High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill Debate
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Mary Creagh
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High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill
Mary Creagh Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I begin by congratulating the Secretary of State on bringing the Bill before us, and I would like to thank him for the patience and generosity with which he has treated us today and for the cross-party approach he has taken on this vital national issue.
Michael Fabricant
Does she share just a teensy-weensy bit of my unease that where there is a love-in and a cross-party approach, it invariably means that the parties are getting something wrong?
Mary Creagh
Well, I do not share anything teensy-weensy or of any other size relating to the hon. Gentleman—[Laughter.] I think we will leave it at that. To give the hon. Gentleman a straight answer, I think that it is important to work co-operatively across the House on issues of national significance The debate that we have had has shown that the vision is important, but also that the concerns and the case for mitigation must be listened to. If we are elected next year, I hope that that will continue during the construction of the line.
High Speed 2 will cut congestion on the railways, better connect our cities and help to deliver a one nation economic recovery, which is why Labour will support the Bill tonight. Its 335 miles will be the longest and most ambitious piece of rail infrastructure to be built in this or the last century. Managed properly, HS2 has the power to transform the economic geography of our country. It will build up our great cities and bring them closer together; it will connect people to each other, to work and to leisure; and it will help to rebalance the economy, creating new skilled jobs and apprenticeships in every nation and region of our economy.
Mr Kevan Jones
My hon. Friend says that the project will link the cities and regions of our country. Does she include the north-east in that?
Mary Creagh
I certainly do. The full Y line will terminate 14 miles south of York so that the classic compatible network trains will be able to run from the north-east—directly from Newcastle—and join the high-speed line outside York, significantly cutting the journey time to Old Oak Common in London and to those intermediate cities of Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham and Birmingham. There will be significant benefits to the north-east.
Paul Farrelly
Given the urge for more speed in the Higgins report, what comfort can my hon. Friend give to the people of north Staffordshire who, as HS2 stands, face the prospect of having only three direct services a day to London from Stoke-on-Trent station, instead of more than 30?
Mary Creagh
It is too early to write the railway timetable for 2026, but when phase 1 of the line is open people from my hon. Friend’s constituency will be able to get on a classic train at Stoke-on-Trent, go down the west coast main line and join the high-speed line at the Handsacre junction—
Mary Creagh
We will not be paying any tolls to go through Lichfield. Journey times to London will be significantly cut. One of the benefits that has perhaps been undersold is the connectivity that HS2 will bring even to those cities not directly connected. Given the anxieties in Stoke-on-Trent and the key decision to be made on Crewe, when will the Secretary of State bring forward his response to phase 2? It would be helpful to know his thinking.
Mr Redwood
What has changed between last autumn and today to move the Labour party from thinking that HS2 offers very poor value for money to thinking that it is a great financial project?
Mary Creagh
David Higgins and Simon Kirby, the former Network Rail chief engineer, have been appointed to the project, and the Higgins review has shown where costs can be brought down. The key risk to the project costs is political delay. We have also looked at the strategic alternatives, as we did in government, and we believe that HS2 is the best way to move to the low-carbon transport infrastructure that our country needs if we are to meet our climate change emissions targets.
Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady accept that in addition to improving journey times for people living in Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire and Staffordshire, an even greater benefit will be the release of capacity on the west coast main line? That will mean that people travelling to London will be able to get seats and will have a better journey.
Mary Creagh
Absolutely. It will also be a key issue for my right hon. and hon. Friends from Coventry, because one of the pinch points on the west coast main line is the crush when commuting from Coventry into Birmingham in the rush hour.
Andrew Bridgen
Can the shadow Secretary of State confirm that the Opposition’s support for HS2 is still contingent on its being delivered for under £50 billion?
Mary Creagh
We will have to see what the Committee delivers as the Bill goes through the Committee process. There are clearly issues to do with the High Speed 1 and High Speed 2 link, which has now been taken out of the Bill. Some of the issues that the Committee will consider will be debated more fully tomorrow.
A Bill of this size and importance will be controversial, and we must debate it properly. A project of this size will affect very many individuals and communities, and the environment. We must minimise the negative impacts wherever possible and deal with the utmost sensitivity with the people whose homes are affected.
