High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill (Instruction) (No. 3)

William Cash Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman]

The motion instructs the High Speed Rail (Crewe – Manchester) Bill Select Committee to resume its work of scrutinising the Bill. To put it simply, the Bill was always going to cover the 15 miles that form the key backbone of Northern Powerhouse Rail, and the motion asks the Committee to continue its work of scrutinising the Bill to deliver this first section of the Liverpool to Manchester railway—the 15-mile section between Manchester Piccadilly station and the parish of Millington and Rostherne in Cheshire.

The motion also requests that the Committee remove the sections of railway south of Millington, which were only required to deliver the now cancelled elements of High Speed 2. Members and constituents who have expressed concerns about the impact of this 15-mile stretch of railway on their property and livelihoods will be able to have their petitions heard. It is therefore crucial that the Select Committee continues its work.

Turning to the detail, on 4 October 2023 the Government announced Network North, a transformative transport infrastructure plan that will see £36 billion invested in hundreds of transport projects across the country. Every region is set to receive the same or more transport investment as they would have under previous plans in transport projects—projects that matter the most to communities up and down the country. At the same time, the Government confirmed an additional £12 billion of investment to enable Northern Powerhouse Rail to proceed to better connect Liverpool and Manchester.

The change before the House is a crucial part of the Government’s Network North strategy, allowing us to invest the money put aside for HS2 in projects that will transform transport within the region. Specifically on Northern Powerhouse Rail, this allows us to deliver it in full, bringing in Bradford and Hull. Network North will radically improve travel between and within our cities and towns and around the local areas, benefiting more people, in more places and more quickly than in previous plans.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the members of the Select Committee for their hard work up to this point. It is no small task that has been put before them, and they have all worked with a vigour that is to be admired, even if some of the work had to be paused while the Government refocused this agenda.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

As is well known, I have been opposed to the HS2 project since its inception, which goes back about 10 years or so. The Minister is giving us a bit of a eulogy about what is being done, and I am very glad that HS2 has been substantially changed and will not go beyond Birmingham. The question I put to the Minister is this: is an instruction the right way to go? Doing so in effect bypasses the Standing Orders, and it puts my constituents and those of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) in an invidious position, to say the very least. I will come on to that later, if I may, but will he answer my question, please?

[Huw Merriman]

I had not really started the eulogy yet, but I do believe this is the right vehicle. The Select Committee on the Bill had already been set up, and it was set up to look at not just HS2 phase 2b, but Northern Powerhouse Rail. It was always on that basis that it was formed, so it makes sense to repurpose the Committee to allow it to continue to work on the one aspect that continues, and to take out the other aspects of HS2 phase 2b, which of course is no longer continuing.

I also want to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who has been a diligent, conscientious and highly effective Committee Chair over the past year and a half. I know he will be looking forward to getting back to the task, as will the other Committee members.

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[Sir William Cash]

The question the Minister referred to is one of additional provisions. The real question—this is a technical question and not good for an intervention—and the bottom line is that additional provisions can be petitioned against. The manner in which the motion is constructed will effectively greatly inhibit, and/or completely prevent, additional provisions from being pursued by petitioners, both in the constituency affected by the Bill, and also for my constituents, who are affected by the fact that the two sections, from Birmingham to Crewe and from Crewe to Manchester, are interconnected. There is a vast amount of concern in my constituency about this issue.

[Huw Merriman]

To be clear, I give a commitment that HS2 will not be going through my hon. Friend’s constituency, and therefore any petitions that were going to be relevant should lapse. This is a matter for the Bill Committee, but that would be the logical extension. Any petitions already made on this 15-mile stretch, which will continue to be within the remit because it continues to be the preferred route, will be heard by the Committee if this motion is passed. If there are amendments, such as from an environmental statement or any that I may propose, that reopens the window for petitions. On that basis, if there is anything new a petition can be made, but if there is not, the petition should already be in. I feel that is the right outcome.

