Coastguard Modernisation

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. I am a member of the Select Committee on Transport, so I know that he has clearly listened to many of the concerns that were identified, particularly on daylight-only operating. When we spoke to coastguards as part of our inquiry we were very struck by their willingness to modernise the service. May I invite him to say a little more about how the new maritime operations centre will harness new technology to augment the safety that the existing stations provide?

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and to the Committee for the work that it did. I suspect that he may get the prize for being the Member with the constituency furthest from the coast who has contributed to this discussion today. I would be happy to talk to him offline, but I sense that Mr Deputy Speaker would not encourage me to explain in detail the technical features of the new maritime operations centre.

High-speed Rail

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) on securing the debate.

I am a member of the Select Committee on Transport, and we are midway through our inquiry into high-speed rail, which is one of the most fascinating subjects that I have had to consider in my time as a Member. In the interests of time, I will not rehearse all the arguments for and against. I want to do two things in my contribution. First I make a plea to all sides in the debate to keep their remarks objective and evidence-based, and not to indulge in unhelpful and insulting point scoring; I say that to everyone. To those who support high-speed rail, it is incredibly unhelpful and insulting to polarise the debate as jobs in the north against lawns in the south, which is insulting to lots of people who have real and passionate objections to the concept of high-speed rail.

[Albert Owen]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point. The problem is that little evidence is available in this country. In particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) has asked the Wales Office for a detailed analysis and to collate the data, so that we can have an evidence-based argument and put forward stronger cases.

[Iain Stewart]

That is one of the things that the Transport Committee is digging into, to ensure that we make a decision based on fact.

To those who oppose high-speed rail, I have seen evidence of threatening letters to some proponents of high-speed rail and some exaggerated claims. My plea to everyone is to stop it. This is the most significant strategic, long-term transport decision we will take for a generation, and it has got to be right. The project will outlive several Governments, of goodness knows what colour and composition, so the decision has got to be right and we must have agreement on it.

Secondly, I would like some reassurance from the Minister about the scope of the Department for Transport inquiry and that that inquiry is not a simple choice between the current High Speed 2 proposals and doing nothing, but that a range of other options can be considered. The Transport Committee has just returned from a visit to France and Germany to look at their high-speed networks. One conclusion that I came to is that what matters is not just building a line, but how it is connected into the existing rail network, the connectivity to the termini on the line, and how it fits in with the wider transport strategy involving freight and aviation. That is what makes high-speed rail a success or failure. We must look at it in the round.

The hon. Member for Clwyd South has mentioned Lille. Yes, it has been successful, but we found that that has often been at the expense of neighbouring towns. The French have recognised belatedly that better connectivity is needed to Lille, and that that is what drives the benefits.

Time precludes me from going into many of the other issues that I wanted to raise, but one is the operating speed of the route. High Speed 2 has been designed for an operating speed of 250 mph, but all the evidence from Europe, China and elsewhere is that although the trains can technically run at that speed, for all sorts of practical reasons they are limited to about 200 mph. That opens up the possibility of other route options. We can build High Speed 2, but not necessarily along the proposed route. The latest generation of Shinkansen bullet trains, which tilt, opens up the possibility of building lines alongside an existing transport corridor, such as the M1 or M40, which would mitigate much of the concern about environmental intrusion. That is what the Germans have done.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the M1 stops just north of Leeds?

[Iain Stewart]

It does indeed, and the current proposal is to go only as far as Leeds. There may be a further development alongside the A1 in future, but I will not argue for that.

The hon. Member for Clwyd South has mentioned the Frankfurt to Cologne line, which was built largely alongside the autobahn, and there has been no concern in Germany about the noise and visual intrusion of that line, which has been welcomed. My request to the Minister is that we examine all the options, because it is vital to get the details right. If we do, we will have a transport system that we can be proud of; if we get it wrong, we may have an expensive white elephant.

Greenock Coastguard Station

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to have secured this debate today on a topic of concern to many in my coastal constituency who rely on the service provided by the Clyde coastguard service at Greenock. Of course, the debate takes place in the context of the consultation on the future of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which was announced to the House in a written ministerial statement on 16 December 2010. The consultation proposes the closure of more than half the current coastguard stations and the loss of approximately 248 jobs.