On the capacity crunch, HS2 will deal with some of these constraints on our railways. Already, thousands of commuters are standing on packed rush hour trains into Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Euston. Last week’s figures from the Office of Rail Regulation showed that the number of rail journeys has more than doubled since 1996. This number will continue to rise, and by 2026 peak demand will be two and a half times the capacity at Euston, twice the capacity at Birmingham New Street, and nearly twice the capacity at Manchester Piccadilly. There is already more demand for train services than there are train paths available on the west coast main line, and by 2024 it will be running at full capacity.
This congestion will have a significant impact on the freight industry and its customers. The west coast main line is the key artery in the Rugby, Daventry and Northampton golden triangle for freight. Over the next decade, passenger constraints will become more serious on the east coast main line and the midland main line. Network Rail’s £38 billion investment programme for the next five years will deliver signalling improvements, platform extensions and some additional services, but those incremental changes will not deal with the looming capacity problem.
Labour Members know from our time in government that major infrastructure takes years to plan and to construct. Many right hon. and hon. Members will remember the Crossrail Bill, which Labour introduced in 2005 and which received Royal Assent in 2008. That railway will open in 2018. Labour in government identified the need for more capacity on London’s railways by the end of this decade, and we acted to deliver it. We must do the same now to build the infrastructure we need to mitigate the looming capacity crunch on our railways.
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
Is the shadow Minister aware that we need 20 paths to take care of increased freight over the next 10 to 15 years, and that our current network cannot supply even one of those paths? Is not that a major reason for arguing for this Bill?
Mary Creagh
Yes, absolutely. Freight has been a Cinderella subject; the focus tends to be on passengers, and that is absolutely right. If we are to achieve the modal shift by getting HGVs off our roads and freight on to trains—that is key in the hon. Gentleman’s area—we have to make sure that freight is able to go on the west coast main line.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
The hon. Lady said that we need to mitigate the worst effects of the railway. Does she accept that as regards ancient woodlands there is no way of mitigating those effects because we cannot replace ancient woodland? According to the Woodland Trust, the preferred route for phase 1 will see the loss of, or damage to, 83 irreplaceable woodlands.
Mary Creagh
I will come to the environmental part of my speech in a moment. I would say to the hon. Lady, as the sole representative of the Green party in Parliament, that her party is in an extraordinary position in voting against what will be the key plank in moving towards a low-carbon transport infrastructure.
Let me turn to reductions in travel times. High Speed 2 will not just increase capacity; it will use the latest high-speed technology to reduce travel times between Scotland, the north, the midlands and London. It will connect with existing railway lines so that from the end of phase 1 direct high-speed services can be operated from Glasgow, Wigan, Preston and Liverpool. [Interruption.] They will go through Lichfield, without a toll. The full scheme will cut journey times from London to Birmingham Curzon Street to 49 minutes, to Sheffield Meadowhall to 69 minutes, and to Leeds to 82 minutes. When both phases are complete, HS2 will link our northern cities, providing new express commuter services between them, as we have seen with High Speed 1 in Kent. That will drive jobs, regeneration and growth across the midlands, the north, Scotland and Wales.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
The hon. Lady mentioned the journey time to Curzon Street, but I am sure she is aware that the journey time from London Euston to Birmingham international will go down to 31 minutes. That will result in an under-utilised runway becoming competitive with some of the London airport runways, which could help relieve congestion in the south-east.
Mary Creagh
That is a very important point. The impact on western Coventry and Birmingham international airport cannot be overstated. When I was 18, the journey time from Coventry to London was two hours, and the £9 billion upgrade has got that down considerably to an hour. To reduce it still further would be a phenomenal achievement in one’s own lifetime.
Mr Sheerman
My hon. Friend and I have been parliamentary neighbours and friends for a long time, so I say in a very positive spirit that I started off, as the Secretary of State has said, supporting HS2 because I thought it would bring power, wealth, activity and jobs to the northern regions, but I have changed my mind because the research increasingly shows that it will suck more power into and give more strength to London and the south-east. Does my hon. Friend share my concerns? The Institute of Economic Affairs raised such questions this morning.
Mary Creagh
I missed that last bit about this morning, but the report we have had and the Treasury analysis show that the benefits will accrue to Yorkshire and west Yorkshire, including my city and my hon. Friend’s town of Huddersfield. One of the key points of the Higgins report is that full investment in east-west rail links across the Pennines is one of the great prizes that HS2 can bring to our area.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
In view of the fact that the French, the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and many other nations have a high-speed link, does my hon. Friend not think it is high time that this country had one? It is about not just those areas that will actually get the link, but interconnecting areas, so people in north Wales and mid-Wales will also benefit from the Crewe link. We have to look at the budget, but surely it is high time to get on with it. That is why people in Wales who do not back everything the Labour party says, such as Professor Stuart Cole, are backing it.
