High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Lord Snape Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I shall indeed cover that in my closing remarks.

It is nearly 200 years since permission was given for the building of what is now the west coast main line. Those railway pioneers made history. The railways allowed goods to travel more quickly to where people wanted them, and allowed people to travel too, for work and leisure. All this truly unlocked the Industrial Revolution, and by connecting people and goods it made the United Kingdom into an economic powerhouse.

Much has changed in nearly 200 years, but I want to focus on the things that remain the same—the things that the railways can still do: the need for railway capacity to take people and freight where they should go; the need for connectivity between places, to make travel easier; and the potential for economic growth through transport investment.

Turning to capacity, the vast bulk of our rail network was built more than 100 years ago. Demand has increased substantially since the 1990s, and the west coast main line is effectively full. Inevitably, this has implications for the reliability and performance of our network, affecting both passengers and freight. I do not want to underestimate those implications. Disruption to freight delivery can be unseen, but the disruption to people’s lives caused by late or cancelled trains regularly makes the press. The resulting huge frustration can mean that people choose not to trust trains for freight or travel, and those choices can mean more lorries and cars on our roads, with higher carbon emissions.

Capacity on, and in turn the resilience of, our railways is essential. The Government continue to invest in our existing infrastructure, but to really increase capacity and network reliability requires completely new capacity. Eking ever more out of our already full network comes with extensive disruption, leading to daily frustration with the impact on lives and businesses. Those rail users may not come back to the railways. If it proceeds, HS2 could be the best solution to capacity problems, providing much-needed space on the congested west coast main line, leading to more passengers and more freight trains on the existing network.

That brings me to connectivity. HS2 could connect many of the UK’s largest cities, and passengers would not have to travel on it to feel the benefit. Estimates indicate that about 100 towns and cities across the country could benefit from HS2 through the improved connectivity that a new railway could provide. That is not just rail connectivity; it is connectivity of people to other people, to jobs, and to businesses and their customers and suppliers. This section of HS2 could join Birmingham and London to Crewe, bringing greater connectivity to the north-west and Scotland.

That leads me to my third point: investment in transport infrastructure is not just about the infrastructure itself. Investment in transport infrastructure drives economic growth. It supports productivity by enhancing the transport networks on which businesses and individuals rely, and provides thousands of jobs and training opportunities in the supply chain. Earlier this year the Government announced that HS2 was already supporting more than 9,000 jobs and that 2,000 businesses had delivered goods and services for HS2. It has been offering up exciting opportunities for young people, with over 320 apprenticeships created so far. It is enabling young people to gain the skills to build our future infrastructure. Those skills are transferable, from building railways to other construction and other economic sectors, meaning that HS2 could give the UK more skills to compete globally, generate long-term employment opportunities and become the driving force behind Northern Powerhouse Rail.

I turn to the Bill itself. Phase 2a of HS2 is approximately 36 miles of track. It will extend HS2 from the end of phase 1 at Fradley near Lichfield and onwards towards Crewe. At the northern end it will connect to the west coast main line, allowing HS2 services to join that main line and call at Crewe station. The Bill gives outline planning permission for the railway and allows for compulsory purchase powers. It affects homes, businesses and land along the way, so it is rightly subject to extensive scrutiny. A Select Committee especially convened to scrutinise the Bill in the other place received over 300 individual petitions. During that scrutiny, the Transport Secretary offered 1,000 assurances to people who are directly and especially affected.

If the Bill receives its Second Reading today, it will pass to another specially convened Select Committee of your Lordships’ House that will look again at the detail of the Bill and make sure that it meets the high standards that we expect. The committee will have the power to amend the Bill as well as to require other changes to this part of the scheme not yet covered in the Bill. Since First Reading in July, the Bill has received 35 petitions for the Select Committee to consider, and HS2 is engaging with those petitioners to try to address their needs.

Stepping back from the individual impacts, wider community and environmental impacts are also raised by the Bill. I reassure noble Lords that I understand these wider concerns but I also remind them that it is not possible to build a railway without having some impact on the wider community. We must strike the right balance between delivering and operating a railway and being sensitive to its surroundings. I believe that the Government have struck that balance.

HS2 has undertaken detailed environmental assessments to ensure adequate mitigation of the railway’s impacts. These 36 miles of track have been considered through 17,000 pages of environmental statement—that is over 470 pages of assessment for every mile of track. Many thousands of consultation responses to the assessment were independently assessed and summarised in a report to Parliament. For example, an ecologically survey at Colwich looked for great crested newts. The field survey confirmed the newts’ presence and, to compensate for any possible losses, approximately 7.4 hectares of grassland, including eight ponds, has been proposed to provide suitable replacement refuge and foraging habitat. These assessments are not the end of our consideration of the environmental effects and impacts on communities. The Government have continued to listen to communities, environmental groups, statutory bodies and other stakeholders to try to reduce the impacts where we can.

Other changes to the scheme include the lowering of the Kings Bromley and River Trent viaducts in Staffordshire to reduce landscape impacts and the relocation of the southern portal of the Whitmore Heath tunnel, removing the need to realign a road and reducing the loss of ancient woodland. There are additional earthworks to further screen the maintenance base near Stone and to provide additional noise mitigation, such as the noise bund at Woodhouse Farm. There are assurances to protect water voles in Cheshire and to provide bird protectors along the power supplies to protect important bird species. These are just a few examples.

