High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I hope that in this debate about high-speed rail the Front-Bench team will not mind my talking about high speed. Of course capacity is extraordinarily important, and we are not just talking about capacity to relieve the west coast main line. The relief that the Y network will give to the east coast main line and the midlands main line is at least as important. I speak as someone whose constituency is dissected by HS1, and we have found that the benefits appear to be much greater than the costs. I speak from that strong perspective. Part of that benefit is down to capacity, but it is also about speed.

It has been of huge advantage to our area that we can get from Ebbsfleet to St Pancras in 17 minutes. Yes, unlike people in Buckinghamshire, we have that intermediate station, but we also benefit from the classic lines which can now take people from Strood to Stratford in 25 minutes and through to St Pancras in 32 minutes. That is bringing in huge amounts of additional people. It is making it much more attractive to come to Medway—to bring in investment, as commercial and professional leaders want to base themselves in Medway. I believe that Birmingham and Manchester will have a similar experience.

If we shorten the journey time from Manchester to London from two hours and eight minutes to one hour and eight minutes, that will be a huge economic boost to Manchester. I find it extraordinary when I hear people say, “Oh, well actually it is going to damage Manchester. It’s going to suck the growth out of Manchester and it will all go to London.” If they believe that, why do they not have the courage of their convictions and argue to slow the line so that it takes four hours rather than two hours?

[Damian Collins]

Does my hon. Friend agree that east Kent has seen real economic benefits—that wages have been rising faster and unemployment has been falling faster than the national average—because of high-speed rail?

[Mark Reckless]

Yes I certainly do agree, and I think that is because of those improved journey times, including to Folkestone. The idea that there would be more jobs in Folkestone if the journey time were two hours rather than one hour, or that if we somehow had a man with a red flag in front of the train that would bring the greatest possible economic growth to the north or to Folkestone, is frankly absurd.

[Mr McLoughlin]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point. He is also making the same point that Sir Albert Bore and Sir Richard Leese would be making to us if they were able to address the House. They are the leaders of their councils and they would say that these lines will bring tremendous benefits to their cities. They are in the best place to know.

[Mark Reckless]

I agree with the Secretary of State. I would add, however, that further benefits to these northern cities and Birmingham could be accrued if we did more than just fulfil the intention of the direct links through to the continent of Europe. Although I understand why the previously proposed way of doing that has not gained support, I hope that we will still look at the possibility of reinstituting a direct connection between HS1 and HS2, and that when we look at the costs and benefits of that we look not only at the benefits to the north of being able to get through to Europe, but at the benefits for people from Manchester or Birmingham of being able to go directly through to east London, Kent or East Anglia from a connection at Stratford. The work Greengauge 21 did on that shows that the benefits will be huge. Yes, there would be benefits for my constituents and people in east London from being able to go from Stratford or Ebbsfleet through to Old Oak Common and on to the north, but a connection would also significantly add to the benefits for people coming from Birmingham and the north. I hope we will look at that.

I believe that there is scope within this Bill to make such improvements. From listening to some of the opponents, it is as if they assume that the costs are going to spiral out of control and that the benefits are all grossly exaggerated, but when I look through the work and the detail of the estimates and calculations, they strike me as extraordinarily conservative.

We have learned the lessons from the great infrastructure projects of the past. If we consider Crossrail or the Olympics, we see it is possible to deliver projects to time and to budget, and possibly faster or cheaper. Part of the reason for that is the very big estimate for contingency. Some people criticised, and we have heard Opposition Front Benchers saying that perhaps they would not support a project if costs were spiralling, but actually a substantial contingency had been factored in: £14.5 billion of the £42.6 billion is contingency. It is not contingency in order to get to our best estimate of what the cost is going to be; the contingency has been padded to the degree that we are 95% certain that the cost will come in below the number given. It is expected that more than £4 billion of that contingency will not be used, so perhaps some of that could be put towards providing a decent quality link between HS1 and HS2, to everybody’s benefit.

[Mr Straw]

Is the hon. Gentleman further reassured by the fact that this project is led by Sir David Higgins, whose estimates for the Olympics, including a substantial so-called “optimism bias”, turned out to be entirely accurate?

[Mark Reckless]

Yes, I am reassured. I consider there to be a degree of pessimism bias in this case; £700 million has been taken out for the link and it has just been absorbed into even more contingency. I think that the contingency is much too high and that the project will come in significantly below the estimates, and that is just on the cost side. We must also look at the benefits side. We have heard a lot of talk about working on trains and how things are calculated, but there is something much more important when we are projecting the growth in traffic and looking at the benefits.

Over the past 10 years, long-distance rail travel has grown by 5.2% each year on average, yet we are assuming that in the future it is going to grow by only 2.2% per year. I do not understand why there is suddenly to be this collapse in the growth rate for rail traffic, and it is on that basis that projections are made. Furthermore, we are assuming that once we get to 2036, only three years after the project has been completed, there will be no further growth in traffic at all. If we had some more realistic calculations on both costs and benefits, we would see that this becomes an even more attractive project. I believe that it will be more attractive still if we have a proper link between HS2 and HS1, bringing benefits to all.