High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Lord Snape Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Lords & Report stage: House of Lords
Tuesday 10th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, my Amendment 9 is grouped, although I am not sure it is closely connected to what the two previous speakers have been discussing. It would delete one of the amendments that the Select Committee proposed in its report. Let me make it quite clear: I do not criticise the Select Committee on this issue; I am sure its amendments are just what is needed. I ask the Minister, however: is it not a bit unusual for a Select Committee’s amendments to be incorporated in a Bill without debate? I had assumed that they might have been tabled for debate today, and we could have debated and no doubt approved them, but it was surprising that a new issue of the Bill was published in the past week as a result of the amendments being included. This may not be a question for the Minister—it may be a question for the Chairman of Committees or someone else—but it is something that we should debate. Perhaps it will be different next time, if there are to be more committees such as this.

While I am on my feet, the Minister kindly briefed us on progress just before we broke up for Christmas. One question that many asked him was: were the Government going to respond to the excellent report from the Select Committee? It would have been nice to have their response before Committee today. We have not had it, but can he assure me that we will receive it in good time for Report?

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

I support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and her colleagues. There are few benefits in old age but I am told that one is that one’s long-term memory improves, sometimes at the cost of one’s short-term memory. I suspect that I am the only Member present here today who served on the original Channel Tunnel Bill, and I well remember the promises made at the time about the connection between HS1and HS2. Even back in those days, there was lots of criticism about the apparent devotion to expenditure on railway and transport in the south of England at the expense of the rest of the country. Assurances were given at that time that there would be genuine benefits from the Channel Tunnel and the associated high-speed lines that would spin off to both the Midlands and the north.

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[Lord Berkeley]

My noble friend did not mention the chord that received permission under the HS1 Bill, built between the London end of High Speed 1 and the North London line. It is there, with tracks and electrification. It has no signals, so it would need a couple of those. We could run trains on the west coast main line from HS1 to Birmingham tomorrow. I do not know how much it cost, but it was a lot as it is quite a complicated piece of construction. It was built as a result of lobbying from the north-west in particular, led by a man called Ken Medlock, who is still alive aged 102 and still very interested. The problem is someone needs to run trains on it.

[Lord Snape]

I bow to my noble friend’s expertise on the geography of this stretch of railway line. I was aware that it was a single track; there was much mocking at the time because it was and it led to the North London line, with the consequential speed restrictions and additional traffic. There was concern that this was not an adequate link, but it is a link nevertheless. I am not blaming the Minister for having the line built—I might blame him for various other decisions he has taken—but perhaps he could tell us whether it is feasible to add signals to this line and give us some connection. Surely the Midlands, the north-west and north-east of England, and perhaps Scotland, deserve better for their taxes than to be told when they arrive in Euston, “Put your bags under your arm and catch the Northern line if you wish to proceed further towards Europe by train”. Surely the Minister and the country can do better than that.

[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the Secretary of State who started HS2, and as a member of HS2 Ltd. I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for missing the beginning of her remarks. I know the whole Committee will want to pay tribute to the Select Committee, which put an astonishing amount of work into the Bill. I cannot think of a more onerous duty that Members of your Lordships’ House take on than being members of hybrid Bill Committees. At the very least they require some kind of parliamentary medal for endurance, which I hope will give them some special form of extended life that ensures they will definitely see the opening of this line all the way through to Manchester and Leeds in 2033. That is the least they deserve.

There are two different issues here and it is important not to mix them up. The first is through trains from Paris to the great cities of the Midlands and the north, which my noble friends Lord Snape and Lord Berkeley rightly said was envisaged in the original scheme for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. The trains were built, but the services were never run. The second is the lamentable connections between Euston and St Pancras. The two issues are separate for this reason: with the best will in the world, the economic case for running through services from Paris and Brussels to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds is very weak indeed.

If I may detain the Committee with a story, when I was Secretary of State I tried to persuade Eurostar to run services to Birmingham once the upgrade of the west coast main line had been completed, which would have made it possible to run a service once that and the High Speed 1 line to St Pancras had been completed. It ought to have been possible to run a service from Paris to Birmingham in three and a half hours, which I thought would have been competitive with the plane and played a very big part in changing the whole mentality of people in respect of high-speed rail and connections with the continent. I simply could not persuade Eurostar to run even one service a day without public subsidy because the traffic projection figures were so low.

If noble Lords stop and think about what has happened on that line, it is not so difficult to fathom. Although HS1 has been a great success in engineering terms and has played a useful part in linking two of Europe’s great cities, it is way off all the projections of traffic between London and the continent. I do not think it is yet even at half the level of the projections of what the traffic should have been. There is still only one service an hour between London and Paris for most of the day. Often those services have quite light loads. The London to Brussels service, which is also about hourly, is often barely half-full. Eurostar told me that there was not enough traffic to fill even one train a day between London and Birmingham and it would do it only if I was prepared to give it a very large subsidy. I had so many other parts of the railway I was seeking to subsidise, including many of the parts that my noble friend Lord Snape has mentioned because the lines in the Midlands and the north require great subsidies to be maintained, that I simply could not justify a public subsidy to do it.

It is important to be frank about this because everybody pays lip service to the benefits of linking HS1 and HS2. On the face of it, it seems absurd that there is not a connection between the two but because the service would be so intermittent—with the best will in the world, only a few trains a day would run on that service—I very much doubt it would be taken up in any big way. While we have cheap airlines that offer very frequent services to Manchester and Birmingham—both are highly successful airports, which are expanding and have significant capacity that they can make available to flights to the continent—it is unlikely that such a line would be viable.

