Railways: High Speed 2

Lord Vinson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Vinson]

I apologise for arriving late, but the overrun rather threw the timetable out.

I am not scheduled to speak, but, as a businessman and having carefully followed the debates on the whole of HS2, it does seem to me to be a folly of the first order. Our country is desperate for new infrastructure development, not only in railways but particularly in roads and elsewhere. This project will not begin to return any money for 15 years, because it cannot until it is running. It has undoubtedly been underestimated already as they have left out the cost of the trains, which are an integral part of the project. It will mean spending £30 billion to £40 billion on something that will yield a negative return, because there is no high-speed train or railway in the world that runs at a profit. It will either have very high fares to try to justify it, or be heavily subsidised.

This country needs that £40 billion spent now over the next 10 years on improving our road bottlenecks, where 95% of our freight will always travel because freight cannot go by high-speed trains; it is a fantasy to think that it can. We have bottlenecks and pinch points on existing railways that could be opened up for a fraction of the money at issue here. I am repeating many of the hugely sensible arguments that have been put up against this vanity project. I hope that it can be delayed in every possible way. I hope that the Treasury will come to the conclusion that it is far too expensive. I hope that sanity will reign so that this money can be deflected to national projects that will give an economic return. Roads, for example, give a huge economic return. It is no good saying, “All people have got to travel by train”. They will travel by car to reach the high-speed trains and there will be massive congestion around the new rail terminals that are going to be put in place.

It is a fantasy project. Nowhere in the world do high-speed trains pay. We have very short distances in this country. For the longer distances—for example, from London to Edinburgh—airlines will always be able to offer fares at one-quarter of the price of train fares for the simple reason that air travel has no highway costs. It has terminal costs, but no highway costs. That is what is makes air travel inherently cheaper over longer distances.

On all these factors, I hope that the Government will reconsider. I hope that they will find a good excuse for dodging their present plans and an admirable reason for postponing, delaying and then cancelling this fantasy project that will bring no economic benefit at all to the British Isles.