High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Framlingham

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on her opening speech. As I will point out in a moment, there is a big problem with the conflict between that speech, which was full of enthusiasm, and the setting up of a fundamental review, which could lead to the cancellation of HS2. There is a clear left hand/right hand problem in the handling of this project at the moment, which will only serve to add to costs and delays. None the less, the noble Baroness’s speech was excellent and set out the whole case against having a fundamental review of HS2. My noble friend Lord Berkeley who, to my amazement, has agreed to serve on this extraordinary review, is not in his place this afternoon. However, I will recommend that he reads that speech and ceases his work forthwith. I also note the presence in the Chamber of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, who chaired the hybrid Bill committee on the London to Birmingham Bill. With the scale of the work required and the dedication of its members, that was one of the most heroic endeavours which any noble Lord has undertaken in recent times. It showed this House at its very best. I am looking around the Chamber to see who will be volunteering for the next hybrid Bill committee. My noble friend Lord Snape is nodding; maybe he will chair that committee. We would certainly welcome that.

The noble Lord’s work played a very significant part in taking this big infrastructure project forward, as did the work of the noble Lord, Lord Birt, when I became Secretary of State for Transport and devoted myself in a serious way to looking at the case for high-speed rail. He and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred to France, but of course it is 55 years, more than half a century, since the Japanese opened their first and transformational high-speed line between Tokyo and Osaka. They started construction 60 years ago, so we have been taking some to catch up, but it was the noble Lord’s strategic review which put it in my mind that I should be looking very seriously at the case for a high-speed rail network in this country. This is a very good example—and we do not have many, I fear, in this terrible Brexit crisis—of constructive public policy which is factually based, learns from evidence and learns from international experience. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson said, almost all the rest of the industrialised world, apart from the United States, has high-speed rail, and even the US is halfway through constructing a line from San Francisco to LA.

The noble Lord mentioned China. China has more high-speed rail than the rest of the world put together and has been building a network at great speed. When I was Transport Secretary the Chinese Transport Minister offered to build our high-speed line. He said to me over a very long dinner in the Transport Ministry in Beijing that he would build it for half the cost of the Germans—I assume that he assumed we were about to give a contract to the Germans. I said, “We have this thing called Parliament, Minister, and it has to agree to all this before we can start the construction, but by all means let us have a conversation in a few years’ time”. I regret to tell your Lordships that that Minister is now in jail under a suspended sentence of death for corruption, so although the Chinese are able to construct these projects quickly, there are downsides in the way they conduct their affairs in Beijing. I am glad that I am with your Lordships and not currently at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

The background to this is a great sense of urgency, as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, said, to see that our infrastructure matches that of other industrialised nations, all of which, apart from the United States, have been investing in high-speed rail to link their major conurbations. When the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, said that this has been conducted without parliamentary consent and scrutiny, that is, of course, palpably untrue. There have been exhaustive debates. The work of the committee of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker, and that of the Select Committee in the other place was absolutely exhaustive.

[Lord Framlingham]

I am not sure that I said it had been conducted without parliamentary consent, did I?

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord said scrutiny.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Framlingham]

It is important to be accurate, with great respect to the noble Lord. He said that I said it had been done without parliamentary consent.

[Lord Adonis]

I did not. I said, “without proper parliamentary scrutiny”. There has been massive parliamentary scrutiny of this project. The Motion the noble Lord referred to, which he moved at Third Reading in January 2017, attracted 25 votes while there were 385 votes on the other side, so I do not think anyone can say that it is not the express will of Parliament that is leading HS2 to proceed.

The problem we have at the moment is, as I say, a left hand/right hand problem. On one hand, Parliament has given emphatic consent to this project to continue, and indeed to be authorised in the first place: not just the first phase, which passed this House by 385 votes to 25, and passed the House of Commons by 399 votes to 42—absolutely colossal majorities—but this Bill, extending HS2 from Birmingham to Crewe, was passed in the House of Commons in the middle of July by 263 votes to 17. There has been cross-party consensus and overwhelming support.

