High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Michael Fabricant Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr McLoughlin]

I will give way to my hon. Friend but then I will want to make some progress.

[Michael Fabricant]

I hope my right hon. Friend can assure me that he has not got anything in his folder about what I might have said yesterday. He spoke earlier about the importance of global trade and of HS2. Does he not accept that it is extraordinary that with this design, HS2, which I do not disagree with in principle, does not have a link with the channel ports, with HS1 or even with whichever airport will be chosen by his own Department to have the third runway?

[Mr McLoughlin]

As for notes on what my hon. Friend might have said yesterday, I do not think I have enough pages in the Department for what he might have tweeted out yesterday. I will address why I think this is the right scheme a little later, because I want also to talk about the links between—

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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]

On that very point, will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mary Creagh]

Yes.

[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.

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[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—

[Michael Fabricant]

In my constituency! Perhaps they should pay a toll.

[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.

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[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

Five years ago, I would have thought it incredible that I would probably be in the same Lobby as the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), not united in some unholy alliance, but instead united in opposing my Government’s Bill. This, for me, is a first. Five years ago, the leader of the Conservative party, now the Prime Minister, supported HS2 in principle, and so did I. Five years ago, my right hon. Friend said that the Adonis route was profoundly wrong—that its implementation would be damaging to the environment, damaging to local areas that could otherwise enjoy peace and quiet, and damaging to the nation as a whole. Yet here we are, five years on, with the Government supporting the original Adonis plan. I find that quite extraordinary.

I totally agree with the arguments for HS2. There is a major capacity problem. Every day some 5,000 to 10,000 people arrive at Euston standing, because there are just not enough seats on the trains to let them sit. However, I agree with the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras and, indeed, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, when he argues that there is not enough capacity at present for those disembarking at Euston to travel across London. How on earth can that be sustained when, in addition, something like 30 trains an hour will be arriving from the midlands and the north when High Speed 2 is completed?

I believe that the implementation of HS2 is deeply flawed. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) has already pointed out, the promises of breakfast in Brum and lunch in Paris with a through route have all gone. There will be no connection between the midlands and the north and HS1 and the channel tunnel. Meanwhile, the Department for Transport, which is supposed to be an integrated, joined-up Department, has, quite rightly, commissioned the review by Sir Howard Davies of which airport is to be the main airport for London. We will not know its conclusions until after the next general election, yet HS2’s route is already fixed and we do not know which airport it will link to. Indeed, it probably will not link with any airport, like HS1. This is a deeply flawed system.

What about compensation, a topic that has been raised by colleagues? What about constituents in Lichfield who are facing spoil heaps for five or six years, as all the soil from the tunnels in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham is transported up to Lichfield to support giant viaducts that we are going to have built? Where will that be stored? In Lichfield. There will be no compensation because the spoil dumps are being regarded as temporary only. Believe me, for someone who is 70 or 80 years old and living next to a temporary mountain, with dumper trucks running by every day, five or seven years can be a lifetime. There should be compensation, and I hope that the hybrid Bill Committee will consider that. I have already talked about the problems of disembarking at Euston and homes being blighted, but what about the arbitrary distances? Beyond a certain distance, there will be no compensation. Absolutely no account has been taken of the local topography; whether someone will be affected by HS2 will depend on whether there are hills or the land is flat.

So it is that, with the greatest regret and for the first time in my membership of this House, I am going to support the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham and vote against my own party on such an important piece of legislation. I hope—I say this for the benefit of the Whip—that it will be the last time I do so.

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[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

As we discuss the Bill, my primary concern is the negative economic impact that HS2 will have on the Welsh economy, as outlined in the independent KPMG report. As things stand, the UK Government will use the general taxation pool, which includes taxes from Wales, to fund an England-only railway without a fair share for my country. HS2 therefore raises a basic issue of fairness in how large infrastructure projects are funded and how public money is distributed in the UK.

Plaid Cymru has fought a three-year campaign for a fair share of HS2 spend for Wales through equivalent Barnett consequentials. One of my first contributions in the House was on the need for Wales to receive its fair share of the many billions of pounds projected to be spent on this project. This issue will be a key dividing line during the Westminster election next year, because it proves that only Plaid Cymru can be trusted to protect the Welsh national interest on one of the biggest spending decisions of this Parliament.

Many parliamentary questions, and freedom of information requests to the Welsh Government, have revealed a complete lack of correspondence or representations from the Welsh Government to the UK Government on the issue of consequentials. Welsh Government spokespersons are for ever quoted in the Western Mail and on the BBC as saying that HS2 is a matter for the UK Government and is a UK-wide project. I remember discussing this issue with Jim Pickard of the Financial Times, and I got the impression that he was similarly confused by the Welsh Government’s approach. It is funny what can happen to a Welsh Government position following a call from a journalist on the Financial Times of London. Within days, the Labour Government had done a U-turn, although it seems that they had already received confirmation that they would receive a consequential of £35 million for 2015-16 for spending on HS2. That is despite the Welsh Government not making any representations. According to recent parliamentary questions, they still have not made any representations.

After the Welsh Government announced the consequential money, there was huge confusion between the two Governments. I am happy to say that, on this occasion, the Finance Minister Jane Hutt was not wrong. The Treasury admitted that it had made a mistake. However, it also said that no further consequentials would be paid in further spending rounds and that it was minded to claw back the money paid in error.

Anyone who takes even a cursory glance at a map can see that the HS2 network will be an England-only project. It will connect Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and, of course, the dark star, London. Over last summer, it became apparent that the cost of HS2 was beginning to spiral. Treasury estimates doubled to nearly £50 billion, which should by rights mean a consequential of £2.5 billion for Wales. Many independent analysts put the project’s costs as high as £80 billion, which would nearly double the consequential for Wales to £4 billion. That is important for two reasons. HS2 will dominate all transport infrastructure spend for a generation. It will be the only game in town. Anyone not on the route will lose out. A fair share for Wales would enable us to revolutionise the transport infrastructure in our country.

The UK Government have a terrible record of investment in Welsh transport. It is nowhere near the 5% that our population share demands. Recent evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee suggested that the long-term historical trend for transport investment in Wales was between only 2% and 2.5%. Network Rail infrastructure investment in Wales stands at only 0.7%. The KPMG report suggests that Wales will be hit hard: Bridgend will lose out on £11 million, Cardiff on £71 million, Carmarthenshire on £12 million, Port Talbot on £1 million, Newport on £37 million, Swansea on £16 million, Monmouthshire on £8 million, Pembrokeshire on £9 million and Powys on £6 million. Outside the major cities and towns, south Wales central will lose out on £29 million and south-east Wales on £19 million. The annual economic loss to the south Wales economy will be more than £220 million.

[Michael Fabricant]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Wales needs a powerful voice to make a real impact on the Department for Transport? Does he also agree that Carwyn Jones, so powerful in Wales, has no voice here in Westminster?

[Jonathan Edwards]

That is an extremely valid intervention. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point.

Evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee indicates that as a result of HS2 there will be 24,000 fewer jobs in Wales by 2040, yet the Labour Government have apparently done a U-turn. What has been most interesting about the debate from my perspective and the Welsh perspective was the shadow Secretary of State’s response to my question when she said that even in the event of a Labour Government following the next election, she could not commit to Barnett consequentials on HS2. I am sure that message will be heard loud and clear in Wales.

The moral and political argument for a fair share for Wales is clear. That is why we will be voting against the Bill and in favour of the reasoned amendment unless there are guarantees that my country will get fairness in future comprehensive spending reviews.