As a footnote, it is always the unexpected in life which changes the course of events, including in transportation. The big unexpected event of HS1 was the massive development of domestic services on the high-speed line—all those Javelin trains—which has made the whole thing much more viable than it would otherwise have been and was not expected on anything like that scale. The other great unexpected gain of HS1, which nobody projected at the time—and who knows what the unexpected gains of HS2 will be?—was the Olympic Games. When the decision was taken to give the Olympics to Stratford, a critical part of the decision was the connectivity that the Javelins provided going out of St Pancras. I am not criticising the decisions to build HS1 or the Channel Tunnel, which were visionary and historic decisions, but unfortunately a link between HS1 and HS2 would be hugely expensive —running into many billions because it would have to be tunnelled. The economic benefit would be limited without massive subsidies. Given the huge costs already in the HS2 scheme, it would be hard to justify those expenses.

My noble friend Lord Snape referred to the plan for a kind of patch-and-mend link between HS1 and HS2 using the North London line. There was a plan for that in the original HS1 scheme, linking to the conventional lines. There was also initially from HS2 Ltd a plan for it in respect of the HS2 line. It has to be said that nobody much liked this. It would have been a very slow connection, weaving its way up to the North London line, across and down, which would have made the line even less competitive with the airlines. When the trains were running, it would have used a lot of capacity on the North London line, which, as noble Lords will know, is now an integral part of the Overground service and a major freight artery. That would have been highly inconvenient. Even that required the building of a substantial single-bore tunnel at a cost of more than £1 billion. The view was taken that rather than expend a large sum of money on a very unsatisfactory patch-and-mend link between the two, which would barely be used in any event, it would be better to wait until some point in the future when our relations with Europe reach a new and glorious period, in which traffic between the major European cities flourishes on a scale never seen before and might then make it economically viable to construct a link between HS1 and HS2.

However, only a tiny fraction of those people who wanted to connect between Euston and St Pancras would have been using direct services to the continent in the first place so the issue of connectivity between Euston and St Pancras, which I think everyone will accept is still highly unsatisfactory, is there in any event. There is a long-term solution: Crossrail 2, which will have a single station serving Euston and King’s Cross St Pancras, and will connect the two underground. That will make it much easier to get to them; it will give big dispersal capacity at Euston when phase 2 of Crossrail is completed in 2033, which is hugely important; and, as I say, it will connect the stations because the entrance at one end will be at Euston and the entrance at the other will be at King’s Cross St Pancras.

Although this degree of work has not yet been done, my assumption with the planning of Crossrail 2 is always that it will be possible to use it also as a pedestrian tunnel with a travelator for getting from Euston to St Pancras. The transport planners are not wildly keen on that idea because it will add to the cost of Crossrail 2 and they want a more limited scheme that has access only for transport users. But it looks patently obvious that if you have a Crossrail 2 station serving the two stations, and you have this underground link, putting in a simple travelator and making it possible for people to connect between the two stations underground must be sensible.

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I again put on record my appreciation that the noble Baroness’s amendments were intended to be probing. While we evaluated various proposals, we felt them to be too costly and not to offer value for money. However, we are looking at how we can effectively link Euston and St Pancras to assist pedestrians. Several noble Lords have spoken of the importance of connections which ensure that every passenger can go from point A to point B in the most efficient manner. As a father of three children who are 10 and under, I know all too well the challenges of interchanges, whether here in the UK or elsewhere in the world. However, having outlined some of the challenges, I hope the noble Baroness accepts the assurance I have given that we are working on the ground with Camden to come forward with solutions and that she is therefore minded to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Snape]

Before the Minister sits down, may I press him for on connectivity between HS1 and HS2? I presume he agrees with my noble friend Lord Adonis that there are problems with envisaging the number of passengers—let us say passengers between Birmingham and Paris—who would use such a link, but is there not something uniquely English about us having an existing link between the two lines that is not used? My noble friend’s argument was that there is no market for passengers between Manchester or Birmingham and Paris. How do we know that if there is not a direct link? The Minister has made it plain that he has three children. The last thing he wants to do is change between different modes of transport. I have every sympathy with him; I have only two and they are adults, but the last thing I would want to do is take them on such a trip. We have an existing link that is not signalled and not used, yet my noble friend, to whose work on this scheme I pay tribute, says that there is not a market for those passengers. If we do not run the services, how will we ever know? Only in England could we have a link, unsignalled, between two high-speed lines—one of them a prospective high-speed line—and say that we are not going to use it. On the economic arguments in respect of passengers taking a through journey, if the Minister moved from the wilds of Wimbledon to Birmingham, would he not find it more attractive to take his three children to Paris on a through train rather than using Euston and St Pancras, no matter how the two were connected?

When were the economic arguments made that there is not a market for the sort of travel that I am envisaging? They obviously did not occur until we had ordered the trains and built the depots. There must have been some feeling that there was a market when trains were built. If I recollect rightly, the Nightstar trains were virtually given away to the Canadian railways. I know that there is a big difference between Canada and our country, but they managed to find a practical use for them—so they should; they got them at cut price; the British taxpayer paid for them all. When did those economic realities first impinge on the decision not to have a link between the two? Will the Minister at least consider looking again at signalling that single line just to test the water and see whether we can have through trains connecting those taxpayers in Birmingham and Manchester, who are contributing to the cost of this whole thing, with Paris and Brussels—to name but two destinations?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I appreciate the sentiments behind what the noble Lord says, and as I have already articulated, the Government did look at connectivity. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, made a very valid point that before you build something, you have to look at the business case and the viability of it. I do not know what the future demand may be for links from other parts of the UK to the continent, and that may well be looked at on a future date. As I have already alluded to, building HS2 opens up doors of opportunity, in terms of the infrastructure connectivity and of course the speed of the link that it provides. I am sure that at some future point those will be looked at again. However, various reports have been conducted. I believe the Higgins report in 2014 advocated abandoning the link between HS1 and HS2, specifically on the issue of costs. That really underlines the Government’s thinking.

