High Speed Rail (West Midlands - Crewe) Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 15th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rachael Maskell]

The hon. Gentleman will know that one concern about the HS2 project is the escalating cost, and that is why we have tabled some new clauses. To join HS1 to HS2 sounds like a logical proposal, but it would mean that costs would go up considerably. Perhaps that is a project for the future, but to get that long overdue connectivity in the north, it is vital that we press on and build a network for the future. We will then see serious modal shift, not only of passengers but of goods.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady not also worried by the very long delay before there is any additional capacity north of Birmingham? Is it not a paradox that something that was designed to help the northern powerhouse will actually produce only a Birmingham-London additional railway for the foreseeable future?

[Rachael Maskell]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As I have already said, we would focus on the north and on making sure that we get those trans-Pennine links in place. We see that as a priority over all rail infrastructure projects, because we understand the power of joining up Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield and the cities and towns beyond. We want to see that investment coming forward. Electrification will also ensure that we benefit from better journey times, reliability and connectivity, which are vital for building our railways into the future. However far into the future it will be until we see the realisation of new rail, it does not mean that we will neglect that ambition to build more capacity north to south, which is vital if we are to take lorries off our roads and give freight an opportunity to move on the west coast main line.

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[Rachael Maskell]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point. The jobs in his constituency are vital. Having met some of those workers, I know that many of them have tremendous skill and could participate in this project. I urge the Minister to look at that situation and ensure that the gates do not close and that those jobs can be saved and integrated into the HS2 project. I trust that she will want to meet my hon. Friend, to advance the case that he has been fighting so hard for.

[John Redwood]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachael Maskell]

I will continue for a little bit, if I may.

HS2 provides a crucial opportunity to create a significant number of freight paths on the west coast main line, thus moving freight from road to rail, with additional capacity, which will attract more passengers to move from air to train and car to train, due to the attractive journey times. That is a crucial shift if we are to reduce our emissions, which are currently at 29% in the transport sector, and our carbon footprint. Of course, that means saving lives, from the poor air quality that so many people experience because of the use of poor fuels on the transport that many people use to get about our country.

Labour’s new clauses seek to address something that is vital to rebuilding public confidence in the project: a transformation in the way that the governance works. We truly believe that the Secretary of State has failed in his obligation to hold HS2 fully to account and certainly has not brought the level of transparency we would expect from a Secretary of State to such a major infrastructure project. He cannot and must not hide, as he is today.

[Rachael Maskell]

Indeed. In the light of concerns expressed by Members from across the House, Labour’s new clauses 1 and 4 seek to drive greater transparency and accountability for the project.

[John Redwood]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachael Maskell]

I will give way briefly, then I must move on.

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[John Redwood]

Does the hon. Lady agree that early and rather more moderate expenditure on digital signalling could greatly increase capacity and, along with short sections of bypass track, could improve reliability of fast train services, which is needed?

[Rachael Maskell]

I am honoured to have a centre for digital signalling in my constituency and have seen the power of it, but sadly, to achieve the capacity that we will need for the future, we have to build more routes. That is what this project will do. It is not either/or—both are required for the future of our rail network, but the right hon. Gentleman makes an important point.

First, we are calling on the Secretary of State to bring quarterly reports on the environmental impact, costs and progress of the HS2 project to the House. This is far too important a project for the Bill to be passed and then for us to read in the press that the costs have gone up and there are delays. The project must be far more accountable to the House, as should the Secretary of State.

Secondly, Labour believes that the scheduling, the integration, the engineering in places and the scope of the project need review. We cannot simply have HS2 Ltd saying, “This is what it is.” There are major issues to be resolved, not least the vital Yorkshire hub and getting the right connectivity into Sheffield. Members and community groups have undertaken detailed work on how improvements can be made to parts of the route, and that is one such example. Labour is calling for the whole of HS2, including phase 2a, to undergo a complete peer review appraisal by independent engineering and economic specialists. We believe that that is the only way that Parliament and the public can have full confidence in the HS2 project. Such a process will ensure that the scope is right, that the integration with the wider network is right, that governance is put right and that the maximum environmental gain is harvested while the cost of the project is minimised. It will not delay the project but enable it to proceed in a way that delivers maximum benefit.