A number of my constituents work at Clyde coastguard station at Greenock, and many of the points that I shall put to the Minister today, and the questions that I will ask him, come directly from them. The House will be aware that coastguards have recently been prevented from giving evidence directly to the Select Committee on Transport. Operations room staff at the Clyde coastguard station have, however, authored a response to the consultation, which was submitted on 5 May. I hope that the Minister will look at that submission and ensure that it is considered constructively. It makes many detailed points in support of retaining a coastguard station at Greenock.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. I am a member of the Transport Committee and, as she rightly says, we are conducting an inquiry into the future of coastguard stations. Although we were not able to take evidence formally from the staff at Greenock, we visited the station and met the staff informally as part of our inquiry. I pay tribute to the officers. The views they expressed were noted, and will be helpful in formulating the response to our inquiry.

[Katy Clark]

I am grateful for that intervention. I hope that the views expressed by coastguards at Greenock and other coastguard stations are listened to by the Government, and I strongly welcome the fact that coastguards were able to speak informally to the Committee. They have made many technical points which it is helpful for Members of Parliament to listen to.

High-Speed Rail

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I add my congratulations to my hon. Friends the Members for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) and for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) and to other right hon. and hon. Members who lobbied for the debate.

I wanted to speak for three reasons. First, I have a long-standing interest in the subject. One reason why I came into politics was to help shape the big strategic decisions that we have to take as a country. I do not want us to look back in 30 or 40 years and realise that we have made the wrong decision.

Secondly, I have a local, constituency interest. My Milton Keynes seat is not on the proposed route for High Speed 2, but it could benefit from the knock-on effects that High Speed 2 would deliver in freeing up capacity on the west coast main line for both commuter services and longer distance stopping services. Anyone who wants to commute from Milton Keynes in peak hours will know that we are severely overcrowded. My other local interest is that although the line does not come through Milton Keynes, it comes close enough for me to have a real understanding of the fact that communities along the line of route will be severely affected. We should not just dismiss the concerns of local residents as though they were Lady Ludlow in “Cranford” objecting to the coming of the railways. They are real communities with real concerns about the impact of the line.

Thirdly and most significantly, I am a member of the Select Committee on Transport and we have recently agreed to conduct a strategic inquiry into high-speed rail. It will not relate specifically to this line of route, but look more widely at the strategic cases for and against high-speed rail in the United Kingdom. I can genuinely say that I will consider all the arguments and evidence objectively. If the strategic case is not made or the detailed plans do not meet the strategic need, I will not support them. However, my starting point is to give high-speed rail in the United Kingdom a fair wind.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), who is no longer in his place, and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) have mentioned, the other countries that have developed high-speed rail networks—Spain, Germany, France, China and Japan—cannot all be wrong. Yes, there will be differences of detail, but they cannot all be wrong, so we must give high-speed rail a fair wind.

It is clear that we need additional north-south rail capacity in the United Kingdom. Anyone travelling on the west coast main line knows that. I will not go into the detailed arguments now, because of the time constraints. Upgrades could be made to that line and to the east coast main line. There is the Rail Package 2—RP2—project. There are measures such as lengthening trains, improving signalling and removing some of the pinchpoints. All those things can and, I would argue, should happen, but I fear that that is not the complete answer. Those upgrades would buy time. If the High Speed 2 proposals went through, the first trains would start running in 2026—15 years from now. The upgrades to the classic rail network would buy us time over those 15 years, and they should happen, but we need to consider what comes next, because I fear that the upgrades have a finite capacity. This is not an either/or situation; we need to consider both.

The nub of the issue is this: what long-term strategic capacity do we need on our railways? I hope that in the course of our investigation in the Select Committee, we will be able to test robustly the likely demand in respect of freight and passengers, for both inter-city and commuter journeys. All the evidence is that there will be upward pressure, but we need to test that robustly. We also need to consider whether High Speed 2 will be active or passive in meeting that demand. Do we simply assume that that increase in demand will happen, or is there a finite point at which, without any other economic change, a total number of journeys will be reached? In my view, it should be active in looking at how high-speed rail can stimulate economic growth.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire referred to the university of Barcelona, but there are also many other studies. I draw right hon. and hon. Members’ attention to the work of Professor Roger Vickerman of the university of Kent, who has written widely on this subject and gave evidence to the Transport Committee in a separate inquiry that we conducted into transport and the economy. I will not summarise all his work—it is very detailed and complex—but one of his findings was that the issue is not just putting in a new line. That in itself will not be enough. It is what else happens, connecting towns and cities around the sites of the termini—the extra capacity and the linkage that go in there. That makes a difference.