The Minister referred, and I assume that her officials were giving her very carefully crafted drafting in this respect, to the work taking place on HS2 as “preparatory work”. There is nothing preparatory about the work being done on HS2 at the moment. The line is being built; more than £5 billion has been spent and more than 1,000 people work at HS2 Ltd in Birmingham. If your Lordships go to Euston, you will see that it is not preparatory work that is leading to the virtual closure of the station, with huge tarpaulins up and big excavation works, but the construction of the railway line. It is right that this should happen, because, unless we start constructing it, it will never be there.

Parliament authorised this project to proceed two years ago. Billions of pounds have been spent, thousands of people are working on it—we expect this work to proceed. It is this that makes the review that has been set up so bizarre. At the same time as Parliament has given express and overwhelming authority for this work to proceed, thousands of people being employed and billions of pounds having been spent, what do the Government do, courtesy of the Prime Minister? They parachute in a fundamental review which is essentially conducting open-heart surgery on a moving patient, if I may mix my metaphors.

This whole project is being constructed, massive public expense is being entered into, and what do the Government do? They announce a strategic fundamental review, looking not just at the management of the project, which is absolutely appropriate to look at because it has not been good enough and is part of the reason we have the cost overruns, but the whole case for HS2, which has been approved by Parliament by majorities of more than 10 to one.

I see the clock is flashing, but I will carry on for a few more minutes because this is Second Reading.

[Lord Adonis]

There is not a fixed time limit. I will make two more points if I may.

When the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, said that the case for HS2 when it started was on speed and not capacity, that was completely untrue. I published the White Paper on HS2 in March 2010, the opening words of which were,

“the Government’s assessment is … That over the next 20 to 30 years the UK will require a step-change in transport capacity between its largest and most productive conurbations … alongside such … capacity, there are real benefits for the economy and for passengers from”—

[Lord Framlingham]

Will the noble Lord give way, since he is determined to take up the time of the House that nobody else, I am sure, will take up? Does he understand that the title of this project is “High Speed Rail”?

[Lord Adonis]

It is a high-speed line, but from the beginning the prime case for HS2 has been additional capacity. I was reading the opening words of the White Paper, which continue,

“alongside such additional capacity, there are real benefits for the economy and for passengers from improving journey times and hence the connectivity of the UK”.

My final point is about the network effects which my noble friend on the Front Bench referred to. HS2 will be a crucial part of a new and upgraded national transport network. It will link into Crossrail in London through its junction at Old Oak Common; it will link in with three airports—Heathrow, which is close to Old Oak Common, Birmingham Airport, through Birmingham International, and Manchester Airport; it will link in with HS3 going east-west; it will free up huge capacity for freight and metropolitan commuter services into all of those three major conurbations.

The right thing for this House to do is give emphatic support to this Bill today. We cannot keep pulling up by the roots big infrastructure projects when they are being half-built. If we do it with this one, no one will ever believe that we will do something as big as this as a country again.

Adjournment

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Framlingham

Thursday 14th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab]

My Lords, I rise to move that the House now adjourns before we proceed with the remaining business, which is almost exclusively no-deal Brexit regulations. The House has spent months now endlessly debating no-deal Brexit regulations, some of us devoting a huge amount of time to it. The argument that has been put to us by the Government is that we need to because it is still the will of Parliament to keep no deal on the table and that, for as long as no deal is on the table, we have a duty to continue to make legislative provision, even though that is hugely diverting of the whole government machine. It is in pursuit of a policy that the Prime Minister has repeatedly said she does not wish to pursue and it is costing £4.2 billion. My noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham has just said that there is agreement across the House on appropriations. There might well by agreement that we could spend that £4.2 billion a lot more wisely than on no-deal preparations including for ferry companies with no ferries and the whole gamut of preparations we have seen. They are a colossal waste of public money and profoundly against the public interest.

