High Speed 2

Debate between Helen Jones and Lilian Greenwood

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood]

I will not give way because I have very limited time; I am sorry.

It is sometimes said that we should just upgrade what we have, and of course we need to invest in the existing network, but the delayed and over-budget Great Western works are showing just how difficult such upgrading can be in practice. Opponents of HS2 are rightly concerned about costs and it is vital that taxpayers get the best value for their investment, so it should be a great concern to us all that the estimated cost of electrifying the Great Western main line has more than trebled, from £540 million in 2011 to more than £1.7 billion today, and the price is still rising. As Lord Adonis has said, it is like performing open heart surgery on a Victorian railway. Let there be no mistake: tracks may have been relayed and signals may have been upgraded since the Victorian railways were put down, but almost all our alignments are inherited from an age of slower traction, and almost 200 years later they have given us compromises.

It may be asked, “What is the alternative to HS2?” The truth is that the alternative, if it can be called that, is to prioritise the needs of one passenger against another. It is to make fast trains compete with commuter and freight services, and to spend even greater sums to extract diminishing returns from our eccentric and increasingly sclerotic network. To my mind, that is no alternative at all. It would lead to a meaner, less socially accessible and more London-centric railway. We urgently need new capacity and HS2 is the right project to provide it.

A number of concerns have been raised, both outside and inside this House. Much has been said about the project’s costs and it is certainly true that there was a loss of focus on costs after the election. That is why Labour successfully amended the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Act 2013 to enforce a much tougher scrutiny regime around the project’s budget. I will add that after the investment in High Speed 1, in Crossrail, in Thameslink and in Reading station, HS2 is a welcome commitment to building world-class infrastructure in the midlands and the north, and not just in London and the south-east.

[Helen Jones]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I will not give way, because I have such limited time and I want the Minister to be able to respond to points.

We cannot and should not ignore environmental concerns, and I am grateful for the briefings and constructive dialogue that I have had with groups such as the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Woodland Trust. Unlike the current Mayor of London, we do not dismiss legitimate environmental concerns raised by people who live along the proposed route of HS2, and we want the environmental benefits of HS2 to be enhanced through an early commitment to decarbonising the electricity market. We also want to ensure that the concerns of community groups are looked at, and that disruption is mitigated wherever possible.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Helen Jones and Lilian Greenwood

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones]

May I make a little progress? I have given way quite a lot.

We need to think clearly about who the people affected are and what the Government think of them.

I have been reading the Minister’s blog; it is very entertaining and I recommend it to my hon. Friends as it is a treasure trove of Tory doublethink. The Minister begins by repeating the usual mantra that if someone is not in work, it is their own fault. He states that too many people

“expect to be able to rely on benefits and those who are hard at work are starting to get the hump.”

Let me say to him that 1,540 people in Great Yarmouth might start to get the hump with him because they are employed and in receipt of council tax benefit.

There are others. Will the Minister tell his disabled constituents, the vast majority of whom would like nothing better than to have a job, why they face an increase in their council tax? The Government trumpet their council tax freeze while imposing council tax rises on the poorest people in the country. When the Minister next visits a group of carers in his constituency—people who do daily the things that most of us could not imagine doing, and who save the country millions of pounds every year—will he say why their reward is an increase in council tax?

Elsewhere on his blog, the Minister writes that

“the sign of a compassionate country and a modern democracy is how it caters for those who are most vulnerable.”

That is what I mean by doublethink, which I think Orwell defined as the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time, while believing in both of them.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend believe that the only localism in which the Government are interested is localising responsibility for cuts? The Government like to talk the talk on protecting the vulnerable while making it necessary for councils to cut the assistance that such people desperately need.

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. We have said throughout discussions on this Bill that it is about centralising power and devolving the blame—after all, Tory-run Westminster council recognises that. That is the test the Minister set for his Government—the sign of a compassionate society in a modern democracy—but I am afraid the Government have failed that, and failed some of the poorest, most vulnerable people in our society. Benefits for people who are disabled will no longer depend on their disability, but on where they happen to live. We are talking about people who are sacrificing their careers to look after members of their family who are ill or disabled, and those who go out to work every week for poverty wages, because they believe that working—when they can work—is the right thing to do.

The Government seek to stigmatise those people as scroungers and they should hang their head in shame. Those people are doing the right thing, contributing to society and doing their best on a low income. The amounts they are being asked to pay may not seem much to people on the Government Benches, but to an individual or family living on the edge, they are unobtainable. Every penny they have is accounted for and there is nothing left for emergencies. To try and find even a couple of pounds at the end of the week is out of the question; it is just not there. That is why council treasurers are expecting to collect only 40p in every £1, and why we risk a repeat of the poll tax fiasco, when thousands of people left the electoral register to try and avoid the tax, and 5,000 people went to prison.