Ensuring that the best modelling of the wider economic benefit is properly appraised is also urgently needed on this project, while at the same time proper security can clearly deliver a focus and confirm that north-south connectivity—and, I trust, east-west too—is really integrated to deliver and to ensure that we get maximum benefit from it. I trust that hon. Members on both sides of the House will support the new clauses, which would answer many of the questions that they have been asking and enhance the Bill and the project.

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[Sir William Cash]

They certainly are, and there are also freehold properties. People who own property, as I have just described, are being put under the most intense anxiety, so I understand the reasons that lie behind the principle of new clause 2.

On new clause 4, I made my point in my intervention on the shadow Minister. I simply cannot understand it. Notwithstanding the intention that appears to be behind the first part the new clause—I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) for backing me up on this—it is inconceivable that the report should only come into effect within 12 months of the Act receiving Royal Assent. It is nonsense. I ask the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) to note that although I shall vote for the principle of an independent peer review, it will be on the strict understanding that that is without prejudice to my concern that the Act will need to be repealed.

I make this point now and may do so again on Third Reading: we are about to experience a new Government, effectively, with a new Prime Minister, depending on the outcome of the leadership election. The two contenders for the leadership have differing views on HS2: one is in favour and the other says that he wants to put it under review. Although rumours are like bats that fly in the night, the fact is that there are very strong feelings in favour of abandoning this entire project. We understand that it has already cost about £5 billion or £6 billion. That is enough money in itself, but to subject this country to unbelievable havoc as the project goes through constituencies such as mine, with all the attendant problems and anxieties that I have described, and to say, at the same time, that the proposal will go through and that the Labour party, by all accounts, will vote for it seems to be completely at variance with all the evidence and reports—I referred to them in the Westminster Hall debate and on many other occasions—which indicate that this is not a viable project. It was dreamt up by a Labour peer. I am never quite sure what the noble Lord Adonis’s allegiance is these days, but he was certainly a Labour member of the Government when this was proposed, and he deserves to be thoroughly condemned for it.

[John Redwood]

Did my hon. Friend notice that while Labour says that it wants a 12-month review of fairly fundamental things, it made it very clear that it does not want any material changes to the project that might delay it? I do not really see what the point of the review is.

[Sir William Cash]

The hon. Member for York Central is smiling as she looks across the Chamber—[Interruption.] She says that it is unbelievable, but it is anything but unbelievable—it is entirely true and entirely credible. My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield backed me up on this. What is the point in having a first-class, independent review of the kind that is being advocated and saying that it will come into effect only after this has been made into the law of the land? [Interruption.] I see the Opposition Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), chuntering, but perhaps he would like to come to the Dispatch Box and explain the nonsense that lies behind that reasoning.

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[Antoinette Sandbach]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. He will see from the drafting of my new clause that it would allow an assessor to assess NDAs that have already been signed, and to allow them to be retained only in circumstances of exceptional commercial confidentiality. I would argue that that is the only ground for retaining them, and that an independent assessor—either a QC or a former High Court judge—should be appointed to assess those NDAs.

[John Redwood]

Could my hon. Friend give us some idea of what kind of information she thinks might be suppressed that we ought to know about? What is the inducement being offered to make people sign these things?

[Antoinette Sandbach]

So far, HS2 has refused to answer freedom of information requests. It claims, in answers given to me as a result of FOI requests, that it is unable to provide answers because it does not know how many NDAs its lawyers have got people to sign and because it would cost too much to provide a Member of Parliament with details of the number of NDAs.

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[Yvette Cooper]

If there has simply been no updated assessment, that might explain why so many of my constituents get stuck on platforms in Leeds, trying to get back to Castleford, or on platforms in Castleford, trying to get into Leeds. So many more people are commuting for work, yet the commuter infrastructure for them is just not there. It is continually our towns that are being let down.

[John Redwood]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I am conscious of the time and see Mr Deputy Speaker looking at me, so I shall give way only briefly.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

I am very relaxed.

[John Redwood]

How would a review help, given that the right hon. Lady’s Front-Bench colleagues and the current Government are united behind the current scheme, which does nothing to help our towns?

