High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report stage
Monday 30th November 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

Leave out “now received” and insert “not received until a Select Committee has been appointed to consider Works Nos 62, 67, 67A, 67B, 67C, 67D, 69, 69A, 70, 70A, 93, 101B, 101C, 101D, 101E, 101F, 101G and 101H and Footpath Stone Rural 33 and related works as listed in Schedule 1 and the House has debated its report and a Government response; that no member who has spoken in proceedings on the bill be appointed to the Committee; that the Committee be given power to receive oral evidence and to appoint specialist advisers; and that the Committee report within three months of appointment.”

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving this amendment at an unusual stage in the proceedings, my purpose is to debate how small changes are made to the Bill, not the route, either by the Government or by petitioners and the use of Transport and Works Act orders. I am grateful to the Minister for the meeting that she arranged with her and the Minister for High Speed 2, Andrew Stephenson MP. We had some useful discussion. The extraordinary thing is that it is not possible, under the current rules of this place, to debate a Select Committee report. In discussions with the helpful clerks, the next best solution that they came up with was that I move an amendment. I will explain what it does in a minute. I am afraid that it would cause delay, but I believe it offers some alternatives. We will see where that goes.

My purpose is to reopen petitions on phase 2a that asked for Transport and Works Act orders as a solution to the small changes that they were proposing. Both Select Committees, because of the custom and practice here, agreed that this should not be allowed. I will explain that in more detail.

Current practice allows for additional provisions or small changes to a Bill. They are approved in revised form in both Houses but, if the additional provision—I shall call them an AP—is proposed in the second House, it means going back to the first House for approval. This adds delay, so it has become custom and practice that an AP cannot to be accepted in the second House. The committee made that clear and I do not criticise it for so doing but, when petitioners propose changes that they believe will be beneficial, cheaper and reduce the impact on a local area—including one to change a viaduct into a tunnel at Wendover, Stone and Woore, in phase 1—their feeling is that attempt to get a fair hearing in the second House, which is usually the House of Lords, was not fair. They were not able to cross-examine the promoters and staff and came away rather unhappy.

My amendment, which is the only solution open to me to get the debate on TWAOs going, is to set up a committee of the House to look at areas of the Bill where petitioners had suggested the TWAO option, which is allowed under paragraph 8.118 of the Companion. The difference would be that the committee would hear evidence with an open mind and would be unfettered from not being able to recommend alternatives that would require an AP or TWAO. The committee’s remit would be confined to those issues where TWAOs were suggested by petitioners and not the whole scheme. It would hear evidence and would I hope be supported by an independent adviser who could advise the petitioners.

The key to the new committee, and we should reflect on this, is that it would recommend changes, but not how they would be implemented. That would be up to the Government, who could decide on a TWAO, or an AP with the additional time it takes, or they could refuse to do it at all. They can do that anyway.

The petitioners who I talked to expected a greater hearing. We discussed this in Committee. The committee clearly felt that it was acting within the constraint of solutions that would not require additional provisions or Transport and Works Act orders, so the petitioners thought that the process was unfair. This is not good for this project, future projects or communities that feel unfairly treated.

There is a solution: to use the TWAO that is provided for in Clause 49 of the Bill. In Committee, the Minister gave a very useful description of what the process entails, so I do not have to repeat it now. However, what worries me is that there does not seem to be any consistency in the use of a TWAO. The Government seem happy to decide when a TWAO should be used and when it should not. I am not in any way taking sides as to the rights and wrongs of each case, because that is how the process must work, but it is necessary to have a process that is fair and seen to be fair and consistent.

Perhaps I may give one or two examples, again without repeating what we discussed in Committee. In phase 2a, there is what has become known as the Stone railhead issue. As noble Lords have said, there has been a lot of discussion about that, and about issues such as the provision of evidence by HS2, the stability of an 11-metre high earth structure and things like that. I think the Select Committee’s conclusion in its special report was that:

“If it subsequently proves unfeasible to locate the IMB-R at Stone as the petitioners contend, it will be for HS2 to resolve the issue within the powers of the Bill.”