Mary Creagh
The benefits of increased connectivity for north Wales cannot be overstated, given the potential for new railway links to towns and cities that currently have no direct rail link to London, and I will now address that in greater detail.
HS2 frees up capacity on the existing network. The full route will provide up to 18 long-distance train services into London every hour, which is the equivalent of a new green motorway. It will separate long-distance trains from local commuter services and freight and free up capacity on the network. That free capacity will bring new commuter services into London from areas of significant housing growth, including Milton Keynes, Luton, Northampton, Peterborough and Corby. The free capacity could also provide more direct, long-distance services to London from places such as Blackpool, Shrewsbury and Bradford.
Jonathan Edwards
The Labour Government in Wales changed their position on calling for equivalent Barnett consequentials following a call from Jim Pickard in the Financial Times asking why they were not making the same case as Plaid Cymru. The financing decisions on HS2 will be made during the next comprehensive spending review, when I suppose the hon. Lady would hope to be making such decisions as Secretary of State for Transport. Will she therefore give a guarantee that, should the Labour party form the next UK Government, Wales will get a fair share?
Mary Creagh
I understand that the pressing issue in south Wales in particular at the moment is the electrification of the Cardiff valley lines. I would hope that that is at the top of everybody’s in-tray to try to sort that out, because there seems to have been some sort of miscommunication, to put it charitably.
Mary Creagh
No. I am not a Government Minister, so I have not seen it. The hon. Lady will have to ask her colleague the Secretary of State to share its contents with her.
Mary Creagh
That is a decision for the Government and they have taken it. Perhaps the hon. Lady should have put that question to the Secretary of State.
I want Sir David Higgins and his team to look carefully at how High Speed 2 integrates with our national strategic road network to minimise travel disruption during construction and operations. Network Rail’s future investment plans must be aligned to maximise benefits to the north. We need an integrated transport system for the UK.
As the Bill proceeds through Parliament, Labour will continue to hold the Government to account to keep costs down. Across the country, our constituents face a cost of living crisis. In this time of austerity, it was right for my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor to call the Government to account for their mismanagement of this project. We know that construction costs in the UK are higher than for comparable projects elsewhere in Europe. They must be rigorously controlled.
Let us look at how the project has been managed. The Government inherited a detailed plan for HS2 from the previous Labour Government, but Labour’s brainchild has been sadly neglected. Four years of delays and mismanagement have caused costs to rise. First, the Government split the project into two phases for financial reasons, which has delayed the benefits of the line to the midlands and the north. Secondly, their review of strategic alternatives took 18 months, and costs have continued to rise as time scales have slipped. Thirdly, their initial consultation on property compensation was a lesson in incompetence: the process had to be rerun after a High Court judge ruled that it was
“so unfair as to be unlawful”.
Fourthly, the Government did not launch the consultation on phase 2 of the route until July 2013; yet it was being worked on when we were in power three years previously, so what was the hold-up?
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
My hon. Friend rightly says that the Opposition will be looking at the costs. If they keep rising, at what stage would she, on behalf of the Labour party, say, “No, this has gone too high, and is sucking out too much money from the rest of the railway network”?
Mary Creagh
We have been very clear that there is not a blank cheque for this project. The Select Committee will obviously look at the parts of the Bill, as it goes through it and hears the petitioning process, but a very clear budget is set out for the project from now until 2020. There will be annual reports on the budget under our amendments to the paving Bill. We look forward to receiving the first report from the Government.
The Transport Secretary has admitted that the legislation will not be passed before the 2015 election, as was apparent to all Members, so his Government have missed their target on that. It is right that there is proper scrutiny and ample opportunity for the Select Committee to examine every complaint and comment thoroughly, but there must be no more Government delays.
I want the Secretary of State or the Minister who replies to the debate to tell us when we can expect the Secretary of State’s response on the phase 2 route to ensure that the north, the north-east, the north-west and Scotland reap the full benefits from HS2 quickly. What impact does the Secretary of State anticipate the construction of the line will have on the Great Western franchising process, which is due in 2016?
On workers memorial day, we remember all workers who have been killed at work, particularly in constructing our transport infrastructure across the decades. In particular, we remember the worker who was recently killed on the Crossrail project, and send our condolences to his family and friends. Our ambition, which I am sure is shared in all parts of the House, is that this railway is free from fatalities and serious injuries.
