High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Debate between Simon Burns and Steve Barclay

Thursday 31st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Burns]

No, I will not.

Unfortunately, a project of this scale and size cannot meet the problems and objections of every part of the route while still keeping to the reason for and need behind the railway. It is rotten when one cannot deal with every problem, but we need to balance what is in the national interest against what can be done to minimise the impact. I believe that the Secretary of State for Transport, his Ministers, the Department for Transport and High Speed 2 Ltd have gone a considerable way—as far as they can—towards meeting and overcoming those problems without ruining the concept of high-speed rail and without it being disastrous for the taxpayer.

For those reasons, I am as confident as one can be that High Speed 2 will become High Speed 3 and go to Scotland, and that in years to come it will go to other parts of the United Kingdom as well. That can happen in an orderly way only if this Bill is passed to enable money to be spent on the preparations—not on building the railway, because the Bill does not deal with that. For those reasons, I will support the hon. Member for Nottingham South and my right hon. and hon. Friends on amendment 17; we gave a commitment to the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras that we would do so. I will certainly oppose amendment 18 and those that flow from it, however, because they are superfluous and, as my hon. Friend the Minister said, contradictory.

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[Stephen Barclay]

Indeed. That brings me to the distorting effect at the heart of the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) and the paradox that the scheme will divert more funding to London.

[Mr Simon Burns]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Stephen Barclay]

I will, but before doing so, may I thank my right hon. Friend, who, throughout his time as Minister, was most courteous and responsive? I take his intervention with pleasure.

[Mr Burns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I hope my intervention does not spoil that record. Is he taking into account the fact that some of the changes, particularly to phase 1, will actually save money? For example, the decision to tunnel around Hanger lane in west London will be cheaper than the original overground proposal, leaving us with money for swings and roundabouts.

[Stephen Barclay]

Of course, there will be some give and take. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) highlighted the issues involved, but let us consider, for example, the Heathrow spur, on which we have had interventions. If Howard Davies decides to go with a hub airport at Heathrow—and one would think it logical for HS2 to connect to it—the cost of that is not in this budget, and neither is the cost of the connection in Camden, so the cost of tunnelling and the additional work that is likely to flow are not in these figures either. I wish, then, to draw the House’s attention to the pressure that is likely to follow from what Donald Rumsfeld would probably refer to as the “known unknowns”, which we know are going to be huge.

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[Stephen Barclay]

Of course there is a debate around Old Oak Common, but I must point out the lack of clarity. Clearing a similar site for the Olympics cost £1 billion. Where is the figure for clearing and regenerating the site around Old Oak Common? Transport for London is putting in requests, stating that it is possible to leverage HS2 with better connectivity using Old Oak Common, and I think it is right to do so, but where is that proposal reflected in the figures?

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury made a clear statement on “The Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday. He did not say that the project would be delivered for £42 billion; he said that it would be delivered for less. That was the promise he made. Now we are talking about a cap of £50 billion, so an extra £7 billion has appeared in the space of a few days. In today’s debate, Members are adding their own wish-lists, which will add further to the costs.

[Mr Simon Burns]

The cost of HS2 is £42.6 billion, within which there is a contingency fund of £14.4 billion. The figure of £50 billion that my hon. Friend has referred to reflects the addition on top of that of £7.1 billion for rolling stock, of which £1.7 billion is the contingency fund. It is not for the building of the railway.

[Stephen Barclay]

The size and quantum of the contingency points to a lack of detail and of financial discipline in the cost estimates. That is why so much of it is vague.

I started my remarks believing that my time was unlimited, but having been made aware by one of my colleagues that my time is more finite than I originally expected, I shall dramatically shorten my speech and finish with reference to two issues.

First, on direct costs, reading the business case put forward this week, it is difficult to get a sense of the impact of energy prices on construction. We justified the high cost of our nuclear deal last week on the basis of rising energy prices, yet we seem to be quoting the same HS1 energy costs for steel construction for this project. Land prices seem vague. Network Rail still has a 23% efficiency gap. Is it to be a subcontractor? Are we going to fix the governance of Network Rail, which is still out of the scope of shareholders, of the National Audit Office and of freedom of information requests?

Secondly, there seem to be a number of contradictions with this project. If economic growth is as good as the passenger forecasts suggest, will it not put pressure on supplier costs for construction, particularly on a project that will deliver at its peak 40% of construction market work? We need far more transparency on costs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Burns and Steve Barclay

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to develop more effective performance management of GPs.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

As set out in the Health and Social Care Bill, performance management of general practice will become the responsibility of the new NHS Commissioning Board from April 2013. This will enable, for the first time, a single, consistent approach to be developed for the assessment and management of general practice.

[Stephen Barclay]

As with any profession, the performance of GPs varies widely. As more power is devolved to GPs, does my right hon. Friend recognise the importance of independent performance management of GPs, in order to identify outliers and improve patient care?

[Mr Burns]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, given his past association as a constituency MP with this subject, because of the problems in his constituency. I believe that we have a strong system of general practice in this country, but I am afraid that more can be done to address variations in aspects of the quality of provision by some general practitioners. As I have said, the NHS Commissioning Board will adopt a single, consistent approach, allowing an overview of performance, which is not currently possible, and ensuring that interventions occur at an early stage. I think that will go a considerable way towards helping with the problems that have been experienced.