I shall make some more progress. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) made clear on Second Reading, and as I have mentioned, part of the Bill’s original purpose was always to deliver this section of Northern Powerhouse Rail, the first half of the line between Manchester and Liverpool. Following today’s motion, the Committee will be able to go back to considering petitions from people and organisations still affected by the scheme. The Committee will also assess any changes to the Bill that I may bring forward to adapt it to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail.

The proposed changes to the Bill will, quite rightly, prompt a new environmental assessment that will consider how any new element in the scheme will affect local areas. Where possible, I will use this as an opportunity to further reduce the construction impacts on communities, and the changes will be provided to the House in the usual way. Although this is a rather technical motion, holding this debate demonstrates good progress in developing the Government’s long-held ambition to improve connectivity between Liverpool and Manchester.

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[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

I must say that the motion before the House is quite bizarre. Now that the hybrid HS2 Bill has been adapted to supposedly deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail, we are asking the Select Committee on the High Speed Rail (Crewe – Manchester) Bill to agree a Bill for a railway that ends in a field, with no connection to the rest of the rail network. This is effectively a railway to nowhere. The motion and the adaption of the hybrid Bill will not facilitate a functioning railway until a connection is established to the rail network at Latchford in Warrington. The Department for Transport is presuming that the remainder of the line will be approved through a completely separate planning process, but does not say what that process is and when it will be brought forward. That is a massive departure from what was experienced in phase 1 or even phase 2, in which a whole corridor approach was considered, with clear connections possible, in each phase, to the existing network. It is totally flawed to segment NPR in the way proposed, rather than looking at the whole corridor, or even a whole phase or section. The proposal does not even properly consider what could be thought of as the NPR core route. The House should not be asked to approve something that will not deliver a functioning piece of infrastructure.

[Sir William Cash]

The instruction states:

“The Committee shall, before concluding its proceedings, amend the Bill by—”

and then sets out certain arrangements relating to certain aspects of the railway. It then states:

“making such amendments to the Bill as it thinks fit in consequence of the amendments made by virtue of”

the previous sub-paragraphs. The words “as it thinks fit” are an absolute carte blanche. If the railway ends in a field, it is not a railway. That is just the starting point. Have the examiners been asked to look at the Bill using the procedures for a hybrid Bill? Effectively, it will not be a Bill, when it has been treated in this way, if the instruction goes through. Should we not put forward petitions, irrespective of the constraints imposed by the instruction, to test just how much this is a matter of principle? The Bill is also constrained by the fact that Second Reading is now effectively torn up, and a new principle is being inserted into the Bill.

[Jack Brereton]

I thank my hon. Friend for those very thoughtful points. I entirely agree that the instruction is wide-ranging. It is concerning to see those sorts of powers being put forward to the Committee. It really does show the abuse of the hybrid Bill process. If any services are to use the line, the railway would have to secure much wider enhancements and additional complex infrastructure, and there is no guarantee of that being delivered. As I said, the delivery of any services on this line will depend on permission being secured for the rest of the section, and that will be approved under a completely separate planning process. The approach being taken really is totally back to front.

[Jack Brereton]

We may come to that shortly, but I am very concerned about this. Certainly, we may consider dividing on the motion.

We should focus first on properly understanding the connectivity enhancement need, and then design the infrastructure to meet that need. Instead, we already have the infrastructure design, and are trying to make it fit with the improvements that we would like for connectivity across the north, because we do not want to spend time doing this properly and restarting the hybrid Bill process. It might have made sense to use the proposed route when the track would be shared with HS2, but it does not make any sense now that phase 2 has gone. It is neither the optimal route for benefits nor the most cost-effective to deliver. I am afraid that this really is an abuse of the hybrid Bill process.

