High Speed Rail

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, and Leeds. However, I would not like anyone to be under the illusion that benefits for people living north of Birmingham will begin to accrue only when the second phase is built. The point of reconnecting the first phase of the line to the west coast main line is that people travelling to Manchester, Liverpool and Scotland will enjoy journey-time savings from the point at which the first phase to Birmingham is opened. That is because the trains we will operate on this proposed railway will run straight off the high-speed line and on to the classic line, dropping the speed down to the line speed of the classic line, but allowing passengers to enjoy the benefit of the journey-time saving between London and Birmingham.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I hope it is in order, Mr Deputy Speaker, briefly to congratulate you on your brave announcement yesterday, and to welcome you to the club.

Has my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had an opportunity to study the experiences of countries such as France, Germany and Spain and the lessons they learned in the construction of their high speed lines? I am thinking in particular about their very effective schemes to minimise noise pollution. Also, please can we ensure that our new railway infrastructure is not a series of new ugly concrete constructions, but instead that we have structures of which we can proud, as we have had in the past with, for example, the Forth bridge and Brunel’s tunnels and viaducts?

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. Yes, we have looked very closely at what has happened in France and at what is happening in Spain, and we have drawn on the experience of those countries in modelling the business case and addressing the approach to mitigation. My hon. Friend’s question reminds me to make a rather important point. We will not be committing to orders for trains for this railway until almost 2020, so there is another 10 years’ worth of train design development before the commitment has to be made.