[Damian Collins]

Of course, my constituency is at the end of the High Speed 1 network. I do not think that we would find anyone in east Kent who does not see the High Speed 1 connection as a catalyst for further economic regeneration that will be delivered for many years to come.

[Iain Stewart]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We need to consider that broader strategic case. Yes, we are considering the first phase, from London to Birmingham, and then the second phase, the Y shape, to Leeds and Manchester, but we need to go further than that. We need to consider the case for connecting this to Scotland. Recently, I was at a launch jointly held by the leaders of Glasgow and Edinburgh city councils, who have proposed that as well as building from south to north, we should build from north to south. We need to ensure that we consider the case for connecting the airports and for freeing up capacity on the classic lines to ports so that increased freight can be transferred there. All those lessons can also come from abroad to influence our considerations here.

I come now to the environmental points. Again, we need to consider what has happened abroad. The proposed high-speed line will have an operating speed of 250 mph, which is a significant increase on the operating speeds of most high-speed lines in the country. I urge caution on that point. Let us consider Japan, for example. The new generation of the Shinkansen or bullet train can operate at about 250 mph, but it is being limited in its speed because of noise pollution concerns.

I would need to dust down my physics textbooks from school to go into the detail, but there are concepts such as tunnel boom noise—if a train operates at such a high speed, it creates additional noise pollution that does not affect conventional TGV lines. We need to consider that. It is significant because some of the possible routes for High Speed 2 have been ruled out by the 250 mph operating speed. That has to do with the curvature of the line. If we conclude that we can operate a high-speed network at a lower speed, at about 180 or 190 mph, we open up the possibility of looking at the high-speed line following the line of route of an existing transport corridor—perhaps the M40, the M1 or the M6. We need to consider all those points.

I am conscious of the time; I know that many other hon. Members want to speak. The point is that we need to consider all the arguments carefully. This is one of the biggest and most significant transport infrastructure projects that we have had to face for a generation. Get it right and we will have a world-class transport system in this country. Get it wrong and we will have wasted billions of pounds and disrupted many communities without having proper gain from it.

Sustainable Transport

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Norman Baker]

I am familiar with Brighton, as the hon. Lady knows. I would say that the public transport system in her constituency is extremely good. Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach Company is one of the best bus companies in the country, and Southern has invested recently in new rolling stock and is one of the better train companies. The frequency of services will be further enhanced by the Thameslink programme and the Government are committed to 2,100 new railway carriages, so people in Brighton and on the south coast can have confidence that the public transport system is serving them well.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s statement. It is timely for my constituency, as Milton Keynes council is consulting on local transport needs and priorities in the coming years. To ensure that that consultation is properly aligned with the new fund, will he say a little more about its time scale and the greater flexibility that local authorities will have?

[Norman Baker]

The guidance for the bidding process has also been released today and is available to Members in the Vote Office. Essentially, there are two bidding rounds for smaller scale projects of up to £5 million and another bidding round for larger projects of up to £50 million. The objective is to make them as quick and as easy as possible, subject to securing value for money and making sure that the money can be released as a consequence of that. The shorter projects will be progressed more quickly than the larger projects, but the time scale has been made available as part of the guidance.

High Speed Rail

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, and Leeds. However, I would not like anyone to be under the illusion that benefits for people living north of Birmingham will begin to accrue only when the second phase is built. The point of reconnecting the first phase of the line to the west coast main line is that people travelling to Manchester, Liverpool and Scotland will enjoy journey-time savings from the point at which the first phase to Birmingham is opened. That is because the trains we will operate on this proposed railway will run straight off the high-speed line and on to the classic line, dropping the speed down to the line speed of the classic line, but allowing passengers to enjoy the benefit of the journey-time saving between London and Birmingham.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I hope it is in order, Mr Deputy Speaker, briefly to congratulate you on your brave announcement yesterday, and to welcome you to the club.

Has my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had an opportunity to study the experiences of countries such as France, Germany and Spain and the lessons they learned in the construction of their high speed lines? I am thinking in particular about their very effective schemes to minimise noise pollution. Also, please can we ensure that our new railway infrastructure is not a series of new ugly concrete constructions, but instead that we have structures of which we can proud, as we have had in the past with, for example, the Forth bridge and Brunel’s tunnels and viaducts?

