High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 2nd sitting : House of Lords & Committee: 2nd sitting
Thursday 12th November 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, this is, for me, a maiden speech as far as this Committee is concerned. I will try to confine it to the essentials of the amendment, which quite possibly will make me unique in this debate. My noble friend Lord Berkeley said that he had no opinion good or bad on the question of HS2: well, pull the other one is my response to that. It is a complete coincidence, I take it, that everything he proposes so far as HS2 is concerned has the effect of delaying or cancelling the project, but he has no opinion, good or bad, other than that. I agree entirely with the sentiments expressed by my noble friends Lord Adonis and Lord Liddle, as well as the views of the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst.

My noble friend Lord Berkeley wants a review. He and I know full well that the number of reviews that have been held about the railway industry, for example, since 2000 has concerned us both. Indeed, both of us have been scathing in the Chamber over the years about the number of reviews that have been held: something like 34 reviews into the railway industry are gathering dust on ministerial shelves somewhere, few of them ever being implemented, and yet he wants another one. My noble friend Lord Adonis read out the names of the distinguished members of the Oakervee Committee, which included my noble friend, who was the vice-chairman. Could he suggest, when he comes to wind up, who, other than the sort of people listed by my noble friend Lord Adonis, could possibly carry out such a review with the impartiality that he desires? Presumably, some knowledge of these construction projects is essential unless we are going to cast around for a dozen people whom we meet in the streets to conduct the review. I would be interested to hear from him when he winds up exactly who he has in mind.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, has made no secret of the fact that she is against HS2. I am always fascinated by the Green Party: if this project that we are debating today was a motorway, for example, running along the path of the proposed HS2, I would expect to see the noble Baroness and her Green Party colleagues carrying banners saying, “Put it on the railway”. The last thing we need is another motorway, yet she is against this particular scheme because, she says,—and I wrote down what she said on Tuesday when I had to contain myself from replying—this project is about cutting a few minutes off the journey time for travel between London and Birmingham. It is, of course, no such thing. I remind the noble Baroness—and I hope that she does not think that I am being personal when I do this—that this scheme is part of an overall concept of a high-speed network in the United Kingdom, which will obviously benefit other regions as well as the south-east. It will also, of course, create space on the west coast main line, which is another plus, as far as I am concerned, in relation to HS2. It is estimated that such space and availability that it will create on the west coast main line will relieve our road network of some 40,000 or 50,000 heavy goods vehicles. Again, that is something else one would have thought the Green Party would have been in favour of but, obviously, if she has this erroneous impression that HS2 is just about speed between London and Birmingham, that is not the case.

Coincidentally, as we are talking about reviews, only today the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce —I do not know whether that organisation would meet with the approval of my noble friend Lord Berkeley —issued a press release and statement about HS2. The press release is only two hours old, so it is hot off the press—I have not put it up to this, I hasten to tell my noble friend—and it says:

“The West Midlands has already benefited significantly from the prospect of HS2’s arrival— Deutsche Bank, HSBC and engineering giant Jacobs are examples of major businesses that have already relocated operations to Birmingham—with HS2 creating more jobs in the West Midlands than any other region outside of London.”


Again, I address my remarks to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Does the Green Party not appreciate the fact that already, years before the scheme is actually completed and the line opened, thousands of jobs are being created? The chambers of commerce goes on to say that HS2 will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, thousands of apprenticeships and supply chain opportunities and,

“as Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce chief executive Paul Falkner states today, it will provide ‘a much-needed shot in the arm to business confidence’ as the country emerges from the health crisis.”

My noble friend Lord Berkeley has fought a valiant battle, whether he admits it or not, to delay this particular project. He needs to come up with something better than a specious argument about yet another review. We really ought to get on with this, and my noble friend will have some difficulty, I fear, when he comes to wind up, in convincing us that this amendment is designed to do anything other than delay this project.

[Lord Framlingham (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendments 6 and 8. Amendment 6 deals with the question of peer review, which is absolutely essential. In my remarks to the Committee last Tuesday, I explained that one of the great shortcomings of the HS2 project from the very beginning has been the complete unwillingness of the responsible Ministers to listen to the best and soundest advice coming from outside their department. Amendment 6 would allow these qualified railway experts to examine all aspects of the project in an unbiased way and give the Government the benefit of their advice. It must, of course, be totally independent of Government, HS2 and any company or individual linked to HS2.

We are all aware of the stories of massive financial and time overruns with aircraft carriers, and nuclear power station building disasters. With HS2, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.” I remind the Committee that we are talking about £106 billion to date—probably £150 billion —and the sum is confidently forecast by reliable sources to reach £200 billion. Surely it makes sense for us to take steps to put in place the strongest possible oversight; peer review will do just that.

Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, recommends the publishing of a cost-benefit analysis of this project. I totally agree with that, although I fear that we are locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. This fundamental exercise should be undertaken, of course—in private business it invariably is—before any decision to go ahead is made. Perhaps it was; perhaps the Minister will tell us, and perhaps we can see it. It is quite simple to do: you make a list of all the costs and a list of all the benefits. You put one on one side of the scales and the other on the other, and I have done just that.

I chose benefits first and it is quite a short list: high speed, capacity and jobs. I turn first to high speed. For all sorts of reasons, the promoters of the scheme no longer cite this as an important aspect of it, so this cannot go on the benefit side, even though high speed is what it says on the tin and that is how the idea was originally sold to the Government. For a whole variety of reasons, it is no longer top priority. I do not know all the reasons: I understand that certain aspects of the line—embankments, tunnels, et cetera—would not cope with the proposed speed; and energy costs were also an issue. Therefore, it is no longer a high-speed train in the accepted sense, and we cannot put that on the benefit side of the scales.