[Yvette Cooper]

Nobody has done a proper assessment of where transport infrastructure investment is going and what the impact is on cities and towns. Some assessment has been made of the impact on different regions of the country, and that is important. Actually, it is significant, because I think the New Economics Foundation cites HS2’s own figures showing that 40% of the benefits from HS2 will go to London, whereas only 10% of the benefits will go to Yorkshire. I want to see a broader assessment of the impact on cities and towns.

Job growth is twice as fast in cities as in towns. New digital jobs, service jobs, university-related jobs and cultural jobs are all being concentrated in cities, but manufacturing, distribution and retail jobs are disappearing from towns. That is a result of automation or changes to our economy, but public sector investment decisions, including on transport priorities, are making that worse. Public services are shrinking back from towns into cities, and the new infrastructure investment is always concentrated on cities rather than towns.

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[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Certainly, for bus services, which are crucial for our towns, the loss of revenue has been particularly crucial and devastating. This debate is about towns getting their fair share of both revenue and capital investment. Currently, I do not think we are getting either.

The campaign to power up the north led by some of our regional newspapers is immensely important, and I strongly back it, but I also think that it is time to power up our towns, as they have immense potential and are not getting their fair share of investment. Time and again, whether through HS2 or Crossrail 2, too much money—the big billions—is still going into the cities rather than the towns. That is why I support this review, but ask for it to be broadened.

I urge the Minister to broaden it as well, because the truth is that Members from our towns have been respectful, we have asked sensible questions, we have been patient, and we have waited and waited and, frankly, we have got nothing. We see no sign of anything improving for our transport infrastructure. We see no sign of anything other than warm words about promises in the future. We need that review of the geographic benefits and we need a proper towns plan—a proper plan for major infrastructure investment. Until we have that, the Government’s transport infrastructure plan is simply not in the national interest.

[John Redwood]

My worry about the Labour new clauses is that they will not achieve the objective that Labour seems to think they will achieve. The truth is that, with the legislation already in place and the likely passage this evening of the High Speed Rail (West Midlands - Crewe) Bill, all the legal powers are there to proceed with the scheme as originally designed. As the contracts are settled, the scope for any fundamental changes arising from a review is either limited or non-existent. As the project develops, there is less and less scope to make any changes to it.

I speak as someone who, when we were first faced with the decision about HS2, decided that it was not the right project. I fully share the ambition of practically everybody in this House that we need an even more successful northern powerhouse and better transport and connectivity throughout those northern cities and towns. As someone who represents a very fast-growing and hard-pressed area of the country, just outside London, I would love to see an even more effective counter-magnet to London elsewhere in the country to pick up some of that growth and some of that prosperity, because we have the difficulties of managing so many people coming in and so many people moving around on transport systems that are woefully inadequate for the task. I share the ambition for the northern powerhouse, but I accept that a decision has already been made in principle, that a lot of money has now been committed and that various works have been undertaken in the name of the project, so it would become more and more difficult to make fundamental change or to think about cancellation.

As it happens, I think that there will be another decision taken quite shortly about this mighty project, because the very likely next Prime Minister has said that he wishes to review it and to think about it again, and I wish him every success with that. It would be a very difficult task, and it would need to be done with reasonable speed. Given that we have committed so much and that there is some reasonable merit in the project, he may conclude that he wishes to go on with it. If he were to make a more fundamental decision, all that we are talking about this afternoon in this House is a waste of time, because, clearly, the project will be cancelled and everything else will lapse.

I work on the assumption that, after review, the new Prime Minister may continue with the project, and that we are in the business of trying to mitigate the difficulties and damages. My colleagues who represent constituencies who are very badly affected by this project deserve special treatment over how it can be ameliorated and improved and how compensation can be paid and businesses dealt with.

Certainly, we need transparency. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) for raising the issue. I want to hear from the Minister about what is going to be done on transparency, so that those who are most adversely affected, should the project go ahead in full, are able to see why the decisions are being made and also have access to the information that they need to get proper compensation.

I myself will not be voting for the Labour amendments, because they simply do not bring any advantage either to those who support the project in full or those who have the problems of handling the disadvantages of the project in their constituencies. I do not see how a further review suddenly will make this a better run project. If the project goes forward, this Minister and any future Minister will have to deal with how the costs will be controlled, how the works will be carried out in a speedy manner and to a high quality with safe standards for the workforce, and how the impact of those works can be minimised on those most affected by them as they go ahead. These remain continuing management problems. An additional independent review is not going to solve any of that. We are now getting to the point where it needs individual management solutions. It is about managers on the ground, how contracts are handled on the ground, and the extent to which Ministers can and should have proper oversight of those contracts, given their commercial nature and given the technical expertise of those actually running the project.