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. Yes, we have looked very closely at what has happened in France and at what is happening in Spain, and we have drawn on the experience of those countries in modelling the business case and addressing the approach to mitigation. My hon. Friend’s question reminds me to make a rather important point. We will not be committing to orders for trains for this railway until almost 2020, so there is another 10 years’ worth of train design development before the commitment has to be made.

Oral Answers to Questions

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

The right hon. Lady has raised this issue before, and she rightly says that the EHRC is doing what it is meant to do as an independent body. It is currently on the information trail, asking for information appertaining to the comprehensive spending review. All Departments are assessing the impact on equality and this Government have acted to protect the lowest-paid public sector workers, most of whom are women, from the public sector pay freeze. We have taken the lowest earners—800,000 people, most of whom are women—out of taxation. This Government have acted to protect women.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

3. If she will bring forward legislative proposals to amend the requirements for the disclosure of historical convictions for consensual homosexual intercourse for the purposes of preventing discrimination.

[The Minister for Equalities (Lynne Featherstone)]

As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities said in her equalities speech last week, the rights and freedoms Bill will include provisions to ensure that those who were prosecuted for consensual gay sex with over-16s at a time when that was illegal may apply to have their conviction deleted from police records. As a result, they will no longer be required to disclose their conviction in any circumstances.

[Iain Stewart]

Does the Minister agree that one of the benefits of the change is that men with such convictions who have not previously volunteered for charities or other organisations will now be able to do so, as they will no longer have to make the disclosure in their Criminal Records Bureau checks?

[Lynne Featherstone]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. It is totally unfair and unjust that men who have a conviction for something that has long not been illegal should have to fear that being exposed—and exposed to partners they live with, who may not know. Such men will never again have to disclose that information. I hope very much that those gay men whom that has inhibited from volunteering will now find that inhibition removed.

Rail Investment

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am delighted to hear from the hon. Gentleman. Not many people who have addressed me on HS 2 have asked me to alter the line so that it runs through their constituency, as I think he has. I am grateful for his enthusiastic support for the project. The HS 2 consultation will include the detail of the route from London to Birmingham, the wider strategic principles of the high-speed rail network and the selected route corridors, so his constituents, his local authority, and indeed he himself, will have an opportunity to make that point.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is correct to assess carefully the different options for the intercity express programme, but when does he expect the first IEP trains to enter service?

[Mr Hammond]

At this point I cannot give my hon. Friend an answer; it will depend on which option is selected. Of the two remaining options, one is for a novel technology—the Agility Trains proposal for a bi-modal train, which is an innovation—and the other is for a standard high-speed electric train set with a diesel coupling at the end of the wires. Clearly the latter option could be delivered more quickly, but our decision must be based on the best long-term interests of the UK’s railway.

Transport (CSR)

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) on securing this debate. I do not intend to speak for very long, as the hon. Lady has comprehensively covered the issues that the Select Committee on Transport is considering and, as a member of that Committee, I do not wish to go over the same ground. For the same reason, I do not intend to comment on the specific projects announced in the comprehensive spending review or subsequent announcements.

I welcome the success of my right hon. Friend the Minister and her colleagues in securing the assessment in the comprehensive spending review. I have to say that I feared it would be much worse and that transport would be one of the easy victims of the cuts that, sadly, must be made. By their very nature, transport projects are long term. If cuts are made, the impact is not always immediately felt. It was very bold and brave of the Government to give priority to the schemes that are for the long-term benefit of the country.

I want to focus on what follows the CSR period. As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside mentioned, one of the Transport Committee’s current inquiries is into transport and the economy. As we are in the middle of that inquiry, I do not want to prejudge its conclusions, but I want to put on the record my concern and desire that we should take a longer-term perspective on transport planning in this country. We should take a more strategic, joined-up view. We have had plenty of laudable policies, schemes and reviews of individual modes of transport, whether rail, aviation, roads or maritime. However, historically, we have not taken a joined-up view and considered different modes of transport and how they fit together.

High Speed 2 is a classic example. I will not revisit the debate we had in Westminster Hall earlier this week, but we should not consider that sort of project in isolation. In considering the economic benefits, we look solely at what High Speed 2 can deliver, but such projects should be considered in conjunction with a long-term aviation policy for the United Kingdom. Before we fix the route of High Speed 2, we ought to consider how it should join up with airports in the south-east and the rest of the country. Germany has a multiple airport hub that is well connected by high-speed rail services. High Speed 2 is a multi-billion pound, long-term project and we will get one shot at making it right. Before we commit to a specific route and a vast sum of public expenditure, we ought to make sure that it is thought through strategically.