[Sir William Cash]

May I refer my hon. Friend to paragraph 3 of the motion? It states:

“The Committee shall treat the principle of the Bill, as determined by the House on…Second Reading, as comprising the matters mentioned in paragraph (4); and those matters shall accordingly not be at issue during proceedings of the Committee.”

What the motion is actually saying, surely, is that the principle of the Bill as originally passed will now be replaced by a new principle, and that any petitioner or anyone else who gets up to speak about it in any context will be told, because of an instruction by the whole House on what I could describe as the misleading basis—I am not accusing the Minister of this; I am merely commenting on the wording of the motion—that the issue cannot be put, and indeed is not to be regarded as an issue. That is a contradiction of what is clearly going on.

[Jack Brereton]

My hon. Friend has made a powerful point. That, too, illustrates the failings of the hybrid Bill process. My hon. Friend and I know about this all too well because of the abuses of the process that we have seen in Staffordshire, which really have not guarded against some of the issues and challenges to which people have been drawing attention. It brings into question the fitness of the process in its entirety, and the way in which hybrid Bills have been enacted.

This Bill was designed and set out to deliver phase 2b of HS2. It was never about NPR alone, so its original objectives were very different. To try to adapt the Bill in this way is totally flawed. It would not afford the due process that is required for the decision in question. I believe we should abandon this phase 2b Bill, and come back with a new hybrid Bill that will deliver NPR properly. We should look at the whole corridor between Liverpool and Manchester, and at areas beyond, not just at the section in the middle, which does not go anywhere. We need a Bill that is capable of delivering the whole project. We cannot just deliver a partial scheme, and expect it to magically result in capacity being released to enable the promised enhancement of services.

There are constraints along the whole route. What about the complexities of crossing the M56, the M6 and the Manchester ship canal to connect with the rail network at Latchford, east of Warrington Bank Quay? What about the enhancements that will be needed between Warrington and Liverpool, including the upgrading of the Fiddlers Ferry line to facilitate services, and what about the capacity improvements that are needed at Liverpool Lime Street station? All these issues need far more detailed consideration and focus, as well as a proper process for approval—and we have not even mentioned how all this will be delivered within a tight £12 billion budget envelope; it is more likely to cost more than £16 billion. As for the point raised by the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick) about connecting with the west coast main line, I am afraid that that will not be possible because of the challenges presented in the Warrington area; the Arpley chord cannot provide a connection with the west coast main line to serve west coast stations north of Warrington.

One might ask why we in Staffordshire are so interested in these matters. It is because we fear those who are seeking to reignite phase 2 of HS2 and all the horrors that it was set to wreak on our fine county. People in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire have overwhelmingly welcomed the Prime Minister’s courageous and correct decision to scrap phase 2. They want the £36 billion released to be spent on projects that will truly deliver the improvements in local transport that will help to transform their lives, and not on remote “white elephant” pet projects.

It is disappointing that the eagerness to progress the plans set out in the motion has not been mirrored in the actions to wind down site compounds, fill in the thousands of boreholes that have been left, and return land to its rightful owners across the rest of the phase 2 route. Little to no progress seems to have been made yet, and the significant costs continue to spiral, even though the project has been cancelled. People in Staffordshire communities such as Swynnerton and Yarnfield, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), are still fearful, given that they have not yet seen any visible signs of unwinding. Motions like the one before us today do nothing to dispel those fears, and there are concerns that some people would like nothing better than to see phase 2 restarted. That is why I have tabled several probing amendments, because we need to know that all elements relating purely to phase 2 will be removed.

Amendment (a) would leave out the provisions relating to the entirety of phase 2b from the junction with phase 2a at Crewe to where it would have joined the line to share track with NPR—importantly, including the stub and junction for where the line would join NPR, which would otherwise remain part of the design. Clearly, following the cancellation of phase 2, the stub and junction are no longer needed, so they should be removed from the design. Removing them would help to reassure that phase 2 could not be restarted at a later stage.

