High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Debate between Mary Creagh and Andrew Bridgen

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

Absolutely. It will also be a key issue for my right hon. and hon. Friends from Coventry, because one of the pinch points on the west coast main line is the crush when commuting from Coventry into Birmingham in the rush hour.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Can the shadow Secretary of State confirm that the Opposition’s support for HS2 is still contingent on its being delivered for under £50 billion?

[Mary Creagh]

We will have to see what the Committee delivers as the Bill goes through the Committee process. There are clearly issues to do with the High Speed 1 and High Speed 2 link, which has now been taken out of the Bill. Some of the issues that the Committee will consider will be debated more fully tomorrow.

A Bill of this size and importance will be controversial, and we must debate it properly. A project of this size will affect very many individuals and communities, and the environment. We must minimise the negative impacts wherever possible and deal with the utmost sensitivity with the people whose homes are affected.

On the capacity crunch, HS2 will deal with some of these constraints on our railways. Already, thousands of commuters are standing on packed rush hour trains into Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Euston. Last week’s figures from the Office of Rail Regulation showed that the number of rail journeys has more than doubled since 1996. This number will continue to rise, and by 2026 peak demand will be two and a half times the capacity at Euston, twice the capacity at Birmingham New Street, and nearly twice the capacity at Manchester Piccadilly. There is already more demand for train services than there are train paths available on the west coast main line, and by 2024 it will be running at full capacity.

This congestion will have a significant impact on the freight industry and its customers. The west coast main line is the key artery in the Rugby, Daventry and Northampton golden triangle for freight. Over the next decade, passenger constraints will become more serious on the east coast main line and the midland main line. Network Rail’s £38 billion investment programme for the next five years will deliver signalling improvements, platform extensions and some additional services, but those incremental changes will not deal with the looming capacity problem.

Labour Members know from our time in government that major infrastructure takes years to plan and to construct. Many right hon. and hon. Members will remember the Crossrail Bill, which Labour introduced in 2005 and which received Royal Assent in 2008. That railway will open in 2018. Labour in government identified the need for more capacity on London’s railways by the end of this decade, and we acted to deliver it. We must do the same now to build the infrastructure we need to mitigate the looming capacity crunch on our railways.

High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Debate between Mary Creagh and Andrew Bridgen

Thursday 31st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

If the hon. Gentleman had listened, he would know that I just said we will support HS2. We shall be voting in favour of it this evening.

This is the first new north-south railway for more than 100 years, but Labour's brainchild has, sadly, been neglected by the Government. Instead of gestation, we have had stagnation. The project has been put at risk by delays, project mismanagement and, in July, by a huge increase to the budget.

First, on delays, Ministers looked at strategic alternatives to High Speed 2. That took until November 2011, which wasted 18 months and led to slippage in the project timetable, with Ministers now playing catch-up. Costs in this Parliament have risen from £700 million to £900 million. The National Audit Office has warned that this tighter time scale poses risks to the project:

“Faster preparation for the bill may increase the extent of petitions to Parliament which may make it less likely that royal assent is granted by the planned date of May 2015.”

Another delay is that the consultation on phase 2 of the route has only just been launched for the Y part of the network, despite the fact that it was being worked on when we were in power three years ago. Ministers have been trundling along; it is time for more urgency.

Secondly, on project mismanagement, the Government’s early cost-benefit reports were criticised in May this year by the National Audit Office for failing to make the strategic case for the new railway. I welcome that that has now been published in full. In September, the Public Accounts Committee warned that Ministers’ plans to present the hybrid Bill to Parliament before Christmas were “ambitious” and “unrealistic”. I would be interested to hear from the Secretary of State whether that is still his plan.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the hon. Lady confirm, as he has stated in the media, that the shadow Chancellor will have the final say over whether Labour supports HS2?

[Mary Creagh]

The shadow Chancellor has never said that in the media. In fact, he has told the media that it will be a collective decision, so I do not know where the hon. Gentleman has got that from.

Finally, this summer the contingency budget ballooned to £14.4 billion, now one third of the railway’s cost. Our concern is that putting in such a large contingency at such an early stage of the project could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). We are living in austere times. Our constituents are facing the largest cost of living crisis for a generation. Prices have risen faster than wages for 39 of the 40 months of this Government, and working people are, on average, more than £1,500 a year worse off. In these circumstances, and given the public finances, it was right for my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor to call the Government to account for their mismanagement of the project, which has led to this ballooning of costs. That is the right thing to do, because public consent for this great project depends on people like the shadow Chancellor having the courage to stand up against sloppy, incompetent and bureaucratic government. It is we, the Opposition, who are the true friends of HS2 and this Government who have put it at risk. We will continue our scrutiny of these costs and our discipline on the public finances.