High Speed Rail (West Midlands - Crewe) Bill (First sitting)

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th June 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Ms Ghani]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Of course local communities want to protect their local heritage sites, and of course we will work with local authorities and Historic England. HS2 Ltd has an extensive community engagement team that works on the ground, and there are also opportunities to petition at the appropriate points in the Bill’s passage.

The listed buildings affected are listed in tables 1 and 2 in schedule 18, and the disapplications or modifications apply only to those buildings. Schedule 19 allows a person authorised by the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England to enter land where there is a scheduled monument to observe or advise on the carrying out of works to ensure the protection of monuments. Similar provisions were included in the Crossrail Act 2008 and the phase 1 Act of 2017.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is always a cause of dismay when our built heritage is affected by new development. The provisions in the clause are very wide ranging. The Minister could consider better safeguards to further ensure that our country’s built heritage is protected during the construction of this vital national infrastructure project. In particular, perhaps a presumption against demolition could be considered where practical. Indeed, the dismantling and relocation of items of built heritage, where practical, might be presumed a better solution. If that were not possible for the entire building, certainly key features of interest could be dismantled, preserved, salvaged or relocated where appropriate.

On the inspection and observation of works, schedule 18 merely indicates that there will be an opportunity for English Heritage to inspect the works, but there is no obligation on it to do so. That could be tightened by the inclusion of an obligation to ensure that all heritage assets affected are inspected and recorded, including by laser scanning to provide a highly accurate 3D model of any assets that are destroyed as a result of the project. That would be a far better way to safeguard the built heritage of our country as a result of the project.

[Matt Rodda]

I concur with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East. I know he has a deep personal commitment to this issue, as he represents a constituency in which a wonderful historic building suffered serious damage.

We take this issue seriously, and I urge the Government to take great care and look at some specific pieces of heritage that might be affected by the developments, such as the historic mileposts, the 1867 rail building at the important historic rail town of Crewe, and the grade II listed farm houses in the line of the route. It would be ironic if wonderful railway architecture from previous generations was damaged or completely destroyed by the building of HS2. It would be so much better if whatever possible could be preserved for the benefit of future generations. We hope the Government will look further into that and consider possible mitigation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Rodda]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; it is nice to have a colleague from Berkshire Labour intervening on me. The Government need to be responsible with these very large sums of public money, and it is deeply disappointing that they have fallen well short at times.

The words of the Public Accounts Committee are worth considering:

“a shocking waste of taxpayers’ money”

is a severe condemnation of the Government. There have been many other allegations about HS2’s potentially not being well planned or managed. Ensuring that HS2 secures value for money is essential if we are to retain public support for the project. There should be no blank cheque.

[Mr Sweeney]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the general principles of HS2 and the need to ensure that the project delivers maximum economic benefit to the nation, including industrial skills and job opportunities. When we look at how the Treasury assesses such projects, we see that very little consideration is given to how much value is created in the wider economy, particularly through industrial development. In my own constituency, the Caledonian railway works in Springburn faces closure. Would it not have been possible to utilise the supply chain opportunities of HS2 to ensure that highly skilled jobs in the railway industry are supported and maximised through the project’s supply chain?

[Matt Rodda]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and particularly for pointing out the importance of the supply chain. I will add that the value of apprenticeships, degree qualifications and other opportunities for young people linked to the programme should be first and foremost in the Government’s mind when they come to look at the supply chain.

Returning briefly to clause 61, essentially it says that there is potential for uncapped Government expenditure, leaving open the possibility of no upper limit on the costs of HS2. Will the Minister update the Committee on the latest cost estimate, and does she believe that the project will be delivered at cost?

[Ms Ghani]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that we are here to scrutinise the Bill line by line, but I welcome the opportunity to remind everybody of the importance of HS2. Of course, it is a crucial project, linking eight of our 10 greatest cities. Supportive comments have been made recently by everybody involved, including the Mayors of Manchester and Liverpool and the leader of Leeds City Council, who have been watching very closely. They are northern, locally elected leaders who are waiting for HS2 to roll through their communities, because they fully understand not only that, at its peak, it will provide work for 30,000 people—most of those jobs being outside London—but its value for money and how it will smash the north-south divide, encourage our communities to come even closer together and force investment in rail infrastructure in the north of England for more than 100 years. This is a key infrastructure, social and economic project for our country.

[Mr Sweeney]

The Minister notes that there is an opportunity to close the north-south divide, but the project’s scope does not include extending the infrastructure to Scotland, to include Glasgow, Britain’s third-largest city. That is critical to the success of this project, and I hope that in the next phase of the HS2 programme the Minister will consider extending the railway all the way to Glasgow, because although Glasgow will benefit from reduced journey times to and from London, the journey times to and from Manchester will actually increase, which is detrimental to the Glaswegian economy.

[Ms Ghani]

I look forward to joining the hon. Gentleman in the Committee and the Chamber, and I welcome his support for the next phase, but let us deal with this Bill in these few short sittings.

We know that this project creates jobs and supports apprenticeships. There are already 2,000 businesses in the chain, and two colleges are supporting it. I do not want to move too far away from the clause, but a valid argument was made about the rest of the Government’s investment in the north. We know that Northern Powerhouse Rail is based on HS2 infrastructure, which is why this Bill, these clauses and this line are so important. We are investing more than £2.5 billion in a rolling programme to upgrade the railway between Manchester, Leeds and York, and the great north rail project is investing more than £1 billion by 2022. I have never seen HS2 as an either/or project; we need to do both. This is a great investment in the north of our country. There is no upper limit. There is just one budget, which is the budget that HS2 must hold itself to. It must also hold itself to the schedules.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 61 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 62

Commencement and short title

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.