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman makes the valid point that the project needs to be carefully considered in a strategic context. However, if the logic of high-speed rail is, among other things, to compete with aviation and draw people away from aviation to reduce carbon emissions, surely there is not a terribly strong strategic logic to the scheme making it easier for people to get to airports.

[Iain Stewart]

I am afraid I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. There will be competition between high-speed rail and short-haul aviation, and I would like the United Kingdom to be part of a Europe-wide high-speed network, so that it is feasible to travel by rail from Birmingham to Paris or Frankfurt. However, it is an inescapable fact that the demands on medium and long-haul air travel will increase and, until an engineer comes up with a solution, we cannot yet take trains across the Atlantic or other expanses of water.

As part of the Transport Committee’s inquiry, we visited Birmingham airport a few weeks ago. The people who work there are excited about the High Speed 2 line, because the journey time from the London area to Birmingham airport will be less than 40 minutes. That opens up the prospect of having longer-haul flights from Birmingham and relieving the capacity pressures on south-east England airports. That might not be the only answer, but it is the sort of long-term consideration that transport planning should include.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

Can I take it from the hon. Gentleman’s remarks that he accepts the principle that the UK needs an international hub airport, as well as airports that function for shorter haul, and that he believes Heathrow is very important to the UK economy?

[Iain Stewart]

The United Kingdom certainly needs a hub airport in the broadest sense. I will not go into the relative merits of all the options in this short debate, but if my right hon. Friend the Minister wishes to promote me to the Government, I would be happy to make such decisions. At the moment, I am afraid such decisions are above my pay grade and that of the hon. Gentleman.

We need to think strategically about what we want the long-term aviation policy of the United Kingdom to be. That might involve Heathrow—although from all the evidence I have seen, I suspect not—or a broader south-east hub and Birmingham, Manchester or other airports in the United Kingdom. The point is that such a long-term view should be considered in conjunction with other strategic projects, such as high-speed rail.

If I may anticipate the comments that I believe my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) will be sharing with us in a short time, we should consider specific transport projects in different locales around the country. There are exciting projects in the Leeds area involving trolley buses and other local schemes, which should also be factored into this country’s long-term planning. As a small aside, I shall mention that it is my hon. Friend’s birthday today. As a birthday present, perhaps the Minister can announce something helpful on the Leeds trolley bus scheme. However, I shall not press that matter any further.

In this country, we are poor at long-term transport planning. Part of the problem is that the tenure of Secretaries of State in the Department for Transport has been very short. Let us consider the average time for which Secretaries of State have served in the past. In the 18 years of Conservative Governments between 1979-1997, there were 12 Secretaries of State for Transport. Under the previous Labour Governments, there were seven Secretaries of State in 13 years—they did not last much longer on average. Transport needs to be pushed up the priority list in government. Again, it is way above my pay grade to determine ministerial appointments and tenure, but I hope that an individual is given the necessary time in post and the flexibility to develop a long-term view.

Those are the main points I wish to put on the record. I have the great pleasure of representing the Transport Committee at a European conference on transport and infrastructure this weekend. I am not a great fan of most things European, but Europe has had a comprehensive, strategic transport plan since 1990. I would like us to replicate that domestically in the United Kingdom. The settlement that my right hon. Friend and her colleagues have secured is, as I have said, very welcome in the context in which we operate. I hope that it will be a sound basis on which we can build a truly long-term national strategic transport plan.

High Speed 2

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) on securing this important debate.

I take a strong interest in the issue at two levels: strategically, as a member of the Select Committee on Transport and because High Speed 2 is a key component in the debate on our national transport infrastructure; and locally. Although the proposed route does not go through my constituency in Milton Keynes, it runs close by, just a couple of miles from my western border, which is close enough for me to have a say in the debate in a local context and to understand the justifiable concerns of many villagers along the proposed route.

I will put my cards on the table right at the start. From all the evidence that I have seen, there is a strong case for an additional north-south strategic rail route in the United Kingdom and for that route to be capable of running the latest generation of high-speed trains. However, I am far from convinced that the detail of the proposed route is correct.

