High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am not sure which citizens of that famous French city my hon. Friend has been speaking to, but the ones we met were very enthusiastic, as were people in other cities. Lille, for example, has been transformed by the high-speed rail—of course it has, and that is a good thing. No one in France is suggesting that the high-speed rail network should be closed down and the country should go back to what it had before.

There are clear economic benefits. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) suggested that freight transport is growing at 10% a year. How on earth can that growth in freight be accommodated without substantial investment in our railway infrastructure and without building a high-speed rail network? As my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) said, simply building another line that is not a high-speed line will cost just as much and not give the benefits, and no one is suggesting that as an alternative.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I am suggesting precisely that alternative. I have a scheme for a dedicated freight route, capable of carrying lorries on trains, that would cost a fraction of HS2 and take all the freight off the north-south lines, freeing them up for more passengers.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am pleased that we have Members with such fertile imaginations in this House that the hon. Gentleman has his own scheme. I have not looked at it, though, so I could not possibly comment.

What is clear to me, as a Member for a south-east constituency that is very built-up and highly residential, is that disputes about infrastructure spending are inevitable. I suggested that when the Tower of London was built, people objected to it on quite worthy grounds. There have been objections to every piece of infrastructure spending in this country for hundreds of years, but that does not mean that we have not gone ahead and built the railways or the ports. We are a commercial nation with incredible skills in engineering. We have, or we used to have, great architecture and engineering—I am not casting aspersions on current architecture, just suggesting that it was very good in the past—so there is no reason to suggest, as some have, that HS2 will be a blight on the countryside. It will change of course, but as has been pointed out, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and other Victorians completely transformed the landscape of this country, but they did not make it worse in any way.

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[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley). His emphasis on freight is absolutely right. I have a scheme which would solve all his problems and, I believe, the country’s problems, but that is another story.

I am a long-term passionate believer in railways as the mode of transport for the future. That was not true 30 years ago. It is gratifying to see Members on both sides of the House supporting the principle of railways, even if we disagree about what particular railways we ought to build. I remain sceptical about HS2. I believe it is unnecessary and extremely expensive, and the opportunity cost of spending elsewhere is very great indeed. But I do not want to be negative; I want to propose sensible, practical alternatives.

The core of all the problems of capacity is London to Birmingham and there is an alternative, which is to upgrade the route between Paddington and Birmingham Snow Hill via Banbury. That could double capacity between London and Birmingham, and also would go to a very sensible terminus at Paddington, which is of course on Crossrail. At the Birmingham end, Snow Hill is in the town centre. The station for HS2 will be away from the town centre, so much of the advantage of speed will be lost in extra transport from that station into the town centre, but Snow Hill is in the centre. That would be a great advantage.

In 1990 British Rail, as it was in those days, freed up the line and ran a train from London to Edinburgh with a two-minute stop at Newcastle. For most of the journey it was a 140 mph operation. The journey took three and a half hours—two and a half hours to Newcastle, three and a half hours to Edinburgh—which was eight minutes faster than the time advertised for HS2 now, so it can be done. We need to upgrade the route on the east coast main line, which means a double viaduct at Welwyn, so that there are four tracks at Welwyn instead of two; an east-west flyover at Peterborough; and a flyover for the Lincoln route at Newark.

All that will free up the line for a very fast, mostly 140 mph operation on the east coast main line, and we can get that journey to Edinburgh eight minutes faster than HS2. It also means that we could get a one and a half hour operation from King’s Cross to Leeds, using the east coast main line. There is even another route to get to Sheffield via Retford from King’s Cross, providing additional fast capacity—not high speed, but fast. Much of that route would be 140 mph.

There are sensible alternatives. They would require a bit of upgrading, such as the redevelopment of some stations, but we would be talking about spending a couple of billion pounds, not £50 billion or more. They would make life much easier for everyone and free up all that extra spending for other routes. The whole railway system, being Victorian, needs an enormous amount of work, including electrification and track renewal, which is needed in many areas.

I also think that we need a dedicated rail freight line, built on old track beds and underused lines, running from the Thames right up to Glasgow, linking all Britain’s main conurbations, and capable of carrying lorries on trains. Some 80% of freight goes by lorry, rather than container. They cannot get through tunnels and bridges, so it would have to be on a new dedicated route capable of taking that kind of traffic. That is what we need to do, and it would cost a fraction of HS2. All those other operations, when added together, would cost much less than HS2 and provide much more benefit. If the cost-benefit analysis was done for that, and for the other routes I have mentioned, I think we would see that it is much more desirable in social, economic and financial terms.