More than half the route is in a tunnel or cutting. The route avoids direct impacts to any grade 1 or 2* listed buildings, to scheduled monuments, to registered battlefields and to registered parks and gardens. The route does not affect any Natura 2000 sites or sites of special scientific interest, or cross any areas of outstanding natural beauty, and HS2 has been designed to withstand a “one in 1,000 years” flooding event. I know there are people who want to see more: longer tunnels, deeper cuttings, taller noise barriers and so on. I understand that. However, our duty to protect the environment must be balanced with our duty to the taxpayer. The work to date has done that and balances these responsibilities appropriately.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that those who demand longer tunnels and deeper cuttings are usually the ones who then complain about the extra costs there involved?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

The noble Lord raises an interesting point. HS2 is intended to be greater than the sum of its parts. It is designed to provide much-needed capacity on our rail network, allowing freight and passengers more reliable services. It could reconnect our country, pumping much-needed investment into the Midlands and the north. HS2 is about potential: to create opportunities for growth, support a brighter future for the UK, improve and rebalance our economy and improve connectivity across the UK. It remains important to get these decisions right, so we look forward to hearing Douglas Oakervee’s recommendations. In the meantime, I hope the Bill is allowed to proceed today. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, as a former railwayman I have never made any secret of my support for this scheme, which in my view ought to go ahead as quickly as possible. The fact that both your Lordships’ House and the other place have voted heavily in favour of HS2 ought to mean that we do not hold things up by having this review. I am not as despondent about the review as some of my noble friends and other supporters. I suspect what is happening with the review is a minor rerun of Harold Wilson’s royal commission. Those of you with long memories will remember that he used to say 50 years ago that a royal commission takes minutes to set up and years to report, and that in the meantime the subject is buried in the long grass.

I suspect that this is a shorter version. The current Prime Minister is quite in favour of infrastructure projects. After all, he has cable cars going across the Thames as a legacy of his time as mayor. He tried to build a garden bridge at some cost—it was not a great success—and his buses, which are a tad uncomfortable in hot weather, are running around London as we speak. He has a record of being in favour of infrastructure projects.

The noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, alas, is not in his place. I am not quite sure why he needs to refer to those copious notes; he has been making that speech for so long he ought to be word perfect by now. It is a pity he fled the Chamber almost as soon as he had committed himself. I wish that he and others who criticise the scheme would come to Birmingham and see the benefit this great HS2 project has already brought to the city. Do they not care about the apprentice college that has already been set up and the number of young people employed in the railway industry as a direct result of this scheme?

I have brought with me today the current issue of Rail magazine. Its editorial is mild praise for the Prime Minister. It refers to “Cunning politics around HS2” and says that the “Oakervee Review is all about what’s best for Boris Johnson”. That endorses the point that I have just made that this review avoids any direct commitment, any go-ahead, before the general election—whenever that is to be held. Yet I do not believe that it is necessarily a precursor to cancellation.

My noble friend Lord Adonis was not too polite about my noble friend Lord Berkeley. I understand why he is not in his place today, given the fact that he serves on this committee. Again, I say to my noble friend Lord Adonis that perhaps he worries unduly. I have known my noble friend Lord Berkeley for 35 or 40 years. During my time in the other place, I served on committees examining two hybrid Bills to do with the Channel Tunnel. He was one of our advisers; he certainly advised us as individual members of those two committees. He is eminently well qualified as a civil engineer. Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that the projected cost of the Channel Tunnel was originally £4.5 billion but that, neither despite of nor because of his advice, the actual bill was £12.5 billion. Therefore, he is used to cost overruns and I hope that he is not too concerned about the increase in costs.

Noble Lords said earlier that it is a pity that the costings cannot be more accurate when the projections are made for these major infrastructure projects. However, we all know that, if every single cost were taken into consideration, there might be problems with the land over which the tracks pass, or areas of the country where people are rich enough to afford the best lawyers to insist that the compensation is far higher than was first envisaged. If a project were put forward on that basis, it would never get past the Treasury’s preposterous regulations.

The noble Lord, Lord Birt, and to a certain extent the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, talked about road and rail infrastructure costs. It was pointed out how differently we treat these projects. Up and down the country at present, we are building what are known as smart motorways. They are not particularly smart if you break down on one of them but that is the name that they have been given. I have been in your Lordships’ House for 15 years and I spent a considerable number in the other place as well, but I do not recollect us ever having any debate in either House about smart motorways. These are major infrastructure projects which, as I far as I am aware, have never been subjected to the sort of critical analysis that rail projects face at present.

We all know the outcome of smart motorways: there will be even more traffic on our motorways. It is a proven fact that the money spent on modernising our road network results in more traffic, although not just this Government but successive Governments have always talked about congestion and pollution and what we can do to combat them. What the Conservative Party has done to combat them, as well as building smart motorways, is to freeze fuel duty for the last decade or so at an estimated cost of £50 billion. Now, it is said that it will reduce fuel duty in the run-up to the election—a complete coincidence, of course —and that will generate even more traffic. For that £50 billion or £60 billion, which will be the eventual cost, we could have built the infrastructure for HS2 twice over.

I seek to make one further point before I sit down. I understand that the Liberal party—although neither of its spokespeople have mentioned this—is looking at demanding that HS2 starts in the north of England rather than where it is due to start. I do not know whether that will be official policy. I read it in a newspaper, so it cannot be right, but that is what I have heard. I just caution against that and urge the Liberal Democrats to look at it again. In the same magazine there is a long article by a gentleman by the name of Mr William Barter, a former senior railwayman. He talks about the difficulties of that approach and what it would do to the existing train service.

I end as I started. I have always believed in this great project. I wish that we could have fewer reviews, but regardless of Brexit and whether or not there is a general election, the sooner it is under way and completed, the better.