As the committee refused the option of a TWAO here, if the Government are to do this later, they will presumably have to do a TWAO at that stage. That will cause a great deal more delay. So why was it not allowed during the Select Committee hearing?

The other case is Woore Parish Council, which felt that it needed a TWAO to help with the flow of lorries to the construction sites and proposed the option of using the Keele services on the M6. We will be discussing transport, heavy lorries and other issues in later groups of amendment, but for the local residents the council’s suggestions seemed much better than HS2’s proposals.

I have discussed before the issue of a tunnel at Wendover, but more recently I have received a copy of a letter from Rob Butler MP, the MP for Aylesbury, who has written to the Minister at some length on it. He commented:

“While HS2 Ltd disputes the Wendover proposal’s figures, the company has consistently refused to provide the evidence to back up its stance – be it technical data on the method of construction, or accurate costings”.


He asks in his letter whether the tunnel alternative actually required a TWAO, but the extraordinary thing is that he then quotes a letter from the Minister, who said:

“Our legal advice is that any scheme that conflicts with the specific description of the work in question … is not permissible”,


and you cannot turn a railway into a viaduct or tunnel, or vice versa. But Rob Butler goes on to say that the Government are changing exactly that by extending a tunnel at a place called Bromford, beyond the length explicitly referred to in Schedule 1 to the Act. The extension conflicts with the description of the works in question, and the Government are proposing it with a TWAO. In the end, Rob Butler MP said:

“If I may put it bluntly, either Schedule 1 of the HS2 (London to West Midlands) Act 2017 is immutable or it is not. Given the Department for Transport has given leave at Bromford to deviate from the consented scheme, it appears a mechanism exists for such changes to be enacted without amending the Phase One Act”.


He added:

“If a tunnel can be granted at Bromford, with the use of a TWAO, why cannot this take place … in Wendover”?

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[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate—an hors d’oeuvre to the main course yet to come. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and other noble Lords are aware, the Bill has already been carefully scrutinised by a Select Committee of this House. That committee was convened under the rules for private and hybrid Bills and was chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, to whom we are very grateful and who unfortunately cannot be with us today.

In its report, the Select Committee discussed whether such a committee can make an amendment to the Bill that extends the powers of the promoter—in this case, HS2 Ltd—such as powers to compulsorily acquire land. Such an amendment to a private Bill is known as an additional provision. The Select Committee report states:

“As a matter of practical reality, almost every additional provision which solves or mitigates difficulties for one group of residents along the line raises new difficulties for another group.”


The Select Committee therefore concluded that amendments that extend powers would not be appropriate.

Those adversely affected by an additional provision in the first House have the opportunity to petition against it in that House and in the second House. As both HS2 Select Committees in this House—for this Bill and for phase 1—have noted, it would not be fair to allow amendments in the second House, unless those affected by it could also petition in both Houses. The consequence of this, however, would be that hybrid Bills would be for ever doomed to travel from a Select Committee in one House to another Select Committee in the other and back again in never-ending ping-pong.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, acknowledged all that in Grand Committee, yet here we have an amendment to send the Bill off to another but different type of Select Committee. This proposed Select Committee would have no powers at all to amend the Bill and the process would cause many months of delay to the Bill and create even more uncertainty for residents and businesses along the proposed route. At some point this must stop, a line must be drawn and a decision taken about the construction of this railway. I urge him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I did not get wholehearted support; I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for her support. I do not think this has been in vain because some noble Lords, such as the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe, in particular, have recognised that perhaps the system needs to be looked at, but not in the environment I started this afternoon. I apologise for that. I wanted to have a debate on Transport and Works Act orders, which we have not had, but we can follow that up some other way.

