High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill

Robert Largan Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I would have expected nothing less. One thing he has helped to highlight with his question is that under a Labour Government we would have control of the finances, unlike what we are seeing with the Tory mismanagement, where there is a ballooning budget. I wanted to come on to that and his intervention is timely, because it is thanks to the usual Tory mismanagement that we are all accustomed to that this is already a watered-down offering, betraying millions and letting down communities across towns and cities in the north and midlands. The continued slashing of HS2, which was born under a Labour Government more than a decade ago, means it is becoming merely a ghost of its former self. So from this Front Bench, we simply urge the Prime Minister and his Transport Ministers to deliver on their promises and ensure that HS2 is built on time and in full.

[Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about betraying millions. Is the leader of his party —he voted to block HS2—betraying millions in the north?

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[Mr Dhesi]

My hon. Friend has been a firm champion on behalf of his constituents. His views are also echoed by my good friend, the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, with whom I have discussed this project. Many are exasperated by the Government’s lack of ambition for Manchester and the north, which is why Labour is very much in favour of this. We need a solution for Manchester Piccadilly station that enables a future Labour Government to pick up the pieces and to deliver that Northern Powerhouse Rail in full to Bradford and Leeds.

[Robert Largan]

The hon. Gentleman is being most generous. As much as I enjoy being lectured about the north by the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), I know that this Government are putting £96 billion of integrated rail investment into the north and the midlands, compared with pretty much nothing from the last Labour Government.

Let me return to the point the hon. Gentleman made earlier about the leader of his party having a constituency interest. I find it remarkable that he suggests that if something were inconvenient for a small area of north London, the leader of his party would side with that ahead of the north and the midlands.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

I would caution the hon. Lady about making a silly political point, because I think Gateway House was probably built in the late 1960s. I certainly know that, for a period of time before local government reorganisation, Manchester City Council was actually a Conservative-controlled council, so she may well find that Gateway House was built under her party’s watch, if she is not too careful. [Interruption.] As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), who was the leader of Manchester City Council for a very long time, says, for four years Manchester, in the 1960s, was indeed a Conservative council. That is a silly point about a building built over 40 or 50 years ago, but it needs to go.

[Robert Largan]

I think the hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. The point about having a lovely piazza and welcoming people into Manchester is a very good one. Would he agree with me that we also want to see long-awaited improvements at Piccadilly Gardens? We would love to see Manchester City Council pull its finger out and sort out what really lets down my home city. It is an amazing city, and if that is fixed as well, it could make the welcome to Manchester even better.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Again, I am straying far off the issue of High Speed 2, but I actually agree with the hon. Gentleman. I think the current Piccadilly Gardens do nothing to enhance the vision of Manchester, and—as a small-c conservative, I suppose—I would actually like to go back to the old sunken gardens with flowers, as we used to have in those pictures Lowry painted, but we are where we are. Absolutely, I want to see Piccadilly being the gateway to the great city of Manchester, with the kind of street scene we are now seeing around Albert Square and the town hall, which is absolutely what can be done with really good streetscaping and landscaping.

To return to HS2, as I say, business leaders in the FT do not accept the £4 billion extra cost that HS2 has put in. Look, I was a local councillor, so I know what officers do when they do not want to do something—they give you a million and one reasons why you cannot do it rather than one reason why you should—and I am sure that it is the same with civil servants and those in the Department for Transport. They will give Ministers a million and one reasons why they should not do the right thing by Manchester. We need someone to stand up to them and say, “Think again. There is a better way forwards.”

I turn to one of the unintended consequences of HS2’s construction. It would be remiss of me not to mention the closure of the Ashton-under-Lyne Metrolink line for a period of at least two years while HS2 is developed around Piccadilly. For those who are not aware, that Metrolink line is an essential piece of transport infrastructure for people right across Tameside. It connects communities from Ashton-under-Lyne through to Audenshaw in my constituency, east Manchester and right into Piccadilly, where it connects with the rest of the Metrolink network through the city centre to Eccles via MediaCityUK. It provides transport links to the 60,000-capacity Etihad stadium at Sportcity and the massive Co-op Live arena currently being built at the Etihad campus.

I find it unacceptable that the Bill plans to mothball the Ashton line and fob off residents with replacement bus services. The Ashton New Road route is already well served by double-decker buses, and people who want to use buses are using them. The beauty of the Metrolink system is that it has attracted people who would not use buses out of their cars and on to public transport, and my fear is that they will go back into their motor cars for the period when the line is mothballed.