I do not see how an independent review can help at all. I do not believe that any serious change could result from it, because the contracts will be let, and we will be told that the contractors have to get on with it. There does remain the issue of whether a new Prime Minister wishes to reopen the whole question, but assuming that he does not we will need proper answers from Ministers about what action they have taken to control the costs, improve the quality and deal with safety, and about how much power they will have in future, given the commercial nature of the operation.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I am generally very supportive of additional high-speed capacity between London, the north-east, the north-west and Scotland, but I have consistently opposed HS2 and the plans for it because this is not the right way to go about it. It is not a question of whether or not my constituency is affected; I would be happy to see a sensible route through my constituency. I and my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) were quite happy to see the very large Norton Bridge junction project in our constituencies, because although it caused quite a lot of disruption, we could see the benefit for the west coast main line—for improving capacity and for increasing speeds to the benefit of everybody. He and I and other colleagues do not see such benefits from HS2 as a whole. However, I personally would like to see a different design and lower maximum speeds—not the 400 km per hour that is projected but something more sensible between 250 km and 300 km per hour. That would allow for a route that is not straight as an arrow, but that has some bends in it that could avoid the villages in my constituency. That kind of route, which would also be more consistent with the kind of trains that we currently have running on the west coast main line, would be infinitely preferable to what we have at the moment. Unlike to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) whom I greatly respect on this matter, I do not think that it is too late to think again about some changes that would make this or a similar project more acceptable to my constituents.

I will support new clauses 1 and 2, certainly, and new clause 5. My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) has already eloquently set out the reasons why we should support new clause 5, and I will certainly do so.

[John Redwood]

I stress that I do not want to stop my hon. Friend getting a better deal for his constituents; I wish him every success in doing that. I was saying that once the contracts had been signed for this project, he will not be able to get change.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am not a believer in breaking contracts if contracts have been signed and if they do not have get-out clauses. I would strongly recommend that we put in get-out clauses, because there will be massive changes over the coming months and years. I accept, however, that once a decision has been taken by this House, if we are in a minority, we are in a minority and it will go ahead. I am just flagging up some of the problems that may be encountered in the future.

In respect of new clause 1, I welcome the quarterly reports. This is a very sensible approach and it is something that has been lacking. We have had intermittent reports from HS2 to constituency MPs who have been affected. We have had the occasional statement from the Minister—and I welcome the work that the current Minister and indeed previous Ministers have done to keep us informed—but what we have not had is an honest assessment of the cost of this project. We were told originally that it was in the £30 billion to £35 billion range, and then a Minister came forward a few years ago and said that it was going to be about £56 billion, but since then we have had nothing. They have stuck to the figure, and what we are being asked as a House today is to vote on a figure that I simply do not believe.

The figures I have seen, calculated by experts in the field, indicate that the cost will be in the region of £80 billion. I have heard it might be more, but let us stick at £80 billion. This House is being asked to agree today to a not insignificant part of a project for which we do not have an accurate cost estimate, and which could be as much as £24 billion a year more. I agree that this is a capital rather than a revenue project, but that is two thirds of what we spend on defence every year; that is an enormous sum of money about which we are not being given any indication. If these estimates are wrong, let the Minister come forward and say that they are wrong and prove that they are wrong. Of course estimates are estimates, and we know that we cannot pin them down to the last million or so pounds, but it is possible to try to disprove the credible figures that have been put in the public domain, and so far they have not been disproved.

[John Redwood]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there could be massive revenue losses once the railway is up and running, because if it turns out that the number of seats provided is greatly in excess of demand, which some people think will be the case, there will be heavy discounts and lots of empty seats, and therefore a very major demand for a taxpayer subsidy?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

As so often, my right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and what has also not been forthcoming is a proper business case. We have had the business case for HS2, but we have not had—I have asked for this time and again—a business case for the remnant west coast main line, which will still be a much larger transport network than HS2. We are told that there will be freight on it, and it is good that there will be additional freight, but freight is a very competitive market and will not replace the extremely lucrative premium revenues that come from high-speed trains.

