High Speed 2

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing the debate and on giving the House a chance to confront a couple of important choices. She is right to say that nettles need to be grasped and bullets bitten, but I think she has chosen the wrong nettles and bullets, and I will explain why in the next few minutes.

As is traditional now, the argument against HS2 is couched in terms of value for money. In any value-for-money calculation, the money is easy to calculate, but the value is much harder to put your finger on. There were arguments in a previous debate about the Treasury Green Book, which is not a wide-ranging analysis. If we measure what we treasure, we will clearly see that HS2 is one of the best value-for-money projects that this country has contemplated for many years.

[Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Liam Byrne]

I will in a moment.

Coming from Birmingham, what I treasure above all is jobs. We have had the slowest jobs recovery since the financial crisis of any city region, and HS2 will bring lots and lots of jobs, not at some distant point in the future but over the next five years. It will bring something like 33,000 jobs around Curzon Street and 77,000 jobs around Birmingham Interchange, in addition to the 30,000 jobs that will be created on the line at peak. This is the most important fiscal stimulus outside London and the south-east. Indeed, if we were to cancel HS2, I would bet my bottom dollar that we would put the midlands back into recession within a year.

[Sir Patrick McLoughlin (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman, with his local knowledge, describe what is happening around Curzon Street now, and what has happened around Curzon Street for the last 20 years?

[Liam Byrne]

The former Secretary of State is right to make that point, because a number of significant businesses are now relocating to what is the worst unemployment hotspot in the country; the worst unemployment and youth unemployment in the country is in and around east Birmingham. We have a chance ahead of us to wipe out that youth unemployment, but only if we grasp the nettle and drive through HS2.

[Graham Stringer]

My right hon. Friend makes a brilliant case. If anything, he underestimates the result. When the Transport Committee went to France to look at the impact of the TGV, it found that the go-ahead cities that used the high-speed lines got huge extra investment that had not been calculated in the original assessment. Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds are all go-ahead cities, so I expect more jobs than my right hon. Friend says.

[Liam Byrne]

Precisely. If we measure what we treasure, and if we treasure jobs, HS2 is, frankly, a project that we need.

However, that is not all I treasure; I also treasure tangible action to decarbonise our economy and our region. I want the west midlands to lead the first zero carbon revolution. Back in 1712, when the Newcomen engine was demonstrated up at Dudley castle, we sparked the carbon revolution the first time around. We need a radical plan that allows us to move trucks off the road and on to rail. Only with the capacity that comes with HS2 can we reopen 36 new freight lines that can take a million lorries off the road each year. We cannot de-clog the M6, the M5 or the M42 unless we get that freight off the road. It is impossible to see how we can drive forward the decarbonisation of a sector that contributes 40% of our carbon emissions each year if we do not drive ahead with HS2.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s aspirations, but for Scotland. To meet the UK-wide net zero carbon targets we have set for 2050, we need to make sure that these new rail lines work for the entire country. Does he agree that we need to review HS2, not only on its business case, but on making sure that it works for the entire United Kingdom and connects the powerhouses in the midlands with the true northern powerhouse, which is of course Scotland?

[Liam Byrne]

I am all for that, so long as it does not introduce a moment of delay in driving this forward. Frankly, our economy cannot have any further delay.

I treasure a project that puts the west midlands at the centre of this economy. I particularly treasure the speed, which will result in a journey time of something like 65 minutes from Birmingham International to Canary Wharf, the most important business site in the country, via the connection at Old Oak Common.

The right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire advanced the traditional bang-for-buck argument, which is that if we got rid of HS2, there would be plenty of bucks left for other kinds of projects. I have to say that that is not fiscal realpolitik at all. The fiscal realpolitik will mean that money currently earmarked for HS2 will be quickly absorbed into other projects, and Opposition Members will be forgiven for worrying that it will disappear into the £10 billion-a-year tax cut proposed by the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson).

The right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire was right to demand choices, but the choices that she proposes are wrong. The real strategic transport choice that this country must confront is not between HS2 and other rail network lines, but between planes and trains. We should drive ahead with HS2 and cancel the ludicrous decision to build a third runway at Heathrow airport for £14 billion. We could use half that money to build a high-speed loop and take passengers from Heathrow to Birmingham, where there is already untapped capacity for 17 million passenger movements a year.

Around the world, a trillion-dollar high-speed rail revolution is under way, and we are being left behind. It is time that this country got on with it.

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

I call Victoria Prentis. Please be brief. Then I will call the Front-Bench spokespeople.