High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

This has been a great debate, but it is a debate about economics, rather than transport, and that is what I will focus on in my brief contribution. This is a debate about whether we want this country to compete with our European competitors and to have a powerful punch in the world that we will confront tomorrow. It is not a debate just about whether this or that place will be affected, but about how all of us will be affected and how the economy will be affected.

We must focus on the economic arguments, of which there are three. The first concerns regional disparities because we cannot afford to go on allowing places such as Yorkshire, which we have just heard about, or other parts of our country, to do less well simply because they are not adequately connected. Growth pole theory tells us that if we can get to and invest in somewhere, that place starts to grow. HS2 will do just that; it will provide that opportunity.

The United Kingdom should be as ambitious as Germany was when it reunified. If someone goes to Lower Saxony today, they will see what has happened because it put money into infrastructure and connections, which are now yielding results. For example, a Porsche factory in Leipzig is able to produce cars with literally to the moment delivery of parts, because of those connections. We should be keen on that for ourselves, and that economic argument underpins my thinking.

The second theme we must develop concerns what we are talking about for the railways. My one regret is that we call it high speed rather than high capacity, because capacity is what the argument is about. We are growing as an economy and we need to transport ourselves and everything else more readily, quickly and efficiently. We must have the necessary links and connections, and HS2 will provide them.

It is all about ensuring that the real economy can work. Of course all our cities are great, but they could be greater still if they had appropriate links with our economic infrastructure. We all know if we look at a map that it is easy to get to London from anywhere, but not easy to get from anywhere to somewhere else. Every time we look at a map we confront that problem, and HS2 will help us by connecting the cities that we need to rely on as future growth poles and places that can expand and develop.

The other big issue for me is our place in the world and the global economy. If we demonstrate that we can pull this sort of project off, we will demonstrate that we can pull a load of other things off as well. It is about confidence, the vision we have for ourselves, and our capacity to engineer, deliver and develop the economic future that we want. It is important that we seize the opportunity of HS2 and ensure that it works, and we can do that by ensuring that it connects with the right places. I take the arguments about connecting with airports and so on, and it is right that we consider whether we are going to Heathrow, Gatwick, or the third option that the Mayor of London would—quite rightly—wish us to consider. We need to set our terms of discussion not about the problems we confront but about the solutions and capacities that we can generate through this ambitious project. We should go for it in terms of the economic and cultural arguments, and because it is the right thing to do for our cities beyond London.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—