I will give a logistical argument. Three double-decker buses are required to give the same capacity as one tram, and to replace a Metrolink service of 10 trams an hour between Ashton and Piccadilly—a tram every six minutes, which by London standards is appalling but by northern standards is remarkable—needs an awful lot of extra double-decker buses in addition to those already using that route. Some of the infrastructure in place—the tracks, the overhead lines and the island stations—may have to be taken out temporarily, at great cost to the public purse, to give extra road capacity. I will give the example of Droylsden, which the Minister will be aware of, because his family’s solicitor’s office is there. The Droylsden tram stop, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), is a pinch point because it is slap-bang in the middle of a busy road at a crossroad junction in Droylsden town centre and the vehicular part of the road is pinched down to one lane only. It queues back now. If we put all those extra buses along that route without taking out the tram stop altogether, we will have traffic chaos through Droylsden. That is why we will not be fobbed off with a replacement bus service.

I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me last month to discuss my concerns and those of Transport for Greater Manchester, Tameside council and Manchester City Council. However, I am afraid to say that he and the Department for Transport fundamentally underestimate the extent of the damage that the suspension will cause and are stubbornly refusing to explore any alternative solutions.

In addition to massively inconveniencing residents, there are three areas where the Government’s plan to suspend the line falls short. First, we have decarbonisation and green investment. Suspending the Ashton Metrolink line will, as I said, increase congestion from buses in an already urbanised part of Greater Manchester, incentivise individuals to travel by private car rather than by zero-emission Metrolink trams, and undermine the Government’s own transport decarbonisation plan.

The second area of concern is economic. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority, alongside Tameside council, recently identified the Ashton mayoral development zone as one of its priority areas to deliver growth in the region. The combined authority has clear and bold ambitions for Ashton and surrounding areas. Tameside council has significantly invested in Ashton town centre, having delivered the new Ashton interchange, learning facilities and new council head offices. Ashton Moss, which is in my constituency, has been identified as a major strategic employment site, with a significant scale of employment and residential growth expected to accelerate the area’s economic development. Transport connectivity is essential for that development to succeed, and the suspension of the line would wholly undermine that.

The third area of concern relates to long-term planning. Transport for Greater Manchester has a simple approach to infrastructure and a mantra that I hope the Minister will take on board for HS2: build it once and build it right. The suspension would ride roughshod over that principle. The Government are planning to commit taxpayer money to temporary mitigation works instead of contributing to a permanent solution that would benefit the people of Tameside and east Manchester for generations to come.

I want to be clear that we in Greater Manchester want improved connectivity and investment in transport infrastructure. However, that must be done right and in consultation with the local authorities and Transport for Greater Manchester. Fobbing us off with paper-thin replacement bus services is not going to crack it.

There is a solution—the Minister knows this—because Transport for Greater Manchester has a plan that would allow for the development of HS2 without penalising the people of Tameside and east Manchester. TfGM has proposed the operation of a Metrolink shuttle service from Ashton to New Islington—the station before Piccadilly —during the period of construction. That would necessitate the development of a depot at Ashton Moss to accommodate the fleet as well as the addition of a crossover at the New Islington Metrolink stop. The Minister has cited a cost of £200 million for that work. That is a figure that I dispute and that TfGM and Tameside council strongly dispute. I remind him that construction of the entire Metrolink line from Piccadilly to Ashton-under-Lyne, including the moving of all the public utilities out of the road and into the pavement, the construction of the line and the stations, and the procurement of the trams to run on the line and to the stations, cost less than what he says a depot would cost.

The Minister also cited as a reason for the cost being extortionate that a high-pressure gas main would need to be relocated. That very same gas main was relocated when the Metrolink line was built and that was included in the overall cost that I just cited—and, 120 metres or so from where the depot would be built, the tramline crosses over that gas main. If it does not seem to be an issue 120 metres away, it should not be an issue for the depot.

In closing, I say to the Minister that, please, we have a solution, and that solution has a legacy benefit. If we built that depot on Ashton Moss, not only could we keep a shuttle service to Manchester going on the Metrolink line, but, in future, tram-train operations in eastern Greater Manchester could make use of that same depot, given that the railway line to Stockport via Denton and Reddish South, which I have been campaigning for, runs alongside Ashton Moss and the depot, so it could be used for generations to come.

The best outcome can be achieved only if the Government agree to implement Transport for Greater Manchester’s recommendations in full, and work collaboratively with local leaders to ensure that we get this right. I fear that we will be in petition mode, and that there will be a petition from Greater Manchester if the Government do not change tack. I hope not, because I do not want this massive infrastructure upgrade for my city region to be delayed. Let’s crack on, let’s get it right, and let’s build it right first time round.