Finally, I thank the noble Lord for suggesting that I go from the wilds of Wimbledon up to the Midlands and that perhaps my children would want to go to the continent from Birmingham rather than from London. If I relied on the intention of my two younger boys, we would be chugging along on the Thomas the Tank Engine, which would not provide the kind of high-speed rail link the country desires, but I note what the noble Lord said. As I said, the Government have explored this during the various processes behind the planning of HS2 links, and various reports have been conducted. I have already indicated that the different links that were looked at were deemed not to provide sufficient benefits and not to be viable in terms of cost. I hope that provides, if not total reassurance, at least some answer to the noble Lord’s concern. With that, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

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[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, particularly Amendments 5 and 6, tabled in the name of my noble friend Lord Stevenson who, I understand, cannot be here today but will be here to make some remarks if Committee continues on Thursday. These amendments call for further things which need to be done before work starts on the project, the first being the cost-benefit analysis of the environmental impact of the work and the second being the traffic management requirements.

I apologise to the Committee: I was unable to speak at Second Reading and should therefore declare my interests. I lived in the Chilterns for 36 years, not in an area directly affected. Further along the proposed line, I know personally every one of the villages mentioned in the amendments on the Marshalled List today. Quainton, Twyford, Chetwode, Mixbury and Barton-Hartshorn—I know them all and have known them for 50 years. I do not just know the villages, their names and the roads; I know the farms, fields, the woodlands and some of the people still living there, and I have seen the devastating effect that the Bill is already having on their lives and their communities. The environmental, not to mention the social impact, is enormous. I know that I am not allowed to make a Second Reading speech, although I did not make one before, and I shall strain every sinew not to do so.

The Government tell us that the public have a right to require value for money, and I totally agree. The cost changes each time I see a figure, but £57 billion is the latest one, and no one with the slightest grasp of reality believes that it will stop there. This House, in the detailed report of the Economic Affairs Committee, chaired by my noble friend Lord Hollick, has already drawn attention to the need for a number of the central questions to be answered. Those questions were posed and not adequately answered by the Government’s very flimsy response in July 2005; nor do I believe they have been since, although I know the Minister said at Second Reading that he thought they had been. Where is the answer to a key question in that list, as to whether HS2 is the best way to spend £50 billion—although I up that now to £57 billion—to stimulate the UK economy?

One thing that has not been done is that the environmental impact has not been subject to any cost-benefit analysis. Surely the public, who are going to have to pay for this project in so many ways and relatively few of whom will see any actual benefit, are entitled to a proper cost-benefit analysis before our countryside is destroyed. As for the pressure to carry on with this project without a cost-benefit analysis, I will come to how it was conceived in a moment, but I understand from the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, when he spoke in this House on an earlier debate on this topic, that the Labour Cabinet was searching for a legacy project and someone suggested that China and France had high-speed railways. I do not think the pressure for it comes from the rail users on Southern, from the commuters standing on trains day after day coming into London or even from those whose businesses in the north of England are hampered by the absence of a good trans-Pennine rail link. We are told there is going to be a lack of capacity, but it is not visible to me as I stand on the excellent Chiltern line stations and see an excellent service at present—not overcrowded —from London to Birmingham. What about spending money on capacity which is really urgent right now, as we have all been seeing in the last few weeks and indeed right up to today?

The reality is that, in choosing that legacy, scant consideration was given to the devastating environmental damage which will inevitably result to a very special piece of English countryside. My noble friend Lord Stevenson was going to talk about the Chilterns, and I will just say a few words about it. It is a unique area of beech wood but has also become, in the 36 years I have lived there, the lungs of London. Anyone who goes down to the Chilterns on a weekend will see people pouring out of London to walk and enjoy the peace which reigns over most of it. Beyond that, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire—the area I know well—is not tourist country. It is not even really walkers’ country but it is old England—the England that we ought to preserve and celebrate. If we destroy those things and take them away from the public, at vast expense and for relatively little benefit to very few people, without making a proper cost-benefit analysis of what we are doing, I do not think we will be forgiven. Indeed, not having such a cost-benefit analysis would be pure vandalism, and I hope the Minister will say that the Government will address all the things set out in the five amendments in the group before anybody starts work with the bulldozers and the concrete and does damage that can never be repaired.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, my noble friend who has just sat down started her speech by saying she was not going to make a Second Reading speech and then, if I may say so, did exactly that. We can all make the sort of Second Reading speech that the noble Lord opposite made too, but we are supposed to be talking about particular amendments to the Bill. Thirty-something years ago, I made a speech in the other place in favour of the Channel Tunnel. The response, largely from my own side of the Chamber, was that there were lots of other priorities that we should spend our money on, such as housing, social services, hospitals, et cetera—the sort of speech that the noble Lord opposite has just made. It was Dennis Skinner who objected to my advocacy of the Channel Tunnel, so the noble Lord opposite has now become the Dennis Skinner of the Conservative Party—not a label I would have thought that he would go out to seek normally.

[Lord Framlingham]

I understand that this is not the place to make a Second Reading speech but we are entitled to talk about the value of these amendments in the whole scheme. What is being highlighted is that there are no solutions and that is very important.

[Lord Snape]

Again, with respect to the noble Lord, I do not mind him speaking about the amendments; procedural matters are not for me, anyway. But he said, in effect, that the money being spent—whether that is £50 billion as my noble friend said or whatever—would be better spent on other things. That, I have to say, is a Second Reading speech, and the question, “Why are you spending money on this rather than that?” could be asked in either Chamber in relation to any matter under the sun. As for my noble friend’s contribution, while I had better be careful that I do not make a Second Reading speech myself, I am somewhat sick of hearing about the enormous damage that is being done to an area of natural beauty by a two-track railway line.

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD)]

What about the tunnels?

[Lord Snape]

I will come to the tunnels in later amendments—my noble friend should not distract me just yet; I will deal with them in a moment or two.