What we will be left with on the west coast main line, which is absolutely vital for my constituency and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) and for Stone (Sir William Cash) and so many others, is a line which takes freight, which of course is heavy and causes extra maintenance, and with suburban and stopping services such as the London Northwestern Railway. That is an excellent service and I use it frequently, but I often pay £15 or £20 for a single ticket from London to Stafford. I welcome that, but it is not possible to run a proper, profitable railway on income like that. What it relies on of course is the incredibly expensive £106 or £108 single peak fare from Stafford to London—my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield will probably be able to quote the figure from Lichfield. These are the fares that pay for the railway at the moment.

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[Mr Lewis]

I respect the hon. Lady’s views on some of those issues in the context of the debate, but I have to say assertively to her that, in the context of austerity, those at the bottom of the pile have suffered more than everyone else. When we look at the impact of austerity on the country and on communities, we see that many northern communities were starting at an incredibly low base. The impact of austerity, therefore, is not simply that we have not been able to catch up; the inequality and disparity in terms of the investment in skills, jobs, infrastructure and public services have actually made the situation far worse. That combination of austerity and the low base of investment, which has been an historical reality under successive Governments, is having a devastating effect on many northern communities.

The hon. Lady therefore really cannot afford to be complacent; she may have had some funding for a bypass in her constituency, but the reality in many of our constituencies in the north of England is that this has been an incredibly challenging and difficult period. If any business had 50% reductions to its budget in a four or five-year period, it would go bankrupt; that is what is happening to many local authorities in the north of England, and especially in Greater Manchester.

I want to come on specifically to the new clause on the non-disclosure agreements tabled by the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach). My view, having come reasonably late to this topic, is that what we have seen in terms of non-disclosure agreements in the context of HS2 is nothing short of a public scandal. Essentially, many of these agreements have been used to silence people inside that organisation who are concerned that Parliament has been misled on a regular basis about financial information. Let us be clear: people have been given redundancy from HS2 because, internally, they have articulated concerns about misleading information that has been presented to this House in terms of finance and capacity.

Ministers have a responsibility to disinfect this issue. They should now make it clear that, former members of staff subject to non-disclosure clauses and paid redundancy simply because they felt Parliament was being misled should be released from those non-disclosure responsibilities and should be able to share their views with Parliament and to put them in the public domain. It is totally hypocritical to talk, quite rightly, about the outrage of the Labour party imposing non-disclosure agreements on its staff, but then for Ministers not to release members of staff in HS2 from such requirements.

I would like to reveal to the House today that a consultants’ report costing at least £1 million was commissioned from a well-known consultant, which did not say what HS2 wanted it to say. That report was more or less shredded; it was certainly never put in the public domain or shared with Parliament.

We know that the costs have escalated time and time again and that some people in the organisation have alerted the HS2 board and other senior executives to the difficulties. I am not saying that HS2 should be scrapped, but for parliamentarians to make a rational, proper judgment on its viability, desirability and achievability, we have to have full possession of the facts. There is absolutely no question but that Ministers have not always been given full information by HS2. As a consequence, Select Committees and the House itself have not been given the full information that we and the public are entitled to in any debate about the desirability of this scheme.

[John Redwood]

If a Government had decided to offer all the northern councils involved their proportion of the original budget for HS2 as capital spend, to spend as they saw fit, does the hon. Gentleman think they would have spent it together on the railway or on something else?

[Mr Lewis]

I say genuinely to the right hon. Gentleman that that is a false choice. In Greater Manchester, thanks to changes the Government have made, we are seeking finally to have the capacity to reintegrate, re-coordinate and, where appropriate, re-regulate our buses. However, the level of subsidy per commuter in Greater Manchester, compared with London, is frankly shocking in terms of the Mayor of Greater Manchester’s capacity to radically improve bus services across the conurbation. I genuinely say to the right hon. Gentleman—this is not a party political point—

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[Mr Paterson]

I totally get that point, but one cannot get from Crewe to the end destinations in phase 1 without getting this part of the project done, and the point is that Labour’s amendments do not allow any action. If the hon. Lady compelled the Government to do something, I might be minded to support that, but as I said, I have become increasingly disillusioned by the cost and the damage to my own patch.