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[Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith), who I have known for nearly 15 years. He is a great friend of mine and I know he is a fantastic champion for his constituents. He spoke passionately about how he is standing up for them and how this project has impacted them. On his wider points opposing HS2, what he said was almost entirely nonsensical and I look forward to demolishing it in a moment.

In the long run we are all dead, according to John Maynard Keynes, and that attitude has been wholeheartedly embraced by many politicians throughout the years. That is understandable, because it is all too easy and tempting to focus on short-term urgent political gains and it is always difficult to spend all our political and financial capital on long-term strategic decisions for which we will get no credit and whose benefit will not be felt for decades to come. We are seeing this short-termism hurt our country in many ways, most acutely through the failure of the Blair Government to renew our nuclear power stations, which we are really feeling now, so I think this Government deserve a lot of credit for going ahead with high-speed rail.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

There might be a contrary view that people in this place sometimes decide on these nice shiny things—for example, George Osborne and his super-duper high-speed trains—knowing full well that they will not have to be there to implement them. The Government might say that in 50 years’ time they want net zero or whatever it is, but they are not going to be there. That is what has happened in this case: it is a white elephant. Come on!

[Robert Largan]

Well, I am very glad I took that intervention. I would say that perhaps George Osborne did expect to be here, but that is beside the point.

As I was saying, I believe that the Government deserve significant credit for taking a very long-term decision that will be of huge benefit to the country, although they will not get any credit for it for a long time to come. Let us contrast that with the Leader of the Opposition, who spent his first four years in Parliament focusing on two objectives. The first was to block High Speed 2 and the billions of investment in the north of England. The second was to try to make the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) Prime Minister.

[Chris Clarkson]

Does my hon. Friend think that is proof that the only north-west the Leader of the Opposition is interested in is NW1?

[Robert Largan]

I could not have put it better myself. When I flagged this point earlier, Opposition Members said it is a constituency interest, which is very revealing. A Member of Parliament’s list of priorities is supposed to be country, constituency, party and then self. It is slightly worrying that, when the interests of the country come up against the interests of a narrow corner of north London, the leader of the Labour party opts for self, party, constituency and then country last, which is very revealing about his priorities.

HS2 is an important infrastructure project, so I take great pleasure in busting some of the myths we have heard this evening. A series of myths about high-speed rail have been perpetuated over the last decade by a combination of muddled thinking and well-financed interest groups, and I will take them one by one.

As we have heard tonight, this is all about time. Who needs an extra 30 minutes off rail journeys down to London? First, this has never been primarily about journey times and speed; this has always been about capacity.

[Greg Smith]

My hon. Friend and I never fell out when we took opposite sides in the Brexit referendum, and we will not fall out over this. He says HS2 has always been about capacity, so why did it have to be built as a high-speed line so dead straight that it had to go through the middle of ancient woodland and the Calvert Jubilee nature reserve? If it were about capacity, the line could have been slower from the outset and could therefore have gone around ancient woodland and nature reserves.

[Robert Largan]

If we are going to spend billions of pounds on a new railway line, we want to make it a fast line. If we were to give in to my hon. Friend’s demands and scrap HS2 tomorrow, we would quickly run up against gridlock on the west coast main line, which is almost at complete capacity already.

[Katherine Fletcher]

The internet is a wonderful thing, and I have just looked at trains from Wellingborough into central London and at trains from Preston into central Manchester, a not dissimilar distance. Should my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) be in his wonderful constituency, he could get three trains before the trains close even on a day of disruption.

[Katherine Fletcher]

I have just checked. And from Preston to Manchester, a similar distance, there is one train because the capacity is not there. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) made a wonderful speech, people need to understand what it feels like to be a rail user in the south-east of England. Does my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Robert Largan) agree that capacity is the key point?

[Robert Largan]

Yes, capacity is the key point.

[Mr Bone]

As my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) obviously knows more about Wellingborough than I do, she might mention that the cattle trucks they are now using, as we cannot spend proper money because it is being wasted on HS2, are of great detriment to my constituents. By the way, a person cannot get on at Wellingborough and go north. It is a total waste, totally wrong. If there was any argument not to pass this nonsense tonight, she should come to Wellingborough and then she would be on my side. Does my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Robert Largan) agree?

[Robert Largan]

It gives me great pleasure to facilitate that tête-à-tête between my hon. Friends the Members for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) and for Wellingborough (Mr Bone).