Several noble Lords have told me that I oppose the HS2 project and that this is only a delaying tactic; I want to put that on record. It would not be a delaying tactic if we had been allowed to talk about Transport and Works Act orders, which we are not under the current procedures. I have said many times that I am in favour of new railways, pretty obviously. My problem with HS2 is that it has turned out over the years to be overspecified and the costs have got completely out of control. The money could be much better spent on the regional railways in the north and the Midlands.

Also for the record, I am not criticising the Select Committee. I have said before that it has done a great job. I am not criticising its selection or its chair. My advice from the clerks certainly is that the second House on the occasion of a hybrid Bill is not a revising Chamber; it is a second Select Committee equal to the first one in its ability. If, by any conceivable chance, a hybrid Bill on a railway started in your Lordships’ House, the House of Commons would become the second House. That could be an interesting discussion and probably would not go down very well.

However, my main concern has been and still is that the Transport and Works Act order process is included in Clause 49 of this Bill but the extent to which it may be used appears to be in the Government’s hands rather than those of the committee, in spite of what has been said. I hope we can continue this discussion in your Lordships’ House on an occasion less time-constrained than this Bill and try and get it right for the next one. I hope there is another one coming. My noble friend Lord Adonis thinks it is going to come within the next six months. We will see whether that is the case. Whether it is or not, I think we need to resolve this and the many things we have discussed.

I did threaten to divide the House but, in deference to the amount of work we have to discuss this afternoon, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.

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[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I add my support for my noble friend Lord Adonis’s amendment. I remember that when he first brought forward HS2 as Transport Secretary it was as a concept for this new Y-shaped spine, which would dramatically transform connectivity between London, the Midlands and the north. This concept has stood 11 years of the most severe examination. This afternoon, we have an opportunity to tell the Government that they cannot replace a north-south divide in this country with an east-west divide, and that both parts of this scheme should go ahead.

We were in economic difficulty at the point when my noble friend Lord Adonis first proposed HS2. We had just been through the financial crisis and the banking meltdown yet, at a time of great fiscal difficulty, here were a Government putting forward a transformative scheme for the country. One of the great things about it was that my noble friend Lord Adonis was able to secure cross-party backing for the whole concept. That is why it survived throughout the decade of the 2010s, first with the coalition and then with the Conservative Governments.

The need for this giant step forward in connectivity in Britain is even more compelling today than it was in 2009, because, since then, regional inequalities have grown. We have Brexit, which, whatever we think of it, will cause problems for regions in the north and Midlands that are heavily dependent on manufacturing. Now we have the prospect of permanent scarring of our economy as a result of the Covid crisis. One thing on which I think we can all support the present Government is their aspiration for levelling up. If we take that aspiration seriously, what on earth is the case for losing heart on this tremendous concept of transforming connectivity in England?

The economic argument holds true. Across Europe and North America, cities are the most dynamic places of productivity, growth, innovation and opportunity. Bringing cities together through better transport connections will increase and multiply those benefits. I saw some data the other day that suggested how the big cities of Britain were all much less productive than their comparators on the continent. This transformative proposal for connectivity would help reverse that. The imperative to go ahead is as strong as it ever was.

I speak as someone who does not live directly on the line. My dad was a railway clerk in Carlisle. When I was a lad, I think there were four express trains during the day from Carlisle to London. The first one left at 8.30 am and got you into Euston just before 5 pm. It was quite nice, of course, because if you could afford it, you could have both lunch and tea in the restaurant car, but it was an exceptionally long journey in the 1950s. Now, as a result of the west coast main line modernisation, the journey time has been reduced to three hours and 20 minutes. With HS2, it should be reduced further to around two and a half hours. Just to show how these things link together, one of the proposals of the borderlands project, which the Government last week agreed should be accelerated, is to spend the money on making sure that the platforms at Carlisle station are long enough to take HS2.

