High Speed 2 (Heathrow)

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I add my congratulations to those that others have given to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) on securing this important debate. I agree with the thrust of much of what he said.

Let me start by welcoming the Government’s announcement of the western spur link to Heathrow. It will greatly improve Heathrow’s rail connectivity to the west and to some areas to the north. I have slightly higher ambitions for the link than my hon. Friend. If we combined that spur with the electrification of the Great Western line and the extra pass it would create, it might be possible to schedule direct services from the west into Heathrow. I do not have the exact timetable modelling to hand, but I believe that it would be possible.

In conjunction with the welcome announcement of the east-west rail link, which goes through my constituency and will also be electrified, it is proposed that some trains will run from Reading to Oxford and then over to Milton Keynes and Bedford. I see no reason why those services should not start at Heathrow, which would be most welcome in my part of the world. Such a move would boost the connectivity of Milton Keynes and our local enterprise area and be attractive for inward investment. The announcement is certainly welcome and hugely significant.

Let me turn to High Speed 2 and its connections with Heathrow. As a member of the Transport Committee, I have looked at the matter in some detail. For some time, I have taken the view that we must look at our strategic rail and aviation policies as two parts of the same whole. They cannot be looked at in isolation from each other, and I have a number of suggestions on which I hope the Minister will reflect.

One of the ambitions for high-speed rail is to achieve a modal shift from domestic aviation to high-speed rail, which is welcome. If we look at the upgrade of the west coast main line, there is a significant shift of traffic from Manchester to London from air to rail. High-speed rail offers greater potential to achieve that shift in domestic travel, and, as my hon. Friend said, that will free up some slots at Heathrow for longer-haul destinations. However, that is only part of the answer. The number of slots that that will free up is comparatively small in relation to the total and increasing demand on Heathrow. At present, there are 1.25 million journeys a year from Heathrow to Edinburgh; 1 million to Glasgow; and 800,000 to Manchester, with a significant percentage of those transferring to other flights. Heathrow is not the destination for many people. Strategically siting a Heathrow hub to attract more of that domestic aviation market will offer huge potential and relieve some of the capacity at Heathrow.

I urge the Government to have a think at this critical juncture before we commit to the detailed legislation on High Speed 2 and proceed with the aviation strategy. We should not rush in and commit ourselves to one project that we might later regret. I do not expect a detailed answer from the Minister at this point. My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds has mentioned a Heathrow hub, but that is one of many solutions. Others may be available. I urge the Government to use this brief interlude to do a bit of strategic thinking and to ask themselves, “Have we got the detail of this right, or are there better options available?”

Let me give a couple of suggestions to illustrate what I mean. If we look at Birmingham airport in conjunction with Heathrow, there is real potential that together they can be regarded as a split hub or a virtual hub. The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) has raised the issue of the travel time between different Heathrow terminals. If—it is a big if—High Speed 2 is constructed efficiently, it will not take much longer to travel between Heathrow and Birmingham airport than it does between Heathrow terminals. It will possibly require air site to air site connections that do not involve changing trains somewhere, but it does, none the less, offer huge potential.

With modest capital expenditure on its runway, Birmingham airport has considerable capacity. It would be perfectly possible for it to be regarded as part of Heathrow—as part of a split hub. I do not think that the detailed planning work has been carried out. Before we get into radical long-term options such as building a third or fourth runway at Heathrow, Boris island or any other option, we should consider much more carefully the potential that we have. I believe that options such as a split hub are possible, but I am not a railway civil engineer; there are people far brainier than me who can determine such things. The option should be considered, because it would find favour with the people at Birmingham airport who are aware of its huge potential.

[Mr Donohoe]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is a fellow Scot, for giving way. The biggest problem in transport today is the connectivity between various forms of transport. Unless and until we wake up to the fact that technology is now available to overcome that, all of what he says is meaningless. As somebody who has to travel on a weekly basis, using three or four different forms of transport, I see how much time is wasted every time I have to travel back to my constituency. Until that problem is overcome and is understood by Government, any of the hon. Gentleman’s proposals are of no value whatever.

[Iain Stewart]

In part, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. We must look at journeys as a whole and not as individual component parts. For decades, we, as a country, have not got this right. Improvements could be made in a number of areas, from ticketing arrangements through to big capital investment. Yes, we have to do that, but I am putting forward one idea through which we might be able to achieve better connectivity. A journey from London to New York might involve taking a train for the first part of it. In Germany, such through-ticketing options do exist. The first part of the journey, for example, is on Deutsche Bahn before the passenger transfers on to Lufthansa. Although I agree with the hon. Gentleman, I am more optimistic about the potential to achieve such connectivity.

If High Speed 2 is properly connected to High Speed 1 and the channel tunnel, we will open up the option of achieving a modal shift not only in the number of domestic passengers into Heathrow but in the number of passengers travelling from Heathrow and Birmingham to the near continent, to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. It would require careful planning. At the moment, it is estimated that the pivotal point for making a rail journey more attractive than flying is about three and a half hours. That will probably lengthen as business travellers value properly constructed carriages that allow them to do business during the course of their journey. If we look at the total travel time involved in a journey from Birmingham to Paris, there is real potential to achieve that modal shift, which will free up more capacity for longer-haul destinations without having to resort to the radical options of new runways or a completely new airport.

Let me give a few figures. There are 1.3 million flight passengers a year going from Heathrow to Amsterdam, the same number going to Paris and Frankfurt, and 500,000 to Brussels and Dusseldorf. Therefore, significant capacity at Heathrow could be released if we get the planning right.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

There is another point in my hon. Friend’s equation. Railway stations seem to be located in the middle of city centres, whereas airports are on the outskirts of cities, and sometimes considerably so. There is always the necessity for a different type of journey to get to the airports. If we go directly from the centre of Glasgow to the centre of Paris, there may not be too much difference in time with high-speed rail.

[Iain Stewart]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. It is not an either/or situation. The line between Frankfurt and Cologne calls at Frankfurt airport, so people have the option of going either to the city centre or to the main airport.

My hon. Friend has put forward the Heathrow hub as a specific model. I do not have any particular detailed knowledge about whether that is the correct solution, but it is one of several possibilities that should be seriously considered.

In essence, that is my point. I do not want the Minister to come back and reject the Heathrow hub or favour another option. I just urge the Government in the recess, when tempers cool down a little and there is time for a little more blue-sky strategic thinking, to use that natural pause in our strategic transport planning to assess whether we have got this matter right or whether we could make some adjustments to improve the capacity of what we have and what is already planned before we start committing ourselves to more radical options, which have all sorts of other issues surrounding them.

On that point, I will conclude and allow other Members to speak in the debate.