Mr Redwood
Is the hon. Lady at all worried that the business case says that load factors on the west coast main line will be only 31% in 2037, and that there will have to be cuts of £8.3 billion to non-HS2 services to try to keep costs under control?
Mary Creagh
The right hon. Gentleman refers to a part of the report that does not immediately spring to mind—I have not perhaps digested it and kept it in mind as thoroughly as he has done—but there is broad consensus across the parties that the project is the right thing to do for the nation, and I hope that we can proceed on that basis.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
As a Yorkshire MP who is now behind the project at full throttle, will the hon. Lady commit herself to selling it in Yorkshire—to her council and beyond—to ensure that we make the most of this project for our region and every city in it?
Mary Creagh
Absolutely. It is right for Wakefield council to represent the views of local residents. The costs of HS2 are significant, but I believe, as does the hon. Gentleman, that the benefits are great.
As I said earlier, we want a one nation economic recovery to rebalance the growth across sectors, nations and regions. A long-term high-speed rail investment programme presents huge opportunities for the UK’s design, engineering, construction and manufacturing sectors. It offers a secure future for the railway supply chain and will showcase the UK’s expertise in the global high-speed market. The Olympics, Thameslink and Crossrail have transformed travel in London. It is time for the wider UK economy and society to benefit from the transformational opportunities that a major infrastructure project brings. The first phase will bring more than 40,000 jobs: 9,000 jobs in construction, 1,500 permanent jobs in operation and maintenance, and 30,000 jobs at Old Oak Common, Euston and Birmingham.
Mr Straw
I entirely support the case that my hon. Friend is making. Would she like to remind sceptics like the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) that as much money is being spent on a single railway station that serves his constituents, namely Reading, as is being spent on the electrification of services across the north-west?
Mary Creagh
That was an excellent point, well made. My right hon. Friend has triggered my memory. There has been £6 billion for Reading, £6 billion for Thameslink and £18 billion for Crossrail—pretty soon there will be enough for a high-speed rail network. I have read about the debates over the disruption that Crossrail has caused. Tottenham Court Road station was closed for two years, yet the centre of our global capital was prepared to put up with that because it realised the benefits that it would bring through reduced journey times. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) has the freight flyover at Reading station, as well as a couple of new platforms and re-signalling work. He will no doubt enjoy the faster journey times to London. I would like the same for my constituents and the constituents of the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith).
I wonder when the Government will be able to report on the vocational training elements of phase 1, which were provided for by Labour’s amendment to the paving Bill. We want to see the annual report and to see what is happening. We welcome the new further education college that will train the next generation of young women and men to become rail engineers. Members on both sides of the House have been bidding to host the college. I look forward to hearing where and when it will open.
Sir David Higgins’s report called on the Government to be more ambitious in the development of Euston station. The iconic new developments at King’s Cross and St Pancras show how stations can transform and regenerate their local areas. I hope that that will also happen at Reading. Euston is potentially central London’s biggest regeneration site. Its redevelopment must provide new social housing to tackle the acute housing crisis in Camden, as well as retail and office space. It would be a disaster if it followed the housing developments in the city centre that are sold off-plan to foreign investors, creating ghost towns, rather than going to local people.
I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) and Councillor Sarah Hayward, the leader of Camden council, will continue to battle to get the best deal for their community. It has been inspirational to talk to my right hon. Friend about the life sciences hub that he wants to see around the Francis Crick Institute, which is due to open near Euston in 2015. To have the tech hub at Old Street and a life sciences hub at Euston would be an enormous boost for young people and jobs in his constituency.
Frank Dobson
I welcome what my hon. Friend has said. Will she bear it in mind that the investment in the Francis Crick Institute, which is a biomedical research centre, is just over £300 million? I believe that it represents a bigger contribution to the future of this country than spending £50 billion on a railway.
Mary Creagh
Perhaps I will break the consensus now. My right hon. Friend’s constituents will benefit from the investment in Crossrail and Thameslink, which will improve London’s transportation system. I gently say to him that his might be a slightly London-centric view. I hope that HS2 will be of benefit to every nation, region and sector of our country’s economy.