This scheme can affect most parts of Britain in a positive way. We should not go back on it now.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I join every other noble Lord who has spoken in reminding the House that services between Birmingham, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield and Leeds are pretty awful at the moment. They are very slow, they are probably unreliable, and they do not help with the levelling-up agenda, “one nation”—as my noble friend Lord Adonis called it—or anything else. It is easy to reflect now on whether the Government should have gone for phase 2b east before they went for 2a, but it is too late for that, and does it really matter?

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[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have some sympathy for this amendment given my experience as a member of the HS2 committee. The representations that we heard from petitioners were basically very local: they were individual petitions—people who had particular grievances and concerns—and, to the extent that there was any collective representation, at the parish council level. It is a pity that broader questions of whether the county council, highways authority and those responsible for transport locally had looked at how the impact of HS2 could be mitigated, given that we do not want to stop it or change the line of the route, did not come up at our committee. I therefore have some sympathy with Amendment 4.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an interesting amendment. I shall just concentrate a very few remarks on proposed new subsection (2)(c) and (d). The first thing to say is that I do not think that anybody is serious in expecting them to build extra stations on phase 2a. Crewe is a very good junction and it must involve, possibly on other lines, building extra stations if it can be justified.

As part of the Oakervee review, I also, with the team, visited Crewe. I think the Select Committee went there as well. It brings into focus the fact that the Select Committee quite rightly looks at local things and people’s concerns, but who looks at what one might call the regional connectivity? I will give one example. We were sitting in the office in Crewe talking to HS2 and Network Rail representatives and it became quite clear that the design of HS2 to go through Crewe station was effectively preventing even an hourly service from Shrewsbury through Crewe to Manchester because of the point layout. I got the impression that HS2 did not care at all about that. Network Rail said, “You’re stopping us doing even what we can do at the moment with difficulty”. I do not know where that should be discussed, or whether it should be in a report, as the amendment proposes, but there ought to be an opportunity to discuss it. It is not a matter for petitioning, but I will be interested to hear what the Minister will say about it.

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 4 because HS2 has come in for criticism about the quality of its consultation with local residents. Although it has impressed on us how much it has improved, I am sure that there is probably still some way to go. I am particularly concerned about the impact of the construction process, which may not be obvious to either HS2, or to local residents, before it starts. Construction of a project of this size and this kind is not a transitory process, in that it will impact on some communities for years. It is not like your next-door neighbour building an extension, where it is bad for a few months but then the disturbance goes away. This could last for years.

The amendment specifies traffic and the impact on the environment. Although both issues were raised in Committee, we still need some answers from the Minister. We have heard a lot, and will hear more today, about the impact on ancient woodlands, but other aspects of the environment are of equal importance, for example wetlands. The amendment also includes an important reference to new links to HS2 itself. I am not suggesting—it never occurred to me—that that means stopping on the way, as that obviously would be a very slow way to run a high-speed railway. Treated properly, HS2 will be the catalyst for a widespread upgrading of our existing Victorian railways. I was taking this amendment to mean improving links into HS2, to the stations that have been specified.

Amendment 8, which is in my name, is also in this group. It specifically refers to that aspect. It provides for an annual review of connectivity in our rail network and the impact of HS2 on that. I have already spoken this afternoon about the importance of using HS2 to unlock capacity to allow more intensive use of existing lines by commuters and for other local journeys, as well as to provide room for the transfer of freight from road to rail. The northern powerhouse and Midlands Connect rely on that. I suggest that progress on this needs annual review because the Government—any Government—need to be kept under pressure to maintain the momentum for change. The review is to be laid before Parliament within six months of its completion. Once again, that is to avoid backsliding.

There is also a provision so that the impact of the pandemic is taken into account. This is specifically to address the impact on demand for public transport, which has clearly fallen sharply in recent months, largely because people are worried about safety, although public transport providers have made huge efforts to ensure it is safe. However, demand will return, albeit maybe in a different pattern which providers will have to adapt to. Anyone who thinks that we will suddenly not want to travel has misjudged human nature and failed to take the lessons of history. I am keen that above all we encourage people back to travelling by rail. There has been a lot of discussion about building back better, and part of that is ensuring that new services are fit for the future, and ensuring that HS2 is the catalyst to enable future UK Governments to deliver on climate objectives, by taking cars and lorries off the road and replacing planes with trains.