The first I knew about the damage to my constituency was when a notice went up in the village of Woore, which the hon. Lady is probably not aware of, in the most extreme north-eastern corner of Shropshire. It is a salient that sticks out to the east between the counties of Cheshire and Staffordshire. Woore is a village of 1,200 people, with a nursery and a primary school of about 60. People walk every day to school and to work. In parts of the main road through the village, there is no footpath and some of my constituents have to cross the road three times, so the situation caused major consternation.

We have had a significant number of meetings with HS2, and I pay credit to the HS2 officials who have been assiduous in coming to meetings and providing information. We have looked at a whole range of alternatives to what could happen. It seems perverse that the original plan to move 600 vehicles a day through the village has come down to 300 by simply doubling the time—it was going to be 600 for three months and now it is 300 a day for six months. They are doing that because they are going to travel three sides of a rectangle. Every alternative that we have looked at has been turned down, and that is why I do not support these amendments. It is the sort of issue that the hon. Lady’s amendments could have flushed out, and there could have been concrete action.

[John Redwood]

Does my right hon. Friend have any sympathy for the amendment from our hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) about non-disclosure agreements?

[Mr Paterson]

I am going to come to that in a minute. I am wholly amazed by the revelations from my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), and I look forward to the Minister’s comments on that, because I was really shocked by what my hon. Friend said. Given my experience of having a series of meetings with HS2 officials, all of which have been—at face value—thoroughly satisfactory and an open exchange of views, but have got absolutely nowhere, it now appears that there might some other reasons why that is. Given what she is saying, I cannot find out why, so if she presses her amendment, which I very much hope she does, I would like to hear from the Minister whether the Government will accept it. If they do not, I will be very happy to vote in favour of it. My hon. Friend has flushed out a most serious issue.

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[Mr Paterson]

That is a perfectly fair point, but there is no money tree. There is a limited amount of private and public money. I put to the hon. Lady that her constituents and mine have suffered for generations from the innate disadvantage of living in a remote rural area, 200 miles from London. With this new broadband technology, they can suddenly be level pegging with someone in the middle of Manchester or the middle of London. They can be just as competitive when talking to a customer in Ulan Bator or San Francisco. We are all absolutely level, but we have to have broadband. A spokesman from Openreach, picking up on the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), said last week that

“building full fibre technology to the whole of the UK isn’t quick or easy. It requires £30 billion and a physical build to more than 30m front doors, from suburban terraces to remote crofts.”

Think of the benefit to our constituents if we had full fibre for £30 billion, which was the original estimate for HS2. This project is getting out of control.

[John Redwood]

People call this project an investment. Now, one aims to get a return on an investment. If we wanted a very modest 3% real on this £55 billion slug of capital, it should be generating profits of £2.75 billion every year. I do not think it will make a single penny. The case for investment has not been made.

[Mr Paterson]

I agree. There were questions about its original cost of £32 billion. We are now at £55 billion and looking at £100 billion. We know categorically that we would massively improve the productivity of every single human being in this country if we had full fibre broadband.

I am not prepared to vote for the Labour party amendments. I thought they were good when I first skimmed through them, but they place no consequential requirements on the Government. If the Government do not support my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury’s amendment, I will vote for it, if she presses it. I am also minded to change my opinion of the whole project, mindful that my constituents have not been given satisfaction and mindful that their lives will be turned upside down for a long period by this project, and to vote against the Bill on Third Reading unless I hear otherwise from the Minister.

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[Ms Ghani]

I feel that my hon. Friend is talking about particular cases in her constituency, on which I am more than happy to provide further information. I will work with her to ensure that she is able to represent her constituents, and that they get satisfactory responses from HS2 Ltd. It takes part in many local engagement events; it has met several thousand residents up and down the country. I do not believe that new clause 5 will deliver what she is asking for.

[John Redwood]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Ms Ghani]

I am running out of time; forgive me.

New clause 5 would slow down the process, and I do not think that it would work effectively. There is already a statutory framework in place for HS2, which includes the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. The new clause is designed to prevent HS2 Ltd from acting as a commercial organisation, and tries to prevent it allocating most of its money, which, I remind everyone in the House, is from the public purse, directly to the programme. Unfortunately, I therefore cannot support the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury.