and is proud of the stations in his constituency, but the truth is that when I first came to this House, we regarded Euston as the best station of the three. It is now way behind the other two stations. HS2 gives us a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a transformational change to Euston station, which will bring it into line with the other two stations.

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[Mr McLoughlin]

I am slightly concerned about the amount of time I am taking, but I will give way to the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson).

[Frank Dobson]

King’s Cross and St Pancras are both in my constituency. They had the support of the local council, the support of the local MP and the overwhelming support of local people, even those directly affected. That is not the case with the proposals for Euston.

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am not sure what point the right hon. Gentleman is trying to make. If we only built infrastructure projects when we had the support of everyone concerned, we would be building very little infrastructure in this country.

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[Mary Creagh]

That was an excellent point, well made. My right hon. Friend has triggered my memory. There has been £6 billion for Reading, £6 billion for Thameslink and £18 billion for Crossrail—pretty soon there will be enough for a high-speed rail network. I have read about the debates over the disruption that Crossrail has caused. Tottenham Court Road station was closed for two years, yet the centre of our global capital was prepared to put up with that because it realised the benefits that it would bring through reduced journey times. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) has the freight flyover at Reading station, as well as a couple of new platforms and re-signalling work. He will no doubt enjoy the faster journey times to London. I would like the same for my constituents and the constituents of the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith).

I wonder when the Government will be able to report on the vocational training elements of phase 1, which were provided for by Labour’s amendment to the paving Bill. We want to see the annual report and to see what is happening. We welcome the new further education college that will train the next generation of young women and men to become rail engineers. Members on both sides of the House have been bidding to host the college. I look forward to hearing where and when it will open.

Sir David Higgins’s report called on the Government to be more ambitious in the development of Euston station. The iconic new developments at King’s Cross and St Pancras show how stations can transform and regenerate their local areas. I hope that that will also happen at Reading. Euston is potentially central London’s biggest regeneration site. Its redevelopment must provide new social housing to tackle the acute housing crisis in Camden, as well as retail and office space. It would be a disaster if it followed the housing developments in the city centre that are sold off-plan to foreign investors, creating ghost towns, rather than going to local people.

I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) and Councillor Sarah Hayward, the leader of Camden council, will continue to battle to get the best deal for their community. It has been inspirational to talk to my right hon. Friend about the life sciences hub that he wants to see around the Francis Crick Institute, which is due to open near Euston in 2015. To have the tech hub at Old Street and a life sciences hub at Euston would be an enormous boost for young people and jobs in his constituency.

[Frank Dobson]

I welcome what my hon. Friend has said. Will she bear it in mind that the investment in the Francis Crick Institute, which is a biomedical research centre, is just over £300 million? I believe that it represents a bigger contribution to the future of this country than spending £50 billion on a railway.

[Mary Creagh]

Perhaps I will break the consensus now. My right hon. Friend’s constituents will benefit from the investment in Crossrail and Thameslink, which will improve London’s transportation system. I gently say to him that his might be a slightly London-centric view. I hope that HS2 will be of benefit to every nation, region and sector of our country’s economy.

We welcome the removal of the HS1-HS2 link from the Bill, which would have caused huge disruption to Camden. Removing it will save £700 million from the budget. We also welcome David Higgins’s proposals for a coherent transport plan for the north, which has been historically underfunded, and for proper east-west rail links between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull. Our cities must plan and are planning how to maximise the regeneration and growth opportunities around the stations.

--- Later in debate ---

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

In the ridiculously short time available, I will have to confine my remarks to the impact on my constituency.

I should point out the ridiculous situation whereby the hybrid Bill before the House proposes major works in my constituency, none of which the Government now intend to carry out. The Bill also provides for a link from HS2 to HS1. That ridiculous proposal has been abandoned altogether. The Bill provides for the option 8 design of the station at Euston. That ridiculous proposal, we are told, is shortly to be abandoned, but the design, cost and construction timetable for the alternative to it have not yet been worked out, so there’s nowt to vote on.

The neighbourhoods to the east and west of Euston station and its railway approaches are densely populated with a variety of uses. Most of the streets are overwhelmingly residential. They are home to large numbers of residents living in high densities in settled and varied communities, with a wide range of incomes, housing tenures, jobs, ethnic origins and religions. Most of those residents want to continue to live there. They rightly resent patronising references to their neighbourhood by the much lauded chair of HS2 Ltd and have asked me to remind him and everyone else that where they live is not like the Olympic site. It is not a brownfield site, ripe for redevelopment.

The HS2 project as now proposed would wreak havoc on those neighbourhoods. It would expand Euston station by 75 metres to the west, demolish the homes of 500 people and subject 5,000 more to living for a decade next to the construction site or beside roads that will be made intolerable by the heavy goods vehicles servicing the main site and the 14 satellite construction compounds. No consideration has been given to the cumulative harm that all this would do to the quality of life of my constituents. The proposed working hours regime enables work to proceed at any hour of the day or night. Every little park and play space near the site is to be taken over. Small, locally owned and locally staffed businesses, especially cafes, shops and restaurants in Drummond street, face financial disaster. Between 40% and 70% of their business is passing trade from pedestrians going to and from Euston station, which, for the duration of the works—10 years—will be cut off by a solid, 3.6 metre-high security fence.

The people I represent believe that HS2 should not go ahead. Failing that, they believe that HS2 should terminate at Old Oak Common, at least temporarily, to test its capacity and permit the assessment of any capacity needed at Euston to be based on experience rather than the guesswork used so far.

[Mrs Gillan]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Frank Dobson]

No, I do not think I should.

If the Government insist on Euston, local people want the new station to be designed to fit within the curtilage of the existing station. HS2 has failed to properly appraise such alternatives, including the double-deck down design put forward by local professionals, who also want the bulk of the space created above the station to be devoted to housing that local people can afford or low-cost units available to spin-off companies developing and exploiting products of the biomedical research organisations in the area.

In December 2010, the right hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), then Transport Secretary, told the House:

“it is right and proper that individuals who suffer serious financial loss in the national interest should be compensated.”—[Official Report, 20 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 1207.]

That promise has not been kept. The arrangements for compensation in my constituency are infinitely worse than those in the rural areas. Right-to-buy leaseholders—Mrs Thatcher’s children—will get compensation, but not enough to buy an equivalent property in the area. People living next to the site—within 5 metres, not 500 metres—whose houses are not demolished will not be entitled to a penny of compensation. That is ridiculous. Neither financial nor practical mitigation measures are being offered to enable the diverse communities in Euston to survive 10 years of turmoil. They do not object to the railway; they object to 10 years of destruction.