High Speed 2

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Godsiff]

I am all in favour of infrastructure investment, but I can think of a whole host of infrastructure investment on which £32 billion could be spent in my constituency, my hon. Friend’s constituency and many other constituencies. This project is not good value for money, and it has not been thought through.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Surely it is a zero-sum game, as was said earlier, because, at a time when we in constituencies that are not directly affected by this railway project are nevertheless having to fight, for example, to save hospitals from closure due to cuts, it seems sheer madness to look at this level of investment instead of at saving our services.

[Mr Godsiff]

I am delighted that I gave way to the hon. Gentleman, because I agree.

Putting aside my views on the subject, I shall share with the House the views of a Manchester-based businessman who came to London on Tuesday for a meeting of the Surface Engineering Association, an excellent organisation that looks after the interests of companies operating in that segment of manufacturing industry. I asked him how long it had taken to travel down to London that day, and he said “Two hours, eight minutes.” He asked why I wanted to know and I told him about the upcoming debate on High Speed 2. He responded that getting to London from Manchester 50 minutes quicker did not really bother him because he used train time to work on his computer and to make calls. He ventured the opinion that if the Government had that sort of money to spend, they should do something about the bottlenecks on the M6, as well as improving the transport infrastructure in many of our cities.

Those views are similar to the majority of those expressed to me by business people in my constituency. Not one business person has come to me and said, “Thirty minutes is going to make the difference between my company succeeding or not.” It is a fallacy to believe otherwise. However, over the years, plenty of constituents have come to me and said that there should be better public transport facilities within Birmingham—an underground system such as the one in London, a tram system such as those that operate in European cites, improved bus services, or new or reopened train lines and stations within and around the city. Those are the types of improvements that the people of Birmingham want, not a vastly expensive link between London and Birmingham.

People have expressed a great deal of concern about the damage that this will cause in the Chilterns and Warwickshire. The impression has been given that only people who live there are concerned about those areas. In fact, many people living in Birmingham travel to the countryside, especially elderly people in my constituency who have enjoyed the benefits of the free or concessionary fares introduced by the Labour Government. They enjoy the countryside; they are certainly not part of the “carpet the countryside with concrete” brigade, and neither am I.

We have had many vanity projects in this country that have been a disaster. I hope the Minister will think again about this project, because I believe that if she goes ahead, it will be a disaster.