We welcome the removal of the HS1-HS2 link from the Bill, which would have caused huge disruption to Camden. Removing it will save £700 million from the budget. We also welcome David Higgins’s proposals for a coherent transport plan for the north, which has been historically underfunded, and for proper east-west rail links between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull. Our cities must plan and are planning how to maximise the regeneration and growth opportunities around the stations.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) and I have formed the new all-party parliamentary group on integrated transport strategy. We are about to do a piece of work that will show that we can start building phase 2 in the north as well as phase 1. Does the hon. Lady have a view on the sequencing of the building?
Mary Creagh
Tempting though it is to offer up my words of complete ignorance on the best way to build a railway, I will leave the matter to Sir David Higgins, who has a bit more experience in the area than me. I would certainly welcome anything that brought the benefits to the midlands and the north quicker, but he is the expert on delivering such large-scale projects.
The transport authorities must prepare to ensure that regional towns and cities reap the benefits of HS2. Railway engineering and advanced construction skills should be a national priority. We want more UK businesses, large and small, to win the large contracts. I hope that in his conclusion the Minister will tell us how he will support cities and businesses to make the most of the scheme.
Mary Creagh
There will be more frequent train services, not just to London but to the major cities of the north, and there will potentially be better east-west rail links in the north for people who want to visit friends and family on the other side of the Pennines.
More capacity on the existing network means more space for rail freight. That will take lorries off the motorways, reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality. The full network should reduce the number of flights from Manchester and Scotland to London. HS2 will help us to move towards a sustainable, low-carbon transport system.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend spoke about flights from Manchester airport to London. At the moment, taking a train from my constituency, which contains Manchester airport, to London takes two hours and 24 minutes. When HS2 is completed, the time will be brought down to 59 minutes. Is that good for the regional economy and for Manchester?
Mary Creagh
I knew exactly how long that journey took, because I looked at train times during my hon. Friend’s by-election campaign and thought that it was a very slow journey. HS2 will be transformational, because it will bring Manchester and London very close together. It will also create a modal shift away from aeroplanes. For any journey that takes about three and a half hours, passengers will be taken out of aeroplanes and on to high-speed rail. That is obviously of benefit and will help us to meet our climate change emissions targets.
High-speed rail offers some of the lowest carbon emissions per passenger kilometre. The emissions are significantly lower than those from cars and planes. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a green spine that links our great cities and to open up wildlife corridors. I was inspired by the Wildlife Trusts’ vision for Low Speed 2, which is a green network of cycleways and footpaths along the line that would connect communities with nature and each other. We must learn from and build on the excellent biodiversity work that has been done by Crossrail. It has worked with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and others to create new habitats for bird life at Wallasea island, using spoil from Crossrail’s tunnelling that was carried down the Thames on barges.
Caroline Lucas
The carbon benefits that the hon. Lady is talking about will happen only if HS2 is responsible for a modal shift away from high-carbon sources such as cars and aeroplanes. Only 11% of passengers are likely to make that modal shift. HS2 is therefore about new journeys, so it will not cause the carbon reductions that she claims.
Mary Creagh
As our country grows and as people travel more, there will be new journeys. One hundred and fifty years ago, people thought that going at 3 mph on a canal through the Standedge tunnel between Huddersfield and Manchester was a marvellously fast way of getting goods from the port of Hull to the port of Liverpool and vice versa, but today we expect a little more. We built the M62, the nation’s highest motorway, which provides a stunning drive from Leeds to Manchester and Liverpool. That is fantastic, but if we end up with transport links that cut down journey times and that get people out of their cars and on to trains, it will be of huge benefit.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Given that 80% of the London to Paris travel market is by train not plane, does the hon. Lady agree that the channel tunnel demonstrates that if transport links are good enough, people will shift the way they travel?
Mary Creagh
Absolutely; people have a tendency to work it out all by themselves. Particularly in this era of the internet and smartphone apps, I am sure that people will be pretty cute about figuring out the best railway and greenest journey that they can make. I do not share the scepticism of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about whether people will shift. However, she also mentioned ancient woodland, and HS2 should set the gold standard in environmental mitigation and in promoting plant and animal life along the route. We will hold the Government and HS2 to account to reduce its environmental impact.
The Secretary of State mentioned climate resilience, and we saw in the devastation of the Great Western main line at Dawlish and the flooding near Maidenhead in February the direct impact of climate change on our transport networks, and on communities and businesses in the south-west and Wales.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
I will support the Government tonight in the Lobby. The hon. Lady talks about the north and London and so on, but does she recognise that this whole debate has very little impact on the west country? [Interruption.] We have just had the most devastating effects through losing our railway line, and it is important that while we proceed we ensure that the west country is not forgotten in the whole story, so that we can deliver growth too.
