HS2

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I wrote a pretty good speech, but then discovered that the debate was starting in about two minutes and did not have time to go and get it, so this will have to be off the top of my head, I am afraid. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, on securing this debate. When I first became a Peer, people said to me, “You’re a Lord? Do you have to have a castle?” I congratulate the noble Baroness on having both a manor and a castle, but I am sorry to say that I do not agree with what she said. I agree that even now, the climate emergency is more serious than most people recognise. It must be taken very seriously. COP 26, which the Government are organising with Italy—when they both have some spare time away from coronavirus—will be an important event. If it does not fundamentally change what we all do, we may well be doomed, but I do not agree with the Green Party that HS2 is somehow at the heart of everything that is going wrong with the planet.

If HS2 was abandoned, what would be the consequence? I am afraid to say that, given the forces that exist in this country, it might well be more motorways. That would be utterly and totally disastrous. Chris Davies, one of our former MEPs for the north-west, told me that HS2 is equivalent to two whole new four-lane motorways. I do not know where that comes from, but it is clear that the west coast main line is just about full. Whenever anything happens, there is chaos—as there was yesterday, when I tried to get down here. If you stand at a station on the east coast main line such as Retford or Newark, and watch the trains whizzing past, you think, “My goodness, they really are coming every other minute.” That may be a slight exaggeration, but both those main lines are essentially full, so something has to be done.

One thing that could be done is to significantly reduce travel and the amount of goods being moved around the country, but I do not see any policies from the Green Party suggesting how on earth this could be achieved. Yes, there will be bulldozers and chainsaws, and they are ugly machinery, but what are the alternatives —walking, cycling, local buses? Even the Government think these are important now, but I am not sure that they are putting enough money and resources into them. However, I cannot get from where I live in Lancashire to Euston or Westminster by walking. I cannot even do it by cycling nowadays—I could have done it once, although it would have taken some time—and certainly not by local bus.

I have looked at the information the Wildlife Trusts have provided about the number of sites they say will be affected or destroyed. There are all these figures being bandied about, some of which were given by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—the latter from a different point of a view—so it would be helpful if someone sorted them out and worked out exactly what the truth is. As much as I support the Wildlife Trusts in all sorts of ways—particularly their planting loads of trees in places such as the new Northern Forest—they are probably overstating their case substantially. Yes, starlings, frogs and sparrows are important, but what they want is woodland; the frogs want nice places where they can breed and splash about. If that can be provided in greater quantity, we do not need to preserve every single existing sparrow, starling and frog; otherwise, there is no development of any sort, anywhere. The Green Party has to come clean on this and say if that is what it wants. If so, okay, but it should tell us.

It looks as though, initially—cross fingers—we will now get the HS2 from London to Birmingham. There is a Bill going through for extension 2a to Crewe, taking trains to what the Minister called the “gateway to the North”, which is the north-west’s version of Balham: the gateway to the south. Noble Lords of my age will understand the joke. I see the Minister is laughing, so she must understand it—that is good—despite being about 100 years younger than me. Extension 2a to Crewe and beyond will allow compatible trains to travel on to Manchester, up the west coast main line to Preston and beyond to Scotland. One hopes that that is still firmly in the plan. It will also allow some to go to Liverpool and north Wales—we will see how that comes about—but that in itself will not sort out the north of England.

We now have a new specific HS2 Minister, who has been given the job of sorting all this out. He happens to be the Member of Parliament for the constituency where I live, Pendle. I wish him the best of luck. It will make his career or destroy it—we shall see—but it is time that HS2 made careers because it is so important.

At the moment, there is a proposal for an extension to Manchester. There is also a proposal for the other leg of phase 2a—or is it 2b or 2z, I do not know—to Yorkshire via the east Midlands. We need to be banging the table and saying that the leg from Birmingham to the east Midlands and Yorkshire is fundamentally important. Loose talk is going around in some circles suggesting that that will be put to one side and the leg to Manchester will be built and continued over the Pennines to Leeds as part of the thing that has various names, one of them being Northern Powerhouse Rail. That would be a fundamental mistake because it would miss out south Yorkshire and the east Midlands, two important urbanised industrial regions that the line really needs to serve.

My noble friend Lord Shutt of Greetland will give some detail on the proposed line in Yorkshire east of the Pennines, and I pretty well agree with what he will say about that. However, it is vital that the way in which HS2 conceived is changed. So far, it has mainly been seen as a way of connecting places in the north of England and Birmingham with London: it has all been about connections and routes to London. Well, we are going to get the route to London. But in the future, we should look at the Birmingham to London section as a branch line, or at least as a line off, with the main spine of a high-speed line in England extending from Newcastle to Exeter. Trains can then run from the far south-west—a region that needs as much infrastructure investment as the north of England—right through to the north-east, and then through to Scotland. We can run trains via the north-west by Carlisle, but the north-east is the major industrial region north of Lancashire and Yorkshire. That new concept ought to be looked at.

On that basis, I ask the Minister to go back to her department and talk about this. Meanwhile, just get on with the first part of this, please.