As it was said, the garden of England, Kent, was not destroyed by High Speed 1, although I sat and listened for months on end to petitioners telling me that it would be. I am glad to say that was the last hybrid Bill I served on; I do not want to do another one after that experience. The destruction never happened, and, indeed, the economy of various parts of Kent has been boosted enormously by HS1, as we heard earlier. I do not know where my noble friend was when the M40 was being built. There are of course no tunnels on it, but I presume that it is a great asset to the Chilterns. I would have thought that objections to it, such as they were, would have been somewhat muted by the convenience to the objectors of getting their motor cars back to London from the lovely parts of the Chilterns in which they lived or were visiting.

[Lord Framlingham]

I accept what the noble Lord says about the building of a two-track railway, but surely given the size of this project he will concede that every possible effort should be made to ensure it has a minimum impact on the countryside. Given that huge size—£55 billion—even reasonable amounts of money should be given, without much discussion, to make sure the damage is kept to a minimum.

[Lord Snape]

I am immensely sorry to refute the noble Lord’s assertions but we spent a long time looking into this project and a considerable amount of money has been and is being spent trying to meet some of the objections that he outlined.

Those who, like my noble friend, were against the project denounced it for costing some £50 billion, yet with every speech they want to add to that cost because there is something in their area that they wish to preserve. I pay tribute, as others have, to the Select Committee, and note that my noble friend Lord Adonis has joined us. It spent months listening to various petitioners, many of whom were against the project, but all anxious for more public money to be spent on the bit they objected to. We could go on like this for ever and not build anything at all. Presumably that was the objective behind the speech of the noble Lord opposite. For my noble friend to pray in aid my noble friend Lord Mandelson by describing it as a vanity project—this from the man in charge of the Dome, a vanity project if ever there one—is, in addition to the other Second Reading speeches that have been made, of no great service to the Committee or the project.

I am fascinated by the agreement between my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. My noble friend wants to extend the line from Hanslope to Crewe. I am not sure how much that would cost. He also wants to build a four-track railway to replace the short distance of three-track railway from Hanslope Junction—as he will recall, there is another three-track railway going north from Rugby. Although it is neither in the Bill nor his amendments, it should not be too great a project to build that replacement. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, meanwhile, wants to reduce the other end of the line to Old Oak Common. Yet they say they are in agreement with one another—by the sound of it, they both want to redesign the whole project. I am not quite sure how much that would cost, either.

I do not know whether there is any great merit in these amendments. I know that my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, spent a considerable time behind the scenes in the attempt to redesign Euston station and I am sure that we will come to that issue under a future amendment. However, it seems to me that this Committee will not make much progress if those who were against the project in the first place make similar speeches on every set of amendments between now and whenever the Committee adjourns later today or on Thursday.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I rise to make a short point following the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Snape. I recently went to the railway museum in Swindon, where I read all about the predictions of disaster for Brunel’s Great Western Railway and the huge opposition to it. In fact, the towns that accepted a station in their centre prospered; those that rejected a station did not prosper as much. We nowadays look on railways as an environmentally friendly way of travelling. I simply want to point out that I do not believe that amendments that question particular aspects of the Bill undermine the Bill; in our case, they are designed to strengthen it. Wanting to monitor the spending of money is a sign that we want the project to succeed. I want to make it absolutely clear that putting down an apparently critical amendment does not mean any lack of support for the concept of the project as a whole. We want it to succeed.

[Lord Snape]

I hope the noble Baroness will accept from me that I am not making that accusation. I am saying that I do not quite understand the agreement between my noble friend and her noble friend Lord Bradshaw on this group of amendments, but I am sure that they will explain it. I appreciate that there are genuine and legitimate concerns inherent in their amendments. My objection is to speeches that are meant to sabotage the whole project. We have had these debates on umpteen occasions. My noble friend mentioned the Economic Affairs Committee report, which was torn apart on the Floor of the House. I am not saying that my contribution made any difference, but the approach that was taken was enough for me. If we are going to judge every project on so-called value for money, no project would ever meet the criteria laid down by those who were against that project in the first place. Whatever you did, they would say, “This is not value for money”. As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, some of the objectors to Brunel’s railway were thought quite credible. They gave evidence to a House of Commons Committee saying that trains passing through Box Tunnel on the Great Western main line at faster than 60 miles an hour would asphyxiate those on board. They were not particularly credible then, although they were listened to, and some of the objections that we have heard to this project are not particularly credible now.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, we have had a wide-ranging Second Reading debate. I sympathise completely with the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and all the communities that are affected. The golden rule of any construction project is that people would rather it happened somewhere else. The golden rule of high-speed rail is that people want the stations but they do not want the line, but the line unfortunately has to go somewhere. Every time that this has been looked at, still more of the line going through the Chilterns has gone into a tunnel to mitigate the impacts on the local community. None the less, the construction work will be a major inconvenience for local communities and I in no way underestimate that fact.

The House and successive Governments have had to address themselves to a particular issue. My noble friend referred to the Government to 2010, in which I led the work. I can tell her that it was absolutely not the case that this was generated as a vanity project. It was generated by looking at the options of further upgrades of the west coast main line. Noble Lords need to understand that the last upgrade of the west coast main line, which was completed in 2009, cost £10 billion —of course, inflation would make that figure much larger now. That was a modest upgrade to provide very limited additional capacity compared with what HS2 will provide. Unfortunately, there is no free lunch. We definitely need upgrades to parts of the Southern network —particularly the London to Brighton line, though if the trains were operating on that line at the moment most of the immediate concerns would be met. Upgrades are needed to most of the commuter lines coming into London. However, we are also going to need significant additional intercity capacity. My noble friend said that this is a line that very few people will use—these are the major conurbations of the country. Almost half the output of the entire country is generated between them by London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. It is simply not conceivable that we will not need very significant additional transport capacity between those conurbations over the next generation. We will clearly not be flying lots of planes between them. We do not want to build new motorways: I know my noble friend will have views on the impact the M40 had on the Chilterns.