Lastly, we come to jobs. Jobs are the proponents’ fallback position, guaranteed to sway faltering Ministers. Obviously, any extra jobs are not just welcome but, in these difficult times, invaluable, although it must be remembered that this was sold as part of the deal long before Covid arrived. It is my view that however much we need jobs, they should not be used as a reason to proceed with a project that is manifestly nonsensical.

If you spent this amount of money on regional railways, improving links from Liverpool to Hull or relieving commuter services in the north and in and out of London, you would produce just as many jobs, spread throughout the country—and, at the end, unlike HS2, you would have something really worth while to show for it. So the jobs argument does not work and that leaves precious little to go on the benefit side of the scales.

Let us look at the costs to the taxpayer: a minimum £106 billion and almost certainly considerably more—all those vital projects which are having to take second place to HS2, we could probably rebuild every hospital in the country for this kind of money; massive, irreparable damage to our environment through a huge swathe of the country; damage to the thousands of people whose lives, homes and businesses have been affected; and massive distrust in the Government’s ability to build anything. I mark it: benefits, precious little; costs, enormous. How did we get into this mess? I truly believe that this will prove to be the most monumental infrastructural and environmental blunder of all time.

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I fundamentally disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, on the issues he has raised in relation to HS2. He dismisses the speed issue, whereas every piece of research reveals that journey times are key to people deciding whether or not to use rail; so journey times need improving.

On capacity, it is the case that existing lines are full. Capacity is about not just how many people are on a train but how many trains per hour there are on the railway, and we badly need extra capacity in order to move the short-distance travellers off the long-distance lines and to allow freight to use the existing long-distance lines to provide enough capacity for all the freight that needs to go on the railways nowadays in order to save our planet. At the moment very low percentages of people in the Midlands and the north choose to travel by train. That is because of the capacity issue—because of problems with the service. We owe it to them to improve the options for them and to make it possible for them to travel in an environmentally friendly manner.

HS2 has often been its own worst enemy. On our Benches there is firm support for the project, as I have made clear today and in many previous debates. But that does not mean that we are not critical of the way the project has been managed so far. The Oakervee report was designed to review the project and point the way forward but that way needs to be a lot less scrappy than the process so far.

I have a general observation to make about this group of amendments, particularly Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. It is long past time for our approach to major infrastructure developments to be fundamentally rethought. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle: for decades we have proved incapable of making clear strategic decisions, costing them realistically and managing them effectively. The National Infrastructure Commission was supposed to give us the longer view required, which short-term government horizons inevitably fail to provide. However, we still do not have a system that works in a modern democratic economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Framlingham (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am happy to support Amendment 7 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, relating to non-disclosure agreements. What on earth does an organisation such as HS2 want non-disclosure agreements for? MI5 and MI6 need secrecy for our national security and Ministers are bound to sign the Official Secrets Act for obvious and long-accepted reasons. It is understandable that employees working at the sharp end of research in companies that are competing with each other might be asked to keep their findings confidential. However, to insist on non-disclosure agreements for those working on a civil engineering project is ridiculous and must be seen as rather sinister.

Is this designed to ensure that no one is allowed to discuss the shortcomings of the project? That must have been hugely harmful to the whole construction process. Greater transparency and honesty might have prevented the problems that have arisen. Transparency leads to discussion and consultation, which eventually lead to efficiency and confidence. Secrecy breeds distrust, lack of communication, incompetence and, inevitably, mistakes, which, in a project the size of HS2, can be disastrous. It is no coincidence that this project encapsulates the worst aspects of both secrecy and incompetence. No one outside HS2 has any up-to-date facts and figures to work with and no one knows how bad things are. The truth will come out in the end, but the acceptance of this amendment might allow some fresh air in sooner rather than later.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Adonis has said, we need some more information and it might have benefited all in the Grand Committee to have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, if she feels that there is a particular problem with whistleblowing on this project. I am rather inclined to agree with my noble friend Lord Liddle that this is not the right legislation in which to include such detail, but let us wait and see.

My noble friend Lord Berkeley referred to the Oakervee review, of which he was such a distinguished member, and said that the process was too short and the terms of reference too narrow. He felt that some members did not want to hear witnesses he wanted to call in case they fell out with the Department for Transport as a result. Like my noble friend Lord Liddle, I have a great deal of time and respect for my noble friend Lord Berkeley, so I do not want to fall out with him either, but this is all a bit President Trumpish, in a way. You sit on a commission and there are various aspects of people’s involvement in that commission that are not quite what they should be. If my noble friend feels that something untoward is going on, he ought to tell us about it when he winds up the debate rather than make the implications that he has.

It is a pleasure, as ever, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham. If I might compliment him by saying so, at least it was a different tune he was playing. The end was pretty much the same, but it was a different tune. We had heard his previous speech, I think, twice on the Floor of the House, once in the Moses Room and at least twice during this Committee. We all knew what he was going to say. The Minister knew what he was going to say. I suspect that the mice in the Members’ Tea Room had an idea about what he was going to say. He is against the project. When I look at the history of his title, I rather think that a lot of his opposition comes from the fact that Framlingham station was closed as long ago as 1952 and the noble Lord has come to the conclusion that if he cannot have any trains, no one else can either. But I will reserve the rest of what I have to say and, like my noble friend, listen with interest to the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer.