High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I ask myself, “Has everything already been said about HS2?”, but I think the answer to that is no. I shall just repeat two points that I made on 24 October. The first is that it needs better leadership. The noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, in reading out that paragraph, identified that. I still do not know who is in charge, although I realise that Sir David Higgins will obviously be in charge. The second point is that it is not about a few minutes off journey times.

The Secretary of State made an excellent speech on 11 September at the Institution of Civil Engineers, but the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, made a much better speech at the Royal Town Planning Institute on 12 November. We could do a lot worse than get the podcast in here tonight, switch it on and go home. The Library provided me with the podcast; it is no good reading it, listen to it. It is electrifying to hear the noble Lord set out the case for HS2.

At this point I need to mention a couple of interests. I do so in particular because the Register of Lords’ Interests is frequently attacked over a lack of transparency. I can say that I have never discussed HS2 with either the company or other rail operators; I have had no discussion with the roads lobby, the landowners lobby or the airlines lobby; and I have had no discussions with local government, although I have requested written briefings. However, earlier this year, HMG was seeking someone to chair the HS2 planning forum, which is the meetings between HS2 Ltd, the Department of Transport and the local authorities along the proposed route. It was for just a handful of days per year. I offered. I did not get past the first cut and I have never spoken to anybody. I have nothing to register but I am being open and transparent, because the offer is there in the files, so that trouble makers in the future cannot make any mileage out of my position.

Following the sad death of my noble friend Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, I was asked by residents to take on the chair of the partnership board at Castle Vale, which is a very large-scale regeneration project on an estate of 10,000 citizens in my late noble friend’s constituency of Birmingham, Erdington. Colleagues will have driven past it. There were 34 tower blocks there at one time; there are now two. The link from the north-south route of HS2 into the centre of Birmingham will traverse the outer perimeter of Castle Vale. It has not been on the agenda of the board to date, although various local representatives have attended consultation meetings. I have not been involved to date, but the Castle Vale partnership board is in the register anyway.

I support the HS2 project. I am not locked into one route or to the starting stations. There will probably be some changes as the thing makes further progress. It has to be straight and cannot stop too often as it has to be fast. Those are a given and I do not see a problem with that. A new north-south link, which in my view should reach both Glasgow and Edinburgh, using modern technology, will bring benefit to generations and regions in the UK. Not many of us here today, as the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, said, will see the benefit, but the crazy way in which the figures are presented is designed to put people off, designed to put supporters off, even. If it is going to benefit generations, why are most of the headline figures less than half a lifetime? It does not make sense. Talk about selling the project short.

My noble friend Lord Adonis in his excellent speech mentioned some of the alternatives. What are they? We could raise the fares; stop people using the railways. Reduce demand—it can be done, but it will not be much good for connectivity, economic productivity and growth. There could be a major expansion of domestic air flights, with extra check-in times, more pollution and a few more local runways. Enough said. We could build more motorways. The road lobby would welcome that. In fact, I wonder how much it is spending on anti-HS2, but I am not making any point about that. Of course, we need to improve the motorway network, junctions and feeder roads, especially on the M40 and the M20, but a major network of new motorways cannot be what the country needs. I have to assume that nobody from the Chilterns ever goes on the M6 north of Birmingham. That road has been 60 feet from the bedrooms of some of my ex-constituents, from 24 May 1972 until today: an elevated section at rooftop level 60 feet from their houses. Think about that for the way people move around the country. It works, but we do not want any more. We do not want a new motorway system. The idea that nobody travels on the existing infrastructure, which does disturb people, is, of course, palpable nonsense.

We could patch and mend the railway. I have not seen the attack on the 2,500 weekends. Basically, it is 14 years of weekend working, as the Minister said, on two out of the three north-south lines at any one time. That is the reality and what is more, it would cost £19 billion to £20 billion and we would not get a great deal from it. None of these alternatives will create the ingredients for regional economic growth and bring the private sector investment on the back of public expenditure which has occurred elsewhere. A new classic rail, the figures say, will cost 9% less than high speed, but high speed rail delivers journey time benefits by a factor of more than 5:1. It is not about journey times but the factor has to be taken into account that HS2, compared to the classic rail, is 5:1.

Not everything has to done at once, which is the impression given by the loose talk of some about the costs. The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, mentioned that the annual £2 billion on London Crossrail ends as the HS2 annual expenditure of £2 billion starts. The two things merge together, and this benefits the whole country, not just the capital city. That has to be taken into account. Buried deep in the publications on HS2 is the point that we are talking about generations benefiting. Therefore, why cannot we use assumptions beyond the 20 years set out in the main body of the documents? The cost-benefit ratio goes from 1 to 2.3 to 1 to 4.5 if we go to 2040. It is preposterous to say that it will benefit generations and then cut off all the calculations showing how beneficial it will be at half a lifetime. It does not make sense. It may be the way that it has been done in the past by the Department of Transport and the Treasury, but it does not make sense in making the case.

I would like to hear from the Minister about one aspect of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, as I thought that it was the most important point he made. He said that the Government should propose development corporations at points of development on the route in order for the public to recoup some of the planning gains in exactly the same way we did in Docklands. Let us face it, in Docklands four local authorities did nothing for 30 years. That is why Docklands had to be seized into a development corporation to get the planning gain back for the public investment. That is exactly what the noble Lord said we can do along the HS2 route. I would genuinely like to know about that because it has not been referred to elsewhere. We cannot be certain—nothing is fixed about this—but the evidence in Docklands, the Thames Gateway and other areas of public investment, such as in the new city of Milton Keynes, which is doubling in size, is that along with public investment comes private investment to create the jobs and an economic future. We cannot, however, factor that into the calculations, although it is clearly self-evident. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, made that point. The public sector must lead on this project. It is no good saying that the private sector should build HS2; the public sector has to lead but it does not have to do it all. By using our brains we can recoup as much of the extra land values as possible, as we have done in the past.

I hope that with this Bill we can hear the whistle blown for HS2 to leave the station of Whitehall to spread economic and social regeneration throughout the UK. So far, the only whistle I have heard regarding HS2 is the dog whistle blown by some colleagues in Labour’s high command, aimed at those living in the Home Counties. Dog-whistle politics are not honest politics in any case. In this case, it happened that the dog whistle was heard in the town hall corridors of the northern cities of this country, and the message came back loud and clear. I hope that we hear no more of the dog whistle.

This is a visionary project on a scale that transcends the Channel Tunnel—although that is unique by definition—and the post-war new towns. It cannot be right, therefore, for any political leader to claim the project for themselves, and the Prime Minister is not doing that. As my noble friend Lord Adonis said, it is to the credit of this Government that they have taken this project forward. This has to be all-party or it will not happen; it is as simple as that. Furthermore, the final decision cannot be left to the financial bean counters because we know that the finance figures are fiddled. The 20-year cut-off helps to destroy the case, so I do not accept it. I reject the scrimping “Britain can’t do it” approach. Leaders need to lead and show vision. They should connect public good investment, much of which can be recouped, with the substantial private gains in jobs and economic and social prosperity. A petty, party, tribal approach is to be condemned and condemned hard and fast to nip it in the bud, otherwise this 20-year project will not get off the ground. I am happy to support the preparation Bill.