High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

First, I, too, welcome the way in which the Secretary of State has handled the issue by not accusing anybody who is not in favour of the Bill or who has signed the reasoned amendment of being a nimby. When an issue is contentious, it is crucial that there is respect on all sides. I wish we had a second day for this debate, because five-minute limits mean no real debate and this issue should be debated.

My constituency is not directly affected in the way that that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) is affected, but when the Eurostar terminal was built at Waterloo we put up with years of terrible disruption, only to find that once it was built and was being used there was a switch and it went off to St Pancras. We had all the terrible problems, but ended up with no direct link to Paris.

When I talk to my constituents about HS2, they overwhelmingly ask whether it is the right way to spend £50 billion. Many of my constituents, who will never have a decent home to live in, who will never get out of overcrowding and who live in very difficult circumstances, are asking whether the money would not be better spent on providing decent homes for everyone in this country. These people live just a mile away from the House of Commons, yet they cannot have money spent on improving the railways within Lambeth. There is no longer a direct train at peak time from Clapham High Street to Victoria, because the platforms at Wandsworth Road need to be extended. Just small amounts of money would make such a difference to commuters around London.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The hon. Lady should come to my constituency. If she missed a train at Gainsborough Central, her next train would be one week away. That is the level of investment in rural lines in Lincolnshire.

[Kate Hoey]

That is exactly what people are asking all over the country: why is £50 billion going on this particular method of improving capacity and speed? I am very lucky, as I can walk to my constituency in five minutes and drive in four, so I do not travel on trains much, but when I do so, I do not find them crowded. Many carriages are empty and I discover that they are first class—there is nobody in them. All sorts of things could be done to increase capacity.

We should also be clear that once we start this project there is no guarantee that the costs will not spiral. I am worried that once we start the project and the costs start to go up, more and more money will be taken away, and not just from other parts of the transport network. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) is unlikely to have extra money spent on railways in his area if we go ahead with this project, as everything will be geared towards the super-project. Everyone will say that that is what we must spend the money on. We are being very short-sighted. This sounds like a sexy project, it sounds like we are being modern and trying to compete with the rest of Europe, but there is not a lot wrong with our railways that could not be dealt with if we had spent money over many years, if we had invested properly and if we now invested across the country rather than in one particular vanity project.

The compensation must be much stronger and greater. It is all very well saying that people can be compensated, but if someone has built up and worked hard on a business or home in the country only to see it blighted or destroyed, compensation might help but it does not take away the pain. It will not do so for the many people who will suffer if the project goes ahead.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) said some time ago, the scheme risks draining much-needed investment away from other railway infrastructure projects for the next 30 years. I want to know why, if the former Chancellor of the Exchequer said that, my party has suddenly changed its mind on the project.

The case for HS2 is flimsy. No amount of spin or the Front Benches being nice to each other will change the basic truth that this is potentially a huge white elephant that will not heal the north-south divide. If we wanted to heal that divide, we would be starting in the north, not the south. Money will be sucked away from all the other desperately needed upgrading schemes all over the country once the project starts. The money that goes in will have no long-term benefit for vast numbers of people in the United Kingdom. I hope that if there is a Labour Government after the next election, our Chancellor of the Exchequer will reconsider the issue and not be tied into saying that whatever happens we will go ahead with the project. The project could be doomed and we want to ensure that this Parliament has a say in whether the money is spent or not.

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[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

We have heard some very good speeches, some of which have been made with a great deal of passion and knowledge. It is not surprising that most of the speeches against this proposal were by Members representing constituencies affected by the line. We have also heard very good speeches praising it by Members representing Manchester and other great cities of the north.

I want to speak for other parts of the country that are not directly affected. I see that the Secretary of State is in his place. I am sure that Parliament will approve this line and it will go ahead, so I urge him not to forget other parts of the country. Some of us are concerned—we have not received enough reassurance on this point—that it will suck investment from the rural lines and commuter lines that the vast majority of our people are using. I am not just speaking for rural people in Lincolnshire, people standing on freezing platforms in Kent, or people trying to get suburban lines into Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool or wherever. We are worried about this vast project that is costing £50 billion, and that is just the start—we all know from Public Accounts Committee reports that we will be spending a lot more than that. I ask people to spare a thought for underinvestment in our rural lines.

When I intervened on the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who was giving a passionate speech about services in London, I was met with incredulity when I said that if she tried to take a train from Gainsborough Central to Brigg and missed it, she would have to wait a whole week for the next one. How many times have I sat, or rather stood, on the platform at Market Rasen waiting for the single cattle truck plodding its way from Grimsby and Cleethorpes at 40 mph? Perhaps that is the maximum speed. If one is lucky enough to get on the train—it is very overcrowded and infrequent—one can get down to Newark. It takes me three and a half hours to drive to the middle of my constituency—that is fair enough—but if I go by train it also takes three and a half hours. On behalf of people who do not want to travel at vast speed to Birmingham and Manchester, we are making the valid point that there is also a case to be made for people who live elsewhere in our country. We have heard so much in the past about the need for speed, but interestingly we hear less and less about that.

I am worried that too much political authority appears to be invested in this project, which started with an idea by the previous Labour Government. I am a bit suspicious about the line running through so many Conservative constituencies, but I will leave that to one side—I am sure it was not meant maliciously. The project has been taken up by this Government, and so much political authority is now tied up in it. We started with the speed case, but it seems to many of us that that has been shot to pieces. We are now told that it is all about capacity, but so many other proposals—

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

The right hon. Lady makes her point very well, but she and the House will know that that is not a matter on which I can make any ruling whatsoever from the Chair.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

My speech is just like one of the train journeys from Market Rasen to London—it is a bit of a stopping service.

I was making the point about capacity. Frankly, this proposal would have got through without any controversy if railway economists had started by making a careful case for capacity and if we had considered things such as better signalling, reducing the number of first-class carriages and the M40 corridor. There are many other proposals for lines—the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) has proposed improving the service from Birmingham Snow Hill to London—but there is an element of suspicion among the general public, is there not, that this is now a political project that we have to proceed with at all costs. I am not sure that that is the best way to invest in the public infrastructure of the future. Surely the best way to make decisions is to base them on careful, transparent and open studies, and that is what I urge the Government to do.