The only option is a significant increase in rail capacity and that can only come in one of two ways. It is not the case that this has not been examined; it was looked at exhaustively in the work that I and the subsequent coalition Government did. It can come from radically upgrading the existing lines. Options for this have been looked at, including four-tracking the Chiltern line—the impact of which on the Chilterns would be greater, out of all proportion, than HS2—and significant upgrades to the west coast main line. The sums required to conduct those upgrades would be approaching the levels we would spend on HS2. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, referred to Brunel. The London to Birmingham railway, linking the two major cities of the country, is not even a Victorian project; it is pre-Brunel. It was opened for the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838. There are only four miles of the entire line going to Manchester which are straight, because most of it was built to get around the estates of many Members of your Lordships’ House. Building significant additional capacity on that pre-Victorian railway, including the required resignalling of almost the entire line, the relaying of the junctions for longer trains, and the rebuilding of the stations—starting with Euston, which is operating at twice the capacity for which it was built in the 1960s—are vastly expensive projects.

The question to which Parliament must address itself, and have a consistency of purpose on, is not whether something needs to be done—there would be a massive betrayal of our national economic future, particularly post-Brexit, if we do not have sufficient transport capacity between the major cities and economic centres of the country—but what should be done. Taking a longer-term view of investments will produce a step change in capacity between these major cities, rather than more patch and mend. Producing incremental increases in capacity will not be sufficient, including on commuter lines because the building of high-speed lines releases significant capacity on existing commuter lines.

[Lord Snape]

The noble Lord is making a much better non-Second Reading speech than I did. Does he agree that any upgrade of the existing railway lines could not be done at the same time as running the present intensive service? The short-sighted nature of debates in this House and elsewhere means that alternative routes have long since been closed—since the 1960s—so we would paralyse the west coast main line for a decade or so ahead while not having the benefits of any diversionary routes.

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[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords, I support the noble Viscount’s amendment. It appears that this provision was not in fact looked at by the Select Committee. It is a provision which, unlike the concerns that were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, is likely to save money rather than cost more—

[Lord Snape]

“My noble friend”.

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My noble friend, I am sorry. On the face of it, it will not require any delay either. The Select Committee was not able to look at it. It was told that the proposal that was then before it was additional provision.

The end result is that Wendover, which I think members of the Select Committee will remember is the village from which they had the largest number of letters, received the benefits, I suppose you could call them, only of a rejection of any sound barriers, which, although they were thought by the committee to be effective, would have been visibly intrusive. It was told that the donation to the church of £250,000 was generous. It is a very musical church which is going to have great difficulty in continuing as the centre for various concerts and performances. A new cricket pavilion was to be provided by the promoters on an alternative ground. That was the end result of Wendover’s concerted effort to bring about some changes in the proposals.

This proposal—if it is right, and I have no means of knowing whether it is—would appear to be one that would have the support of that community, would go a considerable way towards helping to ameliorate some of the worst parts of the line and, as I said, would result in some savings and no delay. Surely it would be possible for the Minister to say that this is one of the proposals that, respecting what the committee has said, was not before it and should be looked at before it is rejected out of hand.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I do not necessarily oppose the amendment, although I listened with interest to what my noble friend said about how this would save money. I am not sure what costings the noble Viscount has carried out. There has been some criticism of the costings so far as the whole project is concerned, yet we are told by the noble Viscount and my noble friend that this will actually save money. Perhaps, for the clarification of the Committee, they could tell us how their conclusions have been arrived at. I am no expert. My noble friend Lord Berkeley might tell me. I am not quite sure what a mined tunnel is and what differentiates a mined tunnel from a normal railway tunnel.

[Viscount Astor]

As I understand it, a mined tunnel is where you use a digger to make a hole, as opposed to one of those circular machines that makes a round hole. Apparently it is a cheaper way of doing it than the other way, but I am not an expert.

[Lord Snape]

Though he is not an expert, the noble Viscount has done extremely well. I am enlightened.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords—

[Lord Snape]

I am replying to an intervention on my speech. I will of course give way to my noble friend in a moment, but first of all I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Berkeley. He was very clear indeed. I have become an expert now on mined tunnels. I give way to my noble friend now.

[Lord Adonis]

I simply wished to make a point to the Minister. My understanding is that it is not correct to say that the Select Committee did not consider this issue of a mined tunnel at length. My understanding is that it spent a very considerable amount of time listening to the arguments. I find it inconceivable, with all the expertise my noble friend Lord Berkeley has been able to give us this afternoon, that we could substitute our judgments in the course of a debate of half an hour, or an hour, or an hour and a half for the huge attention that the Select Committee gave to this over many hours, as I understand it, seeking a very wide range of expertise. If it is the case that the Select Committee considered this and that my noble friend Lady Mallalieu was incorrect in suggesting that it was not considered, I cannot see that there is much point in us continuing this debate in the form that we are.

[Lord Snape]

I am rather sorry I got involved in this whole thing now. I make one plea on behalf of the train passengers, who will pay a substantial amount and a bit more besides as a premium. Part of the pleasure of taking a train journey is looking out of the windows. This obsession with tunnelling everywhere through the Chilterns means we will perhaps be denied the sight of my noble friend galloping across the rolling hills of the Chilterns in pursuit of the uneatable. Surely these are sights that people enjoy when travelling by train. Rather than confine train passengers in tunnels for miles on end, would not the noble Viscount be satisfied with some sort of noise barrier, rather than insisting that train passengers on this proposed high-speed line spend their lives in semi-darkness to avoid my noble friend and her colleagues?

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I hesitate to come into this debate, but I confirmed with my colleagues that I was not suffering from post-traumatic High Speed 2 Select Committee delusion. We spent an inordinate amount of time, quite rightly, looking at possible alternatives and at costings. We did not just take the promoter’s word for it. Whenever it put up its experts we looked at whether we could ascertain whether there was an independent corroboration of the costings. Indeed, the Minister confirmed that this was the case earlier when he talked about the possible tunnelling in the Colne Valley area. That was independently assessed. It was proved that the promoter’s costings were right. There were not any savings to be made, although there were lots of assertions that there were savings to be made.

