National Infrastructure

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I very much support and congratulate my noble friend Lord Adonis on this debate. I would definitely support the national infrastructure commission proposed in the excellent report produced by Sir John Armitt. I follow HS2 with a certain amount of interest. When my noble friend was Minister of Transport, and subsequently Secretary of State, he put a vision into the railways and quite a lot of discipline as well. He started the idea of HS2. The noble Lord, Lord Marland, and my noble friend Lord McFall suggested that everything was too London-centric. I remember suggesting to my noble friend Lord Adonis at the time that it might have been better to start in the Manchester and Leeds areas and work south. It would be easier to get across the Chilterns when there was nothing else to do but join them together. Nevertheless, it went well while he was in charge. I am sad that, in the period from then until the present Secretary of State, Patrick McLoughlin, took office—he is taking a great interest in it and doing very well—I detected a slight rudderlessness in the way HS2 was taken forward at the political level.

Last night I was pleased to be in Brussels with my noble friend Lord Adonis to see him being awarded a very important prize by the European rail supply industry for the vision that he showed in this country when he was Secretary of State. He went round many high-speed lines that were being developed across Europe in Germany, Spain, France and Italy to see how they did it. It was quite clear that in all those places they manage to build these lines much more quickly than we do. When it comes to operating their trains they are nothing like as good as we are, but they do the building very well. I suspect that this is something to do with us being a mature democracy—I am not saying that they are not—and listening to people’s complaints a bit more. I remember when I was starting off the Channel Tunnel, my French colleagues used to say to me: “Why is it taking so long to get permission to build this thing? We got permission in six weeks”. In the UK, we took three years. I asked them how they did it and they said: “If you want to drain the swamp, you do not consult the frogs.” That is an interesting way of putting it but it is quite true. One thing they did was related to arguments about compensation for people who owned property or whose businesses might be affected. There is a system in France where it is normal to pay a good 10% over the assessed market value of the business or the house. I hope we take up some of these big projects and wonder whether we should look at that when we do so. I am sure that if people felt they had been given a little bit extra, in addition to their moving and relocation costs, it would help a lot.

We also need to discuss how to get these permissions. The Bill for HS2 is grinding through the Commons. I do not know whether it is going to take three, four or five years. In many ways, it is no more contentious than the Bill for High Speed 1 was, but is that the right process? If it is, what about having a Joint Committee of both Houses to do it? Do we really need to offer people the opportunity to petition on the same subject—and it can be in exactly the same format—to both Houses? I suggested this a few years ago for HS2 but it has not been taken up. Or should we abandon the hybrid Bill process completely and go for the new regime within the Planning Inspectorate? This, of course, is the way the Thames tideway tunnel is being done. I happen to object to that project, but the process is probably going quite well. We need to have this debate; we need to reflect that, being a mature democracy, we have to take a bit longer. We have a long way to go but I welcome my noble friend’s debate today and hope we can take it forward.