High-speed Rail

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I will try to be brief because I have taken part in debates about this issue in the past.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) on securing this debate. I like the fact that the debate’s title as set out on the Order Paper is positive, and I will resist joining in the accusations against the Secretary of State for Wales—I will wait for her performance this afternoon before the Welsh Affairs Committee.

I want to keep the debate positive because it is important that those of us in favour of High Speed 2 galvanise a campaign in support of it. I have seen the comments of business leaders in the Yorkshire Post in support of the scheme, but that is not enough and we need to bang the drum much louder. A high-speed rail link will not solve the north-south divide, but it will go a long way to remedy some of the problems. It will help us to rebalance the economy so that growth is moved across the country and is not only in the south-east of England. As has been mentioned, we must start dealing with problems of capacity. The west coast main line is already creaking; passenger numbers have doubled over the past six years, with 28 million passengers a year on that line alone. From a personal point of view, it is predicted that 40% more passengers will travel through Leeds station. We must start planning now, and it is time to start looking at high-speed rail. I believe that faster journey times will increase the prospect of investment in other parts of the country.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend and I have had many discussions about this issue. The most recent Government papers suggest that up to 73% of the line’s usage will be for leisure travel. How will that contribute to curing the north-south divide?

[Stuart Andrew]

I think that the Government are being conservative in their estimates of passenger numbers and who will use the high-speed network. I was about to say that even with our current creaking transport network, Leeds enjoys the second largest financial sector in the country. If we have a high-speed route to Leeds, the prospect of increasing and expanding that financial sector could become a reality.

Figures suggest that current proposals for a line between London and Birmingham will generate 40,000 jobs. When we move to the Y-shape, there will be greater prosperity and more jobs. Globalisation means that we need to start meeting the demands of a much smaller world so that those of us on the periphery, as the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) said, can also enjoy the benefits of that.

Let me refer to some of the criticisms of the scheme. Too often we hear people referring only to the line to Birmingham. The whole point about HS2 is that it will go beyond that. The Y-shaped route was the best decision made by the Government. If they had chosen only the line that went to Manchester and then Leeds, I, too, would be a critic, but the fact is that the Y-shape will bring benefits to the whole country, as was confirmed by the Prime Minister on 22 June. I have heard critics say that the line will never get that far north, but the Prime Minister has been clear on the issue.

[David Mowat]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the consultation being for only the leg between London and Birmingham, which is the hardest part to achieve and the part with the weakest business case. The business case for the entire project is much better, because the line becomes easier to build as we go north. Does he agree that even though the business case for the initial part is stronger than those for Crossrail and Thameslink, it is a problem that there is consideration of only that first part?

[Stuart Andrew]

I completely agree. That is why I say that we must consider the project in its entirety and think about going beyond what is currently proposed and on to Scotland. We must think of the very long term, not just the short term. On the one hand, people say, “Oh, this is too many years in advance. It’s not worth doing,” but there is no excuse for doing nothing and we have to plan now to deal with the problem. On the other hand, however, people say, “We shouldn’t be spending this amount of money when times are hard,” but construction will not happen until 2017 and it will take place over two decades. I believe that the cost will be about £2 billion a year, which is similar to the cost for Crossrail, and if that was good enough for London, it is good enough for the rest of the country.

Yesterday, I sat for a short while at the back of the room in which the sitting of the Transport Committee was taking place and I heard the arguments against HS2. They seemed to centre on the claim that existing infrastructure would miss out. In fairness to the Department for Transport, it has invested lots of extra money for projects. When the people appearing before the Committee were asked what they wanted instead, they said, “Roads.” Well, we have seen what has happened before in that respect. They said that the M25 junctions could be improved, which would be very helpful to those of us in the north—thanks very much.

HS2 is not a panacea, but it will dovetail into the northern hub so that we can get people to the north and around the north, and so that business can thrive. That is something that we cannot wait for and Britain needs to catch up.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—