I appreciate the thanks we have had for the amount of time we spent. There were times when I remembered the old Army adage, “Never volunteer”, but, despite that, for the most part we enjoyed it because it was expertly chaired. We ought to pay tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, who carried out the task, in our collective view, skilfully and carefully.

On the final point in Amendment 7, there are no heavy goods vehicles going through Wendover. It was asserted on many occasions that there are alternative routes. Like my noble friend Lord Adonis, I am not trying to pretend that this project will not cause problems in its impact during the construction phase, but we at least ought to be accurate if we are putting down an amendment. I hope that that has helped noble Lords.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Astor]

My Lords, I am grateful to everybody who has spoken. I particularly enjoyed the idea from the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that a four-kilometre mined tunnel would put HS2 passengers in darkness. If I have got right the speed that the train is going to go, in a four-kilometre tunnel, you only have to blink three times and you have missed it.

[Lord Snape]

I am sure that is right, although I am not sure whether it would stand up mathematically in a courtroom, but we are not talking about just this particular tunnel—there is lots of tunnelling through the Chilterns, which has come about as a result of demands, including semi-hysterical demands from a then member of the Cabinet, which in the view of many of us who have taken an interest in the project have added unnecessarily to the cost and makes travelling by train less pleasant. A lot of the people that the noble Viscount represents are against the project as a whole—a point that we have made time after time.

[Viscount Astor]

I am not going to get into that debate with the noble Lord, but I think I am right in saying that the purpose of HS2 was not to give travellers better views of the countryside but to get them somewhere more quickly and more efficiently, although I am sure it is an added bonus if they have a better view of the country.

To come to the point, there is a difference of opinion among experts. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, does not like to see any criticism of this project and regards the promoter’s and the department’s experts as necessarily right. I do not know whether they are right. I did not say who was right; I said that during the Select Committee hearings there were a lot of conversations between experts that show there is a difference of opinion, as there have been since its report. All I am saying is there is an opportunity for the Minister and his department to look at this again. That is all I am asking. I am not saying who is right and who is wrong, but that there is an issue. It will not delay the Bill or the process. It is about whether the Minister’s department will look at the evidence and see whether it addressed all the concerns and issues.

[Viscount Astor]

The Select Committee came to a conclusion, which may be right or wrong. But its members are not rail experts. I admire its distinguished report, but even they would not say they got everything right on every single issue. What I am saying is that during and since the committee, issues have arisen, and there has been further debate and work done on cost. My request to the Minister was whether his department would look at it without in any way holding up the process. Perhaps my noble friend might give this some thought between now and Report. Would that be possible?

[Lord Snape]

The noble Lord said that this mined tunnel would not, in effect, make much difference as far as the journey is concerned. Would he be interested in knowing—I have just been assured by an expert that these facts are correct—that out of the 210 kilometres of the high-speed line, no less than 47 kilometres is already in tunnels? If he does not mind me saying so, that is more than enough.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Snape, again for sharing facts. During the debates we have had this afternoon—

[Lord Snape]

It does not happen often.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I am always grateful for the noble Lord’s interventions.

My noble friend talked about analysing and reviewing evidence. Let me reassure him that the Select Committees of both Houses have looked at this in detail and that it was an exhaustive process, as we have already heard from one member of your Lordships’ committee. It was not looked at only for a few seconds in passing—a blink and then you are through the tunnel, so to speak. This is the view of the department, the Government and myself, and we have to respect the decisions that have been reached by not one but two Select Committees on a process which they themselves—notwithstanding that there were additional provisions as part of the proposals—looked at. They considered the opinions and views of experts from both sides, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Young, and their conclusions after that exhaustive process need to be both reflected on and respected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I will be extremely brief. I agree with the sentiments expressed on both sides of the Committee. My question to the Minister is: why this particular schedule, and why now? I served on the Crossrail Bill. As my noble friend said, many roads in the centre of London were affected. Any of us who have travelled between Westminster and Euston will know the years of dislocation caused by all the Crossrail work at Tottenham Court Road, yet we seem to have coped reasonably well during that time. Now, out of the blue, after a protracted parliamentary process, this draconian measure is put before us. Surely, under his existing highway powers, the Minister could act against any deliberate attempt to forestall proposed works along the route of HS2. If he goes ahead with this, I suspect there will be a further long debate on Report. I cannot forecast the future, but I suspect the Government will lose.

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham]

I add my voice to those who are asking the Minister to think again. Having served on the Select Committee with colleagues who are now friends, I must say that there was no hint of such a late intervention into traffic management. People should be consulted before it goes ahead.

High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Lord Snape Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)]

My Lords, I have one question. Perhaps it is for my noble friend the Minister or perhaps it is for the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. My understanding was that if Old Oak Common were to be used as the terminus for this railway, even in the interim, a completely different design would be required for Old Oak Common than is currently in the Bill. It would therefore require the Bill to be re-hybridised, and would put an almost endless delay on the whole thing.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I find it somewhat bizarre that we should be discussing these particular amendments at this particular time. I find it even more bizarre that these amendments should be moved by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley—both of whom are normally extremely supportive of railway matters. The effect of accepting either or both these amendments, as I am sure the Minister will tell us, would be to delay considerably the project as a whole. I am sure that that is not the noble Lord’s intention, but I hope he will agree with me that that would be the result. He shakes his head—he can come back to me on that in a moment.

I do not think that you could have a re-costing of a project this size and then say, “We will have Third Reading of the Bill in a week’s time, and that’s the end of it”. If the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, is saying that, he is an even bigger financial genius than I thought he was previously. The fact is that there would be further delay. It is seven years since my noble friend Lord Adonis, as a Minister in the last Government but one, came forward with the project—and here we are at the end of a seven-year period discussing two amendments that would, I would guess, have the effect if not of putting the project back another seven years then certainly putting it back for some considerable time.

