High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill (Instruction) (No. 3)

Debate between Graham Stringer and William Cash

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his very long intervention. He is obviously right. Cheryl Gillan did a fantastic job.She was opposed to HS2, and she increased the costs enormously by getting tunnels built under the hills in her constituency.

Another way of looking at the economic nonsense we have had from this Government is that we do not have a high-speed route for the nation; we have an extension of the London underground. We have tunnels leading out of London to Birmingham. I do not know the train times, but my guess is that the times going to Birmingham, going through the tunnels out of London, will be shorter than using the Elizabeth line to travel across London. HS2 is just part of the underground system. It is a London scheme now, not a national scheme.

[Sir William Cash]

At the moment, travelling from Stoke-on-Trent or Stafford down to London Euston, as Conservative Members do, takes just over an hour. I would have thought that most people regard that as pretty fast.

[Graham Stringer]

Indeed, but we are talking about major national infrastructure. I always hoped that HS2 would not just go to Manchester and Leeds but, for both political and transport reasons, would go to Scotland. As someone who believes in the Union between England and Scotland, I think that would help, and it would be very good transport policy, too.