Rail Infrastructure: North of England

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

As the noble Lord will see when he gets to read the documents that are being published today, a huge number of projects are being brought together, and so many of those are around Leeds. It is the case that the core part of Northern Powerhouse Rail will be constructed, and that will provide those fast links through to Manchester. It is the case that there will be significant upgrades to the east coast main line and, of course, there will be electrification of the Midlands main line. Combining that with the construction of a mass transit system, I think, somehow, that Leeds is going to be all right.

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, I look forward to reading today’s document, and I hope it is good news for the north and the Midlands. I appreciate that I am a lone voice on this matter but, given that HS2 has been the disaster that everybody thought it would be, is doing huge damage to the environment, is going to bring little benefit to anybody and is costing now, or is supposed to cost, £150 billion and counting, could the Government not consider—if they cannot scrap it, which I think they should, even though it has cost money already—pruning it back seriously as quickly as possible and using the money saved and the expertise gained to look after railways in the West Midlands and the north of England?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I suppose we are doing a small amount of what would make my noble friend happy. We have looked at the different options. I would be the first person to stand there and warmly welcome a brand-new, big, expensive, shiny rail system— I love them. However, sometimes they take many decades to build, and they can be very expensive, and sometimes they just fly by various communities. What we have done is look at the amount of money that we have, the options that we have and the opportunities that we have to join up many more of the communities that were being missed out by previous plans. I am sure when we come back to discuss the integrated rail plan, we can go into that in more detail.