Integrated Rail Plan: North and Midlands

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

On the environmental advantages, it will interest the House to know that HS2 is being built in as an environmentally friendly a way as possible. Section 2B west is intended to be a net positive carbon contribution, not just in its running but in its entire life cycle, which will be very important.[Official Report, 23 November 2021, Vol. 704, c. 4MC.] I refer the House and my hon. Friend to pages 134 and 135, which contain the full timescale for when the various different benefits will arrive at different locations. In every case, the advantages will start arriving much, much sooner than under the original plans. All the people who say we should have just carried on ploughing on with the original HS2 plan need to explain why it was right to wait until the 2040s for their constituents to feel the benefits. This way, the benefits will start to be felt by this Christmas, when work gets under way on the midland main line and from work already under way on the TransPennine route.

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

I want to follow up on the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). I want to understand the new east-west division that the Secretary of State has set out today. As I understand it, our constituents moving from Leeds to Manchester will travel by high-speed train south of Leeds, then change trains to get a train to Nottingham Parkway, and then get on a new high-speed train from Nottingham Parkway to Birmingham. I think that is what the Secretary of State set out. Since we approved this plan in Cabinet, China has built 23,500 miles of high-speed line. This Tory Government have built none. We have had a review every year and the Secretary of State has just destroyed the plans. Hundreds of millions of pounds in Birmingham is predicated on being at the heart of a network, not a mish-mash. How can we now believe the plan he has set out?

[Grant Shapps]

I should point out that China does not have the same health and safety approach as us. It has a slightly different view of how many people it is acceptable to kill per mile of track laid, and I do not think the right hon. Gentleman is seriously considering we go down that route. I know that he represents a Birmingham constituency and I know that the Mayor of the West Midlands has broadly welcomed this package. Birmingham does very well out of it. The connection that was not initially envisaged in the HS2 plan, between the biggest cities in the midlands, such as Birmingham and Nottingham, will now be complete with not just a parkway station, but with stations into the city centres of Nottingham and Derby connecting Birmingham. That will be fantastic news for his constituents. He asked about trains. No, people will not be changing trains. They will be on the same train all the way through.