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[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I think that the Minister has demonstrated how much consultation there has been over the years. I do not want to go into that, other than to say that most of it has been good. However, I go back to paragraphs (2)(c) and (d) proposed in the amendment of my noble friend Lord Rosser. Once the Bill receives Royal Assent, people will start to think, “Okay, it’s being built. What’s going to be the end result?” I can see my noble friend’s concerns: it gets built but the connections to it by rail, with or without extra stations, either have not been thought through or nobody will know who is responsible for them. Will that satisfy the consultees? I am not sure that having an annual report is the right thing, but I hope that the noble Baroness will consider what should be done to satisfy people that, when the line opens in 10 years’ time or whatever, all these things will have been addressed. If there are changes that people think are desirable, they could have started so that there is not another 10-year gap before something happens.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for raising that point. It is really important, so I will ask my honourable friend Minister Heaton-Harris, the Rail Minister, perhaps to write to him setting out his ambitions for rail nationwide, particularly how his ambitions for rail interact with the ambitions for HS2 and how that then produces greater rail connectivity.

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[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I too support these amendments, particularly Amendments 5 and 6. The destruction of ancient woodland has been exacerbated by the frankly disastrous public relations of HS2 on phase 1, which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned. It has done nothing to endear HS2 to residents up and down the line of phase 1. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has outlined the problems very well, along with my noble friend Lady Young.

I will concentrate on something that my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone asked, which is whether you can avoid ancient woodland by slowing the trains down. It is a rather simplistic explanation on my part, because there is nothing to be done on phase 1. The line is there, HS2 has started clearing everything and we have seen the results. When it comes to the next phases, 2b west and 2b east—if it happens—which we have debated at length today, it would be possible to avoid much ancient woodland if Ministers look at the routing of the line. My noble friends Lady Young and Lord Snape talked about speeds, but obviously the faster a train goes, the straighter the line it goes on must be, not only on plan, but on profile. When you do not want too many humps and bumps, your cuttings and embankments get bigger and you take more land, including, possibly, a lot of ancient woodland.

Many noble Lords have been on the French high-speed line between Paris and Lyon, which was the first one built. I once had the privilege of being in the driver’s cab and found it to be rather like a fairground switchback. It was designed to avoid not only woodlands, also valleys and hills, to save on the cost. Even so, it goes at 270 kilometres per hour, which the French thought was fast enough. We prefer 400 kilometres per hour, because obviously we are a bigger country than France and want to be the best in the world, which is total rubbish. Even if we stuck to 270 kilometres per hour, the French speed, we could probably do something, but I hope that when HS2 and the Government plan phase 2b west, to Manchester, and phase 2b east, to Leeds and Sheffield, if it gets built that way, they look at the speeds and see how the alignment can be done to avoid ancient woodland, at an early stage before the Bill is published.

That is why I could not support my noble friend Lord Adonis’s amendment saying that everything had to be done in a hurry and within six months. As the Minister explained in her response, these things take time, and during that time, those of us who have an interest in avoiding ancient woodland and anything else that we feel needs preserving must look at it and relate it to the design speed of the alignment.

I suppose my last, rather facetious, comment—or maybe it is not facetious—is about phase 2a. The Bill is published, we are debating the Bill on Report tonight and it will probably get Royal Assent quite soon. Of course, if there are any ancient woodlands in the way—and I am afraid I do not know whether there are—one could suggest to Ministers that they make a slight deviation on the route of the line, using a Transport and Works Act order, which I also spoke about earlier. I am sure the Minister will not like that idea, but it is an option and it could be looked at.