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

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

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

[Ms Ghani]

The clause introduces schedules 18 and 19, which disapply or modify controls for listed buildings and ancient monuments to allow the construction of phase 2a and to enable the installation of noise insulation in listed buildings.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

Obviously, listed buildings and ancient monuments are held in high regard nationally. Can the Minister assure us that, in addition to the views of Historic England, English Heritage and the like, the views of local historical groups and community groups will be taken into account before any decisions are made?

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Rodda]

The Minister has addressed some of these issues, but it is vital to get this right. HS2 will allow for more reliable rail services. The current Secretary of State has plunged punctuality on the railways to a new depth—a 13-year low—and we must get on top of that issue. This is a tremendous opportunity to improve connectivity, and it is vital to get urban-to-urban connectivity within the country. We are committed to delivering a transformative package of investment across the rail network in the north of England, backed by a commitment of at least £10 billion to transform connections between major northern cities. The Government have touted similar plans, sometimes described as Northern Powerhouse Rail or HS3, but there is no commitment to the funding—it is interesting that the Minister used that point to address the financial side of the programme.

Any incoming Labour Government would rescope the project to seriously reduce costs and provide far better integration. Furthermore, there is concern over the accountability and the ability of our colleagues in this House to scrutinise HS2, ensure that costs are kept under control, and address the issue of public trust. We believe there is the potential to reduce the cost of HS2 by using a number of other technical measures—I will not address those in detail now—and the operation of HS2 is also contentious. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being invested in HS2, and it is right that revenues go back to the Exchequer and not into the hands of private train operating companies. HS2 should be run in the public sector as a public service. I will return to some of those points later in relation to the new clauses.

The Government have been somewhat inept in handling another specific aspect. HS2 has been rightly criticised for sometimes failing to provide value for public money. For example, the Public Accounts Committee described an unauthorised redundancy bill of £1.76 million as

“a shocking waste of taxpayers’ money”,

blaming it on

“weak internal processes at HS2”,

and there have been other concerns about the project.

[Mr Dhesi]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue of spiralling costs concerns many of us up and down the country? If we do not get this right, it will have a huge impact on how services are delivered in our local communities in terms of housing, education, hospitals and so forth. Does he agree that the Government need to get a grip on the costs of HS2?

[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.