My noble friend the Leader of the Opposition, in her robust and timely intervention a few moments ago, asked the Government what they intend to do in response to the crisis we now face, with the resolution of the House of Commons last night against no deal but, robotically, the continuation of preparations for no deal. They continue imminently in this House with another string of no-deal regulations. On the Order Paper are nine no-deal regulations, which we are expected to pass in debates after this Motion, which will involve big further demands on the government machine, big further expense and further requirements. This is emphatically not just about us; it is about whole sectors of the economy, which will now have to spring into action and make preparations, at huge cost to them and inconvenience to the public, in response to these regulations being passed.

Last night at 7.45 pm, the House of Commons resolved,

“that this House rejects the United Kingdom leaving the European Union without a Withdrawal Agreement and a Framework for the Future Relationship”.

That was not a capricious Motion. It was the latest in a whole series of resolutions the House of Commons has passed in the same spirit. It was passed by 321 votes to 278, so it was a decisive majority and it is now the duty of the Government to give effect to that resolution.

The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, whose contributions we look forward to because they constantly change and develop the argument on Brexit in such a sophisticated way each time he rises, has said that the issue now is the date of an extension. Of course, he is right in the technical, legal sense: having resolved that we do not wish to proceed with no deal we now need to decide what is the period of the extension we will seek in order to avoid no deal. That is correct, although I note that the European Union has already responded positively to last night’s vote. Noble Lords may not all be assiduous, like me, in their use of Twitter, but the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, tweeted an hour ago as follows:

“During my consultations ahead of #EUCO, I will appeal to the EU27 to be open to a long extension if the UK finds it necessary to rethink its #Brexit strategy”.


That is an extremely significant statement in terms of what will happen hereafter. It is abundantly clear from the resolution of the House of Commons last night that the United Kingdom does find it necessary to rethink its Brexit strategy. Any rethinking of our Brexit strategy will require two elements: first, no further contemplation of no deal, which was a ludicrous proposition to put before Parliament and the country and has finally been eliminated by the House of Commons; and secondly, an extension. The length of the extension needs to be agreed, but the principle of the extension is accepted now even by the Prime Minister, and the President of the European Council has already announced that the European Union will be open to debating and discussing that, which one assumes, therefore, will lead to agreement in the European Council next week.

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Adonis]

I am not giving way. The noble Lord can speak after me and it is open to him to do so.

In this circumstance I cannot understand why it is in the public interest for noble Lords to proceed now to debate another string of no-deal Brexit regulations. Surely the right thing to do in the crisis situation in which we find ourselves, where the one certain fact is that we will not be proceeding with no deal, is not to proceed with these regulations, but to adjourn the House and for Her Majesty’s Government to come back in good order on Monday with actual proposals for the change of the law that is required to change the exit date. They should also come back with an apology to Parliament and to the public for the billions of pounds of public money that has been wasted on no-deal preparations. This should all have been devoted to dealing with the issues of real concern to the public—the NHS, the education system, the state of our public services—and not this complete and shameful waste of money in preparations for a no-deal Brexit, which virtually no one in the country supports.

High Speed Rail (London–West Midlands) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Framlingham

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 12th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Framlingham]

My Lords, I rise briefly to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and to support what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is trying to say. This is a long and complicated process and however far in advance one talks about timetables, surely there is little point in building something if it will not deliver what one wants at the end of the day. One must look at the end as well as the beginning to make sure that one gets the system right.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, just to be clear, the illustrative timetables have been published already and, indeed, have been a part of the business case. What my noble friend’s amendment refers to is a comprehensive and detailed working timetable, which, as I say, will greatly build up the expectations of those who will benefit and lead to big and controversial campaigns by those who will not. In some areas, particularly with regard to freight trains, I am assuming that they would not feature in any event.

[Lord Framlingham]

I hate to labour the point. I can understand why detailed timetables would not be wanted, but surely identifying possible bottlenecks and flaws well in advance is absolutely essential.