As far as Old Oak Common is concerned, I say again to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, that he has to answer the point put by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, a former Transport Minister. The fact is that Old Oak, as it presently is, is in no way suitable to be a main terminal. I do not mean to be facetious when I say that if you asked people coming to London where they were going to when they got there, comparatively few would say Old Oak. In Great Western days there was a steam engine shed there, I understand, so trainspotters might well have gone there 50 years ago—but I cannot see there being a great demand to terminate trains at Old Oak, no matter how good the connections will be.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, talked about developments at Euston. He has an amendment which I am sure we will be discussing later about access around Euston station, which is the natural terminus. He makes the very relevant point that, for example, on the TGV in France, high-speed trains stop short of the main terminus, which is the reason for the delays that quite often occur. It seems to me to be a much more sensible engineering prospect to run high-speed trains into the centre of a city rather than making them share crowded tracks with other trains, as they do in other countries. So perhaps on this occasion we got it right.

Finally, whatever estimates are made of these projects often turn out, in the long term, to be unrealistic. My noble friend talked about Crossrail. I was on the Crossrail Bill, and it was said at that time that the estimates for Crossrail were unrealistic—but they proved not to be so. With all due respect to my noble friend’s opinion, he is no better a financier than the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, as far as this project is concerned. So if the noble Lord presses this to a Division, I hope that those of us who want to see this project, after seven years, get the go-ahead will vote in the Not-Content Lobby.

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, I am disturbed that this amendment has come up because, first of all, we have no figures for people who would be very pleased to be dispersed—as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said—at Old Oak Common. Having been to Old Oak Common on one of our visits, I would not like to be lumbered with getting from Old Oak Common to anywhere in London; it just seems crazy. Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said that the forecasts were not up to date. He also cast aspersions on the people who did the forecasts. He said that the forecasts were prepared by people who were not capable and that they were flimsy. This is really too late in the project to make those sorts of comments.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said that he was interested in financial discipline; we are all interested in financial discipline. But not making any forecasts of the people who would be,

“dispersed from Old Oak Common”,

just does not make sense. It seems to me to be a delaying tactic, without actually getting the basis of proper forecasts of people who are going to use Old Oak Common. Coming from Birmingham to Old Oak Common? I ask: who would really want to?

[The Earl of Glasgow (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Bradshaw and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. This seems an eminently sensible suggestion. At the moment, people are trying to make out that this is an attempt to delay HS2; that is the last thing that I would like to do. The amendment would in fact allow it to go ahead. They are talking about a temporary terminal there, for possibly five years or maybe even less.

There are three very good reasons why this is a sensible idea. The first is that we have not yet decided how the route of HS2 will go from Old Oak Common into Euston. There are two or three different routes and I do not think we should be delayed any further on that. That can carry on after the Bill has already gone through. The second thing is what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said. This is a way of cutting costs, if necessary. The five miles between Old Oak Common and Euston are almost certainly the most expensive five miles of the entire route. Therefore, if we can delay the building of that but still continue with the Bill and get the rest of HS2 on the move, so much the better.

The third reason that this is a good idea is that we will have to make a decision about something that is not part of the Bill at the moment. Some time in the future we will have to join HS2 to HS3. One way would be through Old Oak Common, where it can join the present HS1. It is going to be very difficult to make that join somewhere in Euston or St Pancras station. So the amendment is eminently sensible. It has nothing to do with delaying anything: it is very much the opposite. It makes it possible to start the building of HS2 almost immediately.

[Lord Snape]

Has the noble Earl read the amendments that he has just spoken to? Amendment 1 states:

“Construction work otherwise authorised by this Act may not begin until”.


That is, the works at Old Oak Common. Amendment 6, in the name of my noble friend Lord Berkeley, states:

“Cost estimate … The nominated undertaker must not commence any Phase One construction work until the Secretary of State has published”,


and so on. It goes on to talk about a review of the finances. That is not a couple of weeks’ delay; it is years. For the noble Earl to suggest anything different indicates to me that he has not actually read the amendments he supports.

[The Earl of Glasgow]

There is a huge amount of work to be done in building HS2 and we should be able to get on with that. If what the noble Lord is saying is correct, I may have misunderstood.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

No, I am not going to because I have just remembered that Peers are allowed only one contribution on an amendment.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I am not quite sure whether I can help the noble Baroness. I asked the same question about a mined tunnel in Committee and the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, explained it all to me. The problem is that I have forgotten the explanation. It sounded very plausible at the time. I am sure if the noble Baroness consults her noble friend she will get all the details of what should be done.

I listened to the noble Baroness who spoke earlier from the Conservative Benches. She made a fleeting appearance in Committee and said pretty much the same thing; I hope she will forgive me for saying so. I do not think emotive language about a two-track railway destroying the countryside takes this House or this debate any further forward. What did she say: “Just another 8.7 kilometres of tunnel”? That is in addition to the 47 kilometres of tunnel out of the 210 kilometres of the high-speed railway line. This is expensive lunacy in my view. I make a plea again on behalf of those who travel by train. People do not travel by train to gaze at a tunnel wall. Some of the semi-hysterical comments—I exempt my noble friend Lord Stevenson, he will be relieved to know—about the damage that the railway line will do to the Chilterns are just that, sheer hysteria. They were all made 30 years ago at the time of High Speed 1 across Kent, and none of it proved true then. Indeed, the economy of Kent has benefited enormously from High Speed 1.

