HS2 Cancellation and Network North

Rob Butler Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) on securing this debate.

I stood for election in 2019 in complete opposition to HS2. As soon as I arrived in Parliament, I worked hard with colleagues in the HS2 review group to try to get the entire project scrapped by the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but sadly we were unsuccessful. Since the approval of phase 1, I have been tireless in trying to secure better mitigation for my constituents and in holding HS2 Ltd to account when things go wrong, which I am afraid to say they do regularly.

My Aylesbury constituency has been perpetually, permanently blighted by the construction of phase 1 of HS2. I am very pleased that many colleagues here in Westminster Hall today will not suffer such blight with the construction of phase 2. From Fairford Leys to Walton Court, and from Stoke Mandeville to Wendover, construction is causing untold misery for residents, with noise, traffic and daily disruption to everyday life.

At last, in October, we were given a glimmer of hope that we would finally receive some tangible benefit from HS2 through the cancellation of phase 2. Two projects in my constituency appeared on the list of 80 projects that were part of the Network North plan: the south-east Aylesbury link road and the eastern link road. Those two projects are critical to the future success of the town. They will ease congestion, reduce air pollution and help to spur economic prosperity, which are all things that we can all agree are good for our communities. They are essential to support the huge amount of house building that we have already seen in and around Aylesbury and the thousands more houses that will be constructed in the coming years. I am very grateful to the roads Minister, who met me to discuss the roads projects and promised to help me get them over the line.

However, recent communication from the Department for Transport has caused me alarm and made me think that in fact the money for those projects may not be given to my area in the way that we were led to believe, if it is given at all. That would be wholly unfair and profoundly wrong, given the blight that we have suffered and continue to suffer.

Today I seek reassurance from the Minister present, who knows Aylesbury well, that he will do everything in his power to make sure that the two original projects in Aylesbury outlined on that list of 80 projects for Network North will indeed be delivered in their entirety in the Aylesbury constituency. Ultimately, the simple fact of the matter is that the longer we delay unlocking those funds for what are essential projects that will one day have to be delivered, the more the costs will escalate and the bigger the final bill will be. That would benefit absolutely no one. My town is absolutely gridlocked because of this white elephant of a project. We desperately need our share of the money that is being saved by the decision to cancel phase 2A of HS2. The people of Aylesbury deserve absolutely nothing less.

I would just say that we are not opposed to infrastructure at all in Buckinghamshire. Indeed, many people locally support the Aylesbury link of East West Rail. That is the railway that we want in Buckinghamshire, but it always seems to be just out of our grasp. I remind the Minister that we are very keen to see it getting the go-ahead; I seek any undertaking on that that he might be able to give me. We want railways that are right for our communities, right for our society and right for our economy.

[Several hon. Members rose—]