HS2 Cancellation and Network North

James Grundy Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler), I was an anti-HS2 campaigner long before I became a Member of Parliament. I declare an interest: phase 2b of HS2 did run through the Grundy family farm. I recognise many of the issues raised by colleagues—communities paralysed for a decade by uncertainty, businesses unable to invest, people unable to sell their homes.

We were successful in getting HS2 scrapped. I am delighted about that and would like to pay tribute to two colleagues. One of them, who is sitting here, is my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter). He fought manfully for his constituents in trying to stop HS2. The other is my right hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), who consistently stood against this project for a very long time.

There was a real issue with what was proposed. The people of Greater Manchester wanted better connections between Manchester and Liverpool, because those are their commuting patterns. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South has said to me that when his constituents get on the train in the morning, half go to Manchester and half go to Liverpool. The idea that people in constituencies such as ours would suddenly all decide to commute to London from central Manchester because the journey is 15 minutes faster was slightly optimistic.

The other problem was that the changes would have meant that places such as Warrington Bank Quay in my hon. Friend’s constituency would have become regional backwaters. If constituents of mine who would previously have gone via Warrington—as I do when I travel down here—had wanted to travel on the new HS2 line running through our constituencies and connecting with part of my hon. Friend’s constituency, they would have had to travel 30 miles north, through heavy traffic, to Preston. They could not have travelled on the line that went through our constituency unless they went to Preston to catch the train. I thought that was profoundly silly.

My final words—the most telling, I think—are these: “We will get all of the disruption with none of the benefits in an area with the worst railway accessibility in the country. Why should we accept that?” Those are not my words, ladies and gentlemen, but those of Andy Burnham when he was the MP for the Leigh constituency and expressed his concerns about the project to his constituents.

On Network North, I am delighted that the money is being redistributed to more popular transport projects such as the bypass, which I raised at Prime Minister’s questions last week. I look forward to meeting the Minister to discuss bringing forward those projects.