The secondary point—the great unmentionable in this debate on the demand for tunnels—is of course that some people making these points about additional tunnelling do so on the grounds that there is no benefit from high-speed rail passing through the Chilterns to those who live there because there are not any stations. Well, there may be at some time in the future, as we have heard. Again, I exempt my noble friend from that; he is my Whip and I had better tread carefully. Once you get out of London, the M40 passes through the Chilterns without a mile of tunnel. Has that motorway destroyed that part of the world? I do not think it has. My noble friend nods his head but I do not think most people agree. Mind you, of course many of them use the M40 and that they are not going to be able to use the train is behind a great deal of the opposition, in my view. I hope that the Minister resists temptation. Whether it is cheaper to build a mined tunnel or go ahead with the existing proposals, as the Select Committee recommended, I know not. Nobody could have worked harder than the committee to look at those objections. I think there is quite sufficient tunnelling already so far as this high-speed railway is concerned, much of it expensive and unnecessary.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Will my noble friend answer a question that I feel I should know the answer to? How much has all the additional tunnelling that has come on as a result of the various stages of this Bill added to the cost of HS2? I have a slight suspicion that there may be the odd person—I am sure no one in this House—who has demanded a tunnel, for whatever reason, and then complains about the overall cost of the railway once the tunnelling has been accommodated.

[Lord Snape]

I am sure that the Minister, who is listening, will be able to give my noble friend a detailed answer to that question. We see with this project, as we have seen with others, that many of those against the project as a whole for reasons including its cost are the first to demand special provision in their part of the world, regardless of the additional cost. I hope the Minister will resist temptation, as 47 kilometres out of 210 is—I repeat—quite enough for me. Whether or not I will be around in 2026, who knows, but I will do my best and I wish the same to other noble Lords on both sides of the House. I think we deserve better than an extended view of a tunnel wall. Let us see this glorious countryside, that we hear so much defence of in the context of this Bill—mistakenly in my view.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Snape]

12: After Clause 62, insert the following new Clause—
“Protected species
The nominated undertaker has a duty to take reasonable and cost effective steps to deal appropriately with protected species.”

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, I was moved to put down this amendment by a report that appeared in the Times on Saturday 14 January, an extract of which I will read in a moment. The proposed new clause says:

“The nominated undertaker has a duty to take reasonable and cost effective steps to deal appropriately with protected species”.


My concern is as much with the reasonable steps as it is with the protected species. The article in the Times, under the by-line of Mr Ben Webster, the environment editor, says:

“The biggest badger relocation project yet attempted is about to get under way along the route of HS2, the high-speed rail line. More than a thousand badgers in a hundred local populations will be affected by phase one of the line, from London to Birmingham. They will either be moved to new artificial setts or protected from the impact of the line by tunnels dug beneath it. The multimillion-pound publicly funded operation comes weeks after the government said that 11,000 badgers were shot last year to protect cattle from tuberculosis”.


My first question is whether the Minister can guarantee that saving badgers from the shovels and bulldozers of the high-speed train will not risk them falling under the guns of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—that would be an odd way to spend millions of pounds. After all, I understand that licences have already been granted to cull badgers in no fewer than 10 areas in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Somerset. Can the Minister assure us that none of these displaced badgers will be moved to these areas where they will be gunned down by another department? That would not be the best example of joined-up government I have ever seen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I always say that your Lordships’ House serves as a great place of education. I praise the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Snape, introduced his amendment. As we come to the conclusion of our deliberations on Report, it is much appreciated and I commend his style. I turn to the specifics of the amendment. As many noble Lords will be aware, the environmental statement for the Bill ran to some 50,000 pages and exhaustively examined all potential impacts from the Bill scheme and provides the necessary mitigations, including, of course, for protected species.

The noble Lord, Lord Snape, mentioned specific protected species that could potentially be affected by phase 1 of HS2 and these include a number of bat species—I do not have immediately to hand information about the specific type of bat that has been found and the associated costs but I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley on that. The protections also cover otters, badgers, barn owls, not forgetting the notorious great crested newts. I am not going to claim to have seen one, but I assure the noble Lord that I will attempt to do so before Third Reading. On a more serious note, it is important that species are protected. The noble Lord mentioned the badger cull and asked for an absolute assurance. As a Minister responsible for steering the Bill through your Lordships’ House, I can assure the noble Lord and all concerned that the badgers moved for HS2 are intended to be moved only a short distance. None of them will be moved to the cull areas which the noble Lord listed. I have just had an update on the bat issue.

[Lord Snape]

Before we move on to bats, could the Minister elaborate on enticing the badgers from their present lairs? How is it to be done?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I will write to the noble Lord on that, if I may. Perhaps it will serve as an education for all of us. As I said, I have an update on the bats: I feel a bit like breaking news. I have been assured that there is no breed of bat on the line that has never been discovered before. However, there are a number of rare bat colonies near the line of the route and the mitigation measures that have been created include bat bridges. I expect the next question will be: do I know what a bat bridge looks like?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

These are merely mitigation measures. It cannot be the Department for Transport’s responsibility, once we have constructed the bat bridges, to ensure that all bats use them, rather than fly. We leave that matter to the freedom and liberty of the bats themselves. It is important that mitigation measures are in place for all the different habitats. For all potential impacts, we are proposing extensive mitigation measures, including creation of alternative habitats to link isolated areas of existing habitat and the provision of underpasses or green bridges to help maintain movement of species in the landscape.

We deem the amendment unnecessary due to the significant statutory provisions which I am sure the noble Lord is aware are already in place for protected species. We will, of course, need to comply with these during the construction and operation of HS2. These include the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010, the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 and the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. The requirement to comply with this legislation is built in to the HS2 code of construction practice and the project will need to obtain a licence from Natural England for any occasion at which there is a plan to disturb or remove wildlife or damage existing habitats. We have had a very educational—and for me personally an enlightening —debate on this amendment. I hope the noble Lord is reassured by our commitments in these areas and that, on that basis, he is minded to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Snape]

I thank the Minister for his comprehensive reply, but I warn him that I might well return to this subject at Third Reading, if only to ask: if bats can fly, why do they need bridges? If we have bat bridges, why not starling bridges or sparrow bridges? Surely there is some discrimination involved if the bats are being singled out in this way. Nobody could ask for more than the Minister promising to find out exactly what a great crested newt looks like. We are all familiar with colonies of them appearing as soon as there is a major project, but nobody has ever seen one. Given the comprehensive reply from the Minister, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 12 withdrawn.