High Speed Rail

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for providing a copy of his statement in advance.

As the Secretary of State was generous enough to say in his foreword to the Government’s Command Paper, which was published today, HS2 is a project that was started by the last Government. Having successfully built HS1, Britain’s first new railway line for more than 100 years, we were determined that the rest of the country, not just the south-east, should benefit from vital investment to increase capacity and reduce journey times on our railway.

I assure the Secretary of State and the House that we are 100% behind this project. We want to see the line built, and we will continue to offer cross-party support, which will include helping to ensure that the necessary legislation reaches the statute book. I know that the Secretary of State faces considerable challenges in securing the support of colleagues on his side of the House. I have spent much of today defending the project in interviews opposite Conservative Members. I hope and assume that the right hon. Gentleman’s lengthy experience as Chief Whip will come in handy when it comes to quelling the rebellions.

The reason why we need to build this new high-speed railway line is clear: capacity. Our existing three main routes between north and south are congested, and in the case of the west coast line, nearly full. If we do not act now, we will face even worse overcrowding. Doing nothing is not an option. Continuing to patch and mend our existing lines is no longer good enough, and will not bring us the major reductions in journey times that HS2 will deliver.

Given the importance of the scheme, I wonder whether the Secretary of State appreciates the level of frustration at the slow progress made so far in the current Parliament. The consultation on the first phase has been botched, not by him, but in his Department. Submissions have been lost, and the Government now face defeat in the courts, which has the potential to take us back to square one on the consultation. The draft route for the second phase was finally set out only today, two and a half years after the election. No legislation has been published. Today’s Command Paper suggests that Royal Assent to the Secretary of State’s first hybrid Bill will not be achieved until some point in 2015, not by the time of the next election as was previously intended. This scheme is too important to be subject either to further delays or to incompetence in the Department for Transport. I hope that the Secretary of State will now do all that he can both to speed up progress and to avoid any further errors.

On the judicial review, will the Secretary of State update the House on when he expects to receive a judgment, and on the impact that a ruling against his Department would have on the plans that he has set out today?

Let me now turn to the specific details of the route announced by the Secretary of State. First, will the right hon. Gentleman think again about his decision to commit himself only to introducing legislation covering the first phase of the line from London to Birmingham in the current Parliament? Of course it is true that a single Bill would need to await completion of the consultation on the second phase of the route, but by introducing the Bill later in this Parliament and carrying it over to the next—as we did with the legislation for the building of Crossrail—we would secure Parliament’s approval for the whole route earlier than we would under the Government’s plans. That would open up the possibility of beginning construction in the north as well as the south, which is something that the Transport Committee has urged the Government to consider.

Secondly, will the Secretary of State look again at the issue of connectivity between HS1 and HS2, which many, including his own party’s Mayor of London and also Transport for London, believe to be totally inadequate? The proposal to make use of an existing part of the North London line looks like a back-of-an-envelope fix that is not focused on the long-term potential for international rail travel. Surely we need to build a dedicated, purpose-built link between HS1 and HS2. I urge him to look at this again.

Thirdly, will the Secretary of State listen carefully to the concerns that he will have heard today about the decision not to connect HS2 with our major city centres in some instances? I appreciate the difficulty, not least in terms of engineering and cost, of taking a new rail line into an existing major rail station and enabling through services, yet the consequences of not doing so are potentially economically to disadvantage city centres and encourage out-of-town development; and passengers losing much of the journey time savings achieved by using the new line as they transfer to get to their city centre destination. I know that there are differing views on this from city to city, and there is no single right answer, but the Secretary of State’s proposals today make it clear that the recommendations are just “initial” recommendations and I hope that that indicates a willingness to continue a dialogue on these issues, not least with the cities themselves.

Finally, will the Secretary of State accept that today’s decision to kick into the long grass how HS2 will connect to Heathrow is a major error? As he knows, our preference, as a result of our policy review, is to take the line direct via Heathrow. That was the Conservative party’s position before the last election and I am sorry that it no longer supports it. However, the Government’s compromise of a spur was at least a recognition of the need to provide a direct link to Heathrow from HS2. Abandoning that today sets back the potential for HS2 to deliver transfer traffic to our hub airport via high-speed rail rather than short-haul flights, an approach that has the potential to free up valuable slots that could be used for new long-haul flights to serve emerging markets.

The Secretary of State says that that decision has been taken because the Davies commission on aviation will not report back before 2015. Surely the answer is not to delay decisions on HS2 but to speed them up on aviation. Will the Government finally accept that 2015 is far too late to have an answer to our longer-term aviation capacity needs? Will he agree to our call for the commission to produce its final report way in advance of 2015, enabling cross-party talks on a way forward that can be put to people at the next election? That would deliver the certainty needed not just for aviation, but on the route for HS2.

I hope that the Secretary of State will consider those four issues in the spirit in which they are raised. We seek to improve the Government’s proposals, because it is vital that we get this right if all the benefits we all seek are to be realised.

[Mr McLoughlin]

May I start by thanking the hon. Lady for the support that she gives, in principle, to the project? I fully accept that HS1 was finished by the previous Government, but if we needed to get into a debating argument, I could say that it was started by the previous Conservative Government, who had the foresight to say how important it would be. Anyone who uses St Pancras station will have seen what a vast difference has been made to that station since HS1. It used to be a station that nobody wanted to go to, but now it is a destination in itself. I wanted to make that particular point first.

The hon. Lady raised a number of points. She said that I will have certain strong voices against me on this side of the House, but I dare say—I know this from some of the letters I have received from Labour Members—there will be some vocal opponents on her side of the House too. We will see how the debate goes, but that is the case. She also asked me to speculate on what might happen in the judicial review. I may have been in the Whips Office for 17 years, but I am not prepared to start speculating from the Dispatch Box on what the courts may or may not say. We will wait to hear what is said, because a judicial review has taken place. I believe that the Government have acted properly in the way this has gone forward, but we will wait to see what happens on that.

The hon. Lady talked about how some cities are disappointed not to have stations directly in the city centre. As I said in my statement, this is the start of the process and not the end of it, but I say to her that HS2 is not just about serving cities; it is about serving the regions, and so this goes a lot wider than just the cities. Some cities will have a station in them, because of the way in which things have been constructed and the way in which we can engineer into them. In certain other areas the engineering is much more difficult and a lot more expensive, but as I have said, we will of course listen. I have engaged with the city leaders—I know that some of them will be disappointed that I have not been able to say to those cities exactly where the route has gone until today—and so that process is there.

The hon. Lady talks about having a greater link between HS1 and HS2, and I am certainly prepared—I have received representations from the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who is sitting directly behind her—to look at how that can be done. However, it is true to say that, even as presently announced, HS2 will be able to serve areas of the continent direct if there is a demand and need for that.

The hon. Lady made the point about Heathrow. The Government have set up a commission to try to get a consensus. We have a welcome consensus on HS2—cross-party consensus on big infrastructure projects is a tremendous advantage because of the time that such projects naturally take. However, it is right to see what the Davies commission says.

The hon. Lady’s final point was to ask whether we could hold the project off and bring the measures together in one Bill. That would lead to a tremendous delay. There would not just be a delay while we consulted, but a delay while the environmental assessment was conducted and consulted on. Far from making the process quicker, it would be delayed; I estimate that it would mean we probably could not have a Bill ready until 2018. I want a Bill to begin its progress in this Parliament. Of course, how the Bill progresses is up to Parliament.