Mary Creagh
Absolutely. [Interruption.] I pay tribute to the Network Rail staff whom I visited out by Reading and who worked around the clock in difficult circumstances to open the route—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Lady, but there is a low level of conversation going on around the Chamber. This is an important debate. If Members wish to have conversations, by all means they can leave the Chamber to do so. If they are in the Chamber, they should allow the hon. Lady a fair crack of the whip.
Mary Creagh
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) who have continued, along with the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile), to raise the need for resilient transport links in the south-west. I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that his Government previously promised his community £31 million of funding for rail resilience works, including at Cowley bridge outside Exeter—money that failed to appear in last year’s autumn statement and which was brought forward only after the devastation at Dawlish in February this year. However, he makes the important point that today’s vote is not about choosing between HS2 and other rail projects, and his great western main line will be electrified over the next five years. The Government have repeatedly raised expectations in the south-west and said that money will be found to make the transport infrastructure more resilient. Perhaps in his closing remarks the Minister will tell the House when we can expect some of those scenario planning options, which I know Network Rail is acting on—I think there are three scenarios at the moment.
Mary Creagh
I will conclude my remarks, because I know that other Members want to speak.
High-speed rail in Britain is nothing new. The great western line, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was the first high-speed line, taking travellers from London to Oxford in just over an hour in the 1850s—twice as fast as the competition. HS2 follows in Brunel’s great tradition of railway innovation, and we should learn from that ambition for our railways. HS2 is our opportunity to connect our cities, rebalance the economy, and deliver a railway fit for the 21st century. Let us continue to work across the House to realise that ambitious vision for our country.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
It is a delight to follow the impassioned pleas of the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley).
Edward Watkin is buried in St Wilfrid’s churchyard, a few hundred yards from where I live in my constituency. He was a rail engineer, an entrepreneur, an industrialist and a Liberal MP. He designed the Great Central Railway, from Manchester to London, which opened in 1899. It could be described as the high-speed rail line of its day—it was modern, used the European gauge and brought down the journey time from the great city of Manchester to the great city of London immensely.
As part of his rail empire, Watkin began to dig the first attempt at a channel tunnel, which has been mentioned by Government Members. He wanted to connect his railway line from Manchester to London and all the way to France. The project was started, but, unfortunately, it was then opposed in this House, because it did not trust the French. Some 120 years later—
Mike Kane
Thank you, Mary. It is ironic that part of HS2 will go along the pathway that Edward Watkin built 120 years ago. It is a further irony that it will pass within metres of his graveyard in my constituency of Wythenshawe and Sale East. That will be a fitting tribute.
As a new Member, I will talk for a second about what I believe the purpose of good public policy to be. It must always be to promote the common good. It must be to create the conditions that allow people, groups and communities to thrive, fulfil their potential and live life more fully. I believe 100% that High Speed 2 will do that.
I served as a young councillor in Manchester under the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). I remember the projects that he started and delivered, and that I supported. He bid for the Olympic games, which was unheard of. He won the Commonwealth games. We built the second runway. We introduced light rail. We brought about regeneration after the IRA bomb just after the change of leadership. I am immensely proud of that. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said, we pulled that city up by its bootstraps in that decade. I was proud to serve on that council under the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton and, subsequently, that of Sir Richard Leese.
With the HS2 line, Manchester and the northern economy can fulfil their potential. We can unleash good public policy for the common good, which will help individuals, groups and societies in northern England to prosper. The line will vastly reduce the time that it takes to travel between Manchester and London from two hours and eight minutes to one hour and eight minutes. As I said in my intervention, the time from Manchester airport to London will go from two hours and 24 minutes to 59 minutes. Manchester airport is the most important air gateway in this country outside the capital. We must imagine the benefits of the economic regeneration that that will bring. In fact, we do not have to imagine the benefits because we know what they will be. An HS2 station at Manchester airport will bring about £500 million of investment per annum and more than 9,000 extra jobs.
We have talked about how to rebalance this nation economically. There was a fascinating programme called “Mind the Gap” by Evan Davis, which was all about clustering. When Daniel Adamson built the Manchester ship canal in 1822, he wanted there to be a northern region that stretched from Liverpool to Hull. If I serve in this Parliament for a long period, that is what I want to see achieved. HS2 is the first stage in creating that northern hub—that second city.