Publicly Funded Infrastructure Projects

Lord Freeman Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Freeman (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on securing this debate. I must say that I have learned more from him in debates on transport in the House of Lords than I could possibly have imagined before joining. I agree with his analysis to a certain extent. I very much agree with the general approach to HS2 of the noble Lord, Lord Snape. Within the limited time I have available, I hope to return to what he said.

As a Rail Minister, I looked at HS1 in great detail, and I tell the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that it was very difficult constantly to keep up with fresh problems discovered by the contractors. We had to change the route in some cases, particularly near the Channel Tunnel, to accommodate construction and, as far as possible, avoid excessive noise to some of the houses on the route. Changes are almost inevitable, and he is absolutely right to suggest that there should be regular updates by the Department for Transport as projects proceed.

I was deputy chairman of the HS2 Select Committee considering the route as far as Birmingham. We regularly asked for and received information about the cost of changing the route, both to avoid noise and inconvenience and to make the train route as fast and comfortable as possible. I think HS2 will be a tremendous advantage to those travelling north. Birmingham is already assigned as the first major stop, but if there is to be further development of routes across the Pennines, the extension of HS2 will only help that. Given the advance in identifying problems of pollution coming from certain motor vehicles, high-speed trains will do a great deal to provide clean and fast services.

I am bound to point out to your Lordships that, according to the newspapers, Boris is against HS2 and Jeremy Hunt is in favour. My colleagues will correct me afterwards on whether that is true, but it shows that there is still a great deal of debate.

Returning to the purpose of the debate, we owe the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, thanks. It is very important that the department regularly monitors the costs of any major transport project so that Ministers can decide where to make adjustments or amendments to the project—or indeed extend it. That has been a gap in the past, certainly in my experience. A regular flow of information about the actual problems that inevitably occur when you are building a railway line enables Ministers to make decisions to save money or change the route.

I therefore very much welcome the prospect of a high-speed rail link to the north, I am absolutely certain that it will come, and the fact that Jeremy Hunt came out this morning publicly to support it, which I am delighted about, gives me a great deal of confidence. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on securing the debate, which I have enjoyed and learned a great deal from.