One of the most frequent tropes used by opponents of HS2 is, “We don’t need to invest in rail because we have high-speed broadband. Everyone will be working from home and having remote meetings, so it is not a problem at all.” How would we deliver freight via Zoom? It is not possible to deliver millions of tonnes of freight a year over the internet, and those who argue otherwise are completely missing the point. We desperately need to move away from road haulage and on to rail freight, which is one of the big benefits of HS2. It opens up capacity not only for passengers but for rail freight, too. I am very proud to represent a large number of quarries, and I chair the all-party group on mining and quarrying. One big challenge is getting all the aggregate out of our quarries and on to site. At the moment, a huge volume of that is done by road, by HGVs, which causes huge problems across the Peak district. Being able to increase that capacity is a big benefit of high-speed rail.

I next come on to address the point about cost, which has always been mentioned. People say that the cost of high-speed rail is “astronomical” and “completely ridiculous”, and that this is “a white elephant”. Let us consider the opponents of HS2’s worst-case-scenario cost figures—I think they are massively inflated, but let us take them at their word. How much would that actually cost when we spread it out over the lifetime of the project, which is decades? Even on the worst-case scenario, we are looking at about £5 billion a year, which is half of what we spend on overseas aid every year. When we are talking about a huge investment to upgrade the most important railway line in the country, spending 0.25% of our GDP a year over several decades does not seem to be a disproportionate amount of money.

Another of my favourite myths is, “HS2 is bad for the environment.” I recall that in the last one of these debates the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) referred to HS2 as “environmental annihilation”. I am not sure whether she has ever been to Kent, where HS1 exists; it is still the garden of England. One wonders whether some of the opponents of HS2 have ever seen a railway line. We are not talking about eight-lane superhighways; we are talking about a relatively narrow footprint and about beautiful pieces of infrastructure. I would happily take all those people to places such as New Mills and Chapel Milton, where stunning viaducts criss-cross a national park, no less, and are beloved parts of the landscape.

Next, people say, “It’s a false choice. We should be investing in local lines, not spending billions on this big infrastructure project.” That is just a completely false narrative. A big part of opening up this capacity is that it helps existing commuter lines, with High Peak being the perfect example of that. Commuters on the Buxton line heading into Manchester from places such as Whaley Bridge, New Mills, Chapel-en-le-Frith and Buxton are on a really poor service. Why is that? It is because it has to go through the Stockport-Piccadilly corridor, which is one of the most congested lines anywhere in the country. There is not enough space on that line to get a more frequent or more reliable service into Manchester. HS2 opens up the Stockport corridor and will allow for a more reliable and more frequent service for my constituents.

We are also doing all the investment in the local lines too. The £137 million upgrade of the Hope Valley line in my constituency is under construction already; the HS2 Minister recently came with me to see the construction progress. That is also going to have a huge positive impact on commuters in my constituency and, again, it is going to open up freight capacity to help get goods out of the quarries in the Peak District and through into market.

Yes, I would like us to go even further. I would love to see us upgrade the Glossop line as well, as there are interesting proposals to go for a double track beyond Broadbottom to Glossop and to improve signalling on the way into Manchester Piccadilly, which could open up even more improvements on one of the fastest growing and busiest commuter lines anywhere in the country. That would be fantastic too.

Having gone through a number of the myths in relatively quick fashion, let us have a look at what we are talking about tonight, which is this Crewe to Manchester Piccadilly leg. It is really important that we get this right. A number of Opposition Members have talked about Manchester Piccadilly station, and I agree that it is essential that we get this right. Huge sums of money will be involved and this is an opportunity to dramatically improve one of the key stations not just for Manchester or for people in High Peak who commute in there, but for people across the entire north of England. This needs fixing and it is important that we explore all the options, including an underground line.

[Mike Amesbury]

It is good to hear that we have some consensus on that issue. As the hon. Member powerfully said, it is not a trade-off between a national project and local services and facilities. My constituents in the Northwich part of my constituency would love to have the promised two trains an hour, but because of the lack of capacity in and around Manchester it just cannot happen. That is where Ministers need to focus a little more energy and to invest to ensure that this project lasts for generations.

[Robert Largan]

I know Northwich very well—in fact, I used to work there—and HS2 will open up huge opportunities for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents.

I am pleased that, after my discussions with the HS2 Minister, the instructions to the Select Committee on the Bill allow it to look into all options at Piccadilly. That is really important. The Committee also needs to look into all options at Manchester airport. A few people have already talked about making certain that we get that right, with the proper Metrolink, rail and bus links. There is lots of work to be done in the Bill’s next stage.

Let me conclude by saying that high-speed rail and the Government’s wider £96 billion investment in rail in the north of England is good not just for the environment, the economy, jobs and the High Peak; it is good for the whole of the north of England and for the whole country. Let us get on and build it.