We run the risk of an enormous and costly error in this country if we do not get the details right, which is why I warmly welcome the recent assurance by the Secretary of State and the Minister that the inquiry into High Speed 2 will examine both the strategic case and the specifics of the proposed route. Frankly, we get one shot at making the project work and, vitally, if it is to succeed, it must be done on the strongest evidence and commanding broad-based support in the country.

One strategic argument is that, instead of ploughing billions of pounds into constructing a High Speed 2 line, the money—smaller amounts even—could be better used upgrading what are known as the classic rail routes. I regard that as a false choice.

As any regular user of the west coast main line knows, it is already getting pretty close to capacity, even after the substantial investment and upgrades in recent years. If anyone doubts that, I invite them to go to Euston station at 7 o’clock on a weekday evening and try to board the Manchester train. Virgin has to employ people who are basically crowd-control managers to prevent ugly scenes. The line has other pinch points as well.

[Steve Baker]

Does my hon. Friend agree that ugly scenes as a result of scarce resources are typical of socialism?

[Iain Stewart]

My hon. Friend tempts me down an interesting line of debate but, in the interests of brevity, I will resist that temptation.

At the moment, the classic network has pinch points. Yes, certain upgrades could be made—trains could be lengthened by a couple of coaches, there is room for one additional train movement in and out of Euston at peak times and the speed on the line could be increased a little. All those things can be done, but they would only buy time.

The choice, however, is not between doing those things and investing in High Speed 2. If we look at the time frame for High Speed 2, there is a gap between the existing capacity and what is needed in current years. I believe we have to do both—upgrade the classic rail routes and plan for the long term with High Speed 2. Simply, the forecast increase in the UK population and our increased willingness and desire to travel more and in comfort, mean that the extra capacity is required.

I accept the general case that there should be a route from London to Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and cities in the north of England and in Scotland. However, it is important that the business case is rigorously tested. From a common-sense layman’s perspective, we need to challenge why certain aspects of the current HS 2 case seem to be omitted or rejected. Time constraints prohibit me from going into those in detail, but let me flag up one or two of the issues, which other Members have raised.

Why does High Speed 2 not connect with HS1? It is crazy not to connect them, in my view. I had a meeting with the chief executive of Crossrail recently, and I asked him, “Has anyone considered using Crossrail as a link between High Speed 1 and High Speed 2?” He said, “You’re the first person who’s ever proposed that to me.” Such a link may not be the answer, but it is surely the sort of issue that we should look at as we consider a multi billion pound scheme over many years. Has High Speed 2 been considered in the context of broader UK aviation policy? Should we not look at connecting Birmingham airport, Heathrow and other airports in the midlands and the south as part of our total transport policy?

Why are we not looking more at intermediate stops along the line? I have enormous sympathy for the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe, who said that Buckinghamshire would have all the pain but none of the gain because there would be no access point along the route. The French TGV system has intermediate stops at different points. This summer, I travelled on the line down to the Mediterranean, and there is a stop at Valence. It is constructed in such a way that it does not impede the fast trains that shoot through, but it gives access to many towns and cities in that part of France. If I may, I would like to put in an early bid for an Iain Stewart international gateway station to serve Milton Keynes and the surrounding areas.

There are justifiable environmental concerns, but I urge those who are concerned about the environmental impacts to look closely at other high-speed lines around the world. The use of proper cuttings and natural cuttings can minimise a lot of the noise and visual damage.

I want now to make a more strategic point. Everyone who objects to rail schemes believes that they will be ugly and unsightly, but they need not be. This country has a proud tradition of building infrastructure projects—particularly rail infrastructure projects—that enhance the environment. The Forth bridge, the Ribblehead viaduct and Brunel’s bridges and tunnels are things of beauty, and, done properly, the projects that we are talking about could actually enhance the countryside. I do not want to create some ghastly, ugly concrete jungle, but for goodness’ sake, if we are going to make High Speed 2 a national project, let us use it to showcase what we can do. I have mentioned examples of older infrastructure projects, but we could look at modern ones, such as the Millau viaduct in France, which enhances the environment.

It is absolutely right that we consider the strategic case to make sure that the numbers stack up. Equally, everyone along the route must have their say as to why the line should or should not go through a particular locale. However, let us do things with a positive attitude. We need High Speed 2 in this country and we get one shot at it. When we have the inquiry, which I strongly welcome, let us undertake it with a positive attitude.