High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to follow that extremely powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), with whom I agree entirely. I speak in favour of the reasoned amendment and against the Bill because of my strong reservations about the route alignment, the business case and the compensation arrangements. I do so with great regret, because it did not need to be like this. If the argument had always been about capacity, and a little more common sense had been in evidence over speed—we do not need trains travelling at the speeds proposed—we could have had a very different proposal that might have been much more acceptable to my constituents, even if the route had gone through my constituency, and to the country at large.

I fully accept the need to increase capacity, and sensible alternatives, including new lines, have been put forward and dismissed with too little consideration—contrary to what the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), who is no longer in his place, said earlier. I also accept the fragility of the existing network and that we need new, 21st-century lines, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) and others have argued, we should make much better use of the existing transport corridors, such as the M40 corridor through the Chilterns. I urge the Government to look at that argument again when they consider phase 2—as should the Committee on phase 1.

I want to speak up for those who have opposed the work of HS2. Those people have spent their own time and money because they believe it is not in the interests of the country or of their communities. It is not that they do not want development. In my constituency, we already host the M6, which is being widened to allow the managed motorways scheme, and both branches of the west coast main line. Recently, we have had the four-tracking in the Trent valley and we will shortly see, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), the Norton Bridge flyover, which will bring four new train paths an hour on the west coast main line. Those projects have been accepted because they are in the national interest.

What my constituents do not accept is a line constructed with little regard for the communities that it splits and the landscape that it degrades. In my constituency, we have five communities that will be split, or very nearly so—Ingestre, Hopton, Yarlet, Marston and Great Haywood. Those affected are not, as some people say to me in e-mails, wealthy Range Rover drivers; many are people who invested their very limited lifetime savings into property that they see falling sharply in value or becoming unsaleable, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) said. Very few of those currently blighted are receiving proper compensation. I am glad that the Secretary of State referred to better compensation being on offer. I would welcome that, but urge him to listen to what my hon. Friend the Member for Stone said earlier.

I will not go into the details of the business case, as others have done so, but I will mention two things. The cost, as far as I can see, excludes the cost of money—interest of several billion pounds over the course of the project. I would ask HS2 to tell me that I am wrong; so far it has not done so. I am also concerned about the lack of a sound business case for the west coast main line post-HS2. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) spoke powerfully about that. The case for HS2 depends on a fully functioning west coast main line continuing, yet to date I have seen no proper business case for it. Let us not forget that the west coast main line will lose much of its profitable business traffic. As we have heard, it will continue to require substantial maintenance and probably increasing public subsidy. Where is that to come from?

My constituents in Stafford willingly bear a substantial weight of national transport infrastructure—the M6 and two parts of the west coast main line—and they benefit from it, but they need to be convinced that an additional line will be built sensitively and sustainably. Regretfully, I believe that that is not the case with the proposal on the table.