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[Graham Stringer]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his very long intervention. He is obviously right. Cheryl Gillan did a fantastic job.She was opposed to HS2, and she increased the costs enormously by getting tunnels built under the hills in her constituency.

Another way of looking at the economic nonsense we have had from this Government is that we do not have a high-speed route for the nation; we have an extension of the London underground. We have tunnels leading out of London to Birmingham. I do not know the train times, but my guess is that the times going to Birmingham, going through the tunnels out of London, will be shorter than using the Elizabeth line to travel across London. HS2 is just part of the underground system. It is a London scheme now, not a national scheme.

[Sir William Cash]

At the moment, travelling from Stoke-on-Trent or Stafford down to London Euston, as Conservative Members do, takes just over an hour. I would have thought that most people regard that as pretty fast.

[Graham Stringer]

Indeed, but we are talking about major national infrastructure. I always hoped that HS2 would not just go to Manchester and Leeds but, for both political and transport reasons, would go to Scotland. As someone who believes in the Union between England and Scotland, I think that would help, and it would be very good transport policy, too.

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[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker; I think I can do it a lot quicker than that.

I agree with the remarks made by my hon. Friends from Staffordshire and, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), who set out the practical side. I also agree with the scrapping by the Government of the Birmingham to Crewe section, but that does have consequences, both for my constituents and for those between Crewe and Manchester.

Having looked at the appalling behaviour of HS2 over the years, the mess over compensation that is still carrying on, and things like that—I have been into all that in the past, and it is not strictly speaking the subject of this particular debate, but it is a very serious point—I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South that the Bill should be withdrawn and reintroduced, to ensure that the petitioners by reason of valid additional provisions, as a matter of principle, can have it examined properly in all respects, ab initio.

As I said in my interventions, the sleight of hand of this instruction, which as I have already noted is self-contradictory and purports to provide for matters that are, in my opinion, unprincipled and, as a matter of law and procedure, are stating things to be so that simply are not so, is not the way to proceed. There is a lot of merit in the way the Government are reorientating the objects in order to improve the situation in other parts of the country. However, as regards those directly affected—and ultimately the hybrid Bill procedure and its principles are about protecting those petitioners injuriously affected by a Bill’s provisions—I believe the motion is morally unjustified, indefensible and damaging to the rights of petitioners, with respect both to the constituents between Birmingham and Manchester and to my constituents who will be affected between Birmingham and Crewe.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

As the hon. Gentleman has been admirably short, I will call Grahame Morris, but please remember that I need to bring in the Minister as well.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker—I will respect your wishes. I had not intended to speak in the debate, so I apologise for being late. I serve on the House of Commons Transport Committee, along with colleagues who spoke earlier from the Government Benches. I also served on the HS2 hybrid Bill Committee that dealt with the section from Crewe to Manchester Piccadilly.

[Sir William Cash]

Is the hon. Gentleman actually involved with a Bill that is currently in existence, or is he suggesting that something should be done in respect of a Bill that is not the same as the Bill that was introduced in the first place?

[Grahame Morris]

My goodness, that is a complicated intervention—I am not sure that I am suitably qualified to answer it. I just thought that I might share some of my thoughts having served on the Bill Committee, without any particular axe to grind.

I served on the Bill Committee because I was asked to do so as a servant of the House, in order to consider the merits or otherwise of the various petitions. I do not know whether Members are familiar with the process. I am not suggesting for a moment that it is perfect, and I know that there are arguments for revising the hybrid Bill procedure, which is quite lengthy, but some right hon. and hon. Members have suggested—perhaps through a lack of understanding of the process—that it is a mechanism for steamrolling through opposition, and I can absolutely assure them that that does not happen. In fact, if anything, petitioners—who may be individuals, businesses, environmental groups, local authorities or groups representing commercial interests, such as the National Farmers’ Union—are given ample opportunity to make representations to the Committee through petitions, and then to speak to those petitions and articulate their arguments for mitigation, compensation and route variation.