High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Simon Burns Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s witty intervention, but I do not think it has anything to do with the debate. It was an enjoyable interlude.

We have not had any real perception, understanding or analysis in the debate of what high-speed rail has meant for our partner countries in Europe. I am a member of the Select Committee on Transport and we went to France and to Germany. Nobody in those countries is suggesting that they should close down their high-speed routes. Indeed, everyone we met, from local residents to other stakeholders, Government people and business people, was determined to expand the network.

I am not suggesting for a minute that because such things are supported in France and Germany we should follow that path, but I am saying that we should investigate, as we have, the reasons behind their approach. We need some very good reasons why Britain is so peculiar and different that high-speed rail will not benefit us. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State observed, Italy has 960 miles of high-speed rail. We have only a small amount—only 60 miles, I believe—

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)]

Sixty-seven.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am sorry—67. Everyone else—including China and others around the world—is looking to expand their high-speed rail network. It is only in this country where we are looking not to build any further expansion of the network. That should strike right hon. and hon. Members as very bizarre.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)]

This has been an extremely good and well-informed debate. A significant number of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members have spoken in support of High Speed 2 and this paving Bill, and a number, including a number of my right hon. and hon. Friends, have expressed their concerns and lack of support.

I want to begin in a slightly unusual way by congratulating the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), on taking the view in the national interest that they will support the Bill tonight, as they supported it when they were in government. For that consistency, I congratulate and thank them.

We heard a number of excellent speeches. I thought the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) was particularly relevant and interesting, because his constituency has the experience of High Speed 1. I also enjoyed the robust contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley), who is clearly a keen and enthusiastic supporter of the project.

I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) and others who oppose the Bill and who have the preferred or proposed route going through their constituency that I understand what they are going through. I have considerable sympathy for them as constituency MPs and I admire they way in which they are rightly fighting for the interests of their constituents, but ultimately I believe that the national interest must come first, although we must do all we can to alleviate any problems that have been highlighted.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Burns]

I am sorry, but no. I have very little time and a lot to say to reply to the debate.

In the comments made both by those who support the Bill and by those who oppose it, there was a common theme: we have to sort out the issue of compensation. I agree. We accepted the High Court’s decision in the only one of the 10 judicial reviews that we did not win that we should reconsult. That consultation on a comprehensive compensation scheme will begin shortly, and I can say to my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) and others that the options to be considered will include a property bond.

My hon. Friends the Members for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) and for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) asked that we say once again what the costs are. I will give those figures to the House now. For phase 1, it is £21.4 billion in 2011 prices, and for phase 2, it is £21.2 billion, making a total of £42.6 billion, which includes a contingency of £14.4 billion. The cost of rolling stock is £7.5 billion, of which £1.7 billion is the contingency fund.

The debate has laid bare the fact that everybody wants the benefits that high-speed rail is set to deliver—new jobs, growth and prosperity for our country—but there are understandably some questions and concerns about how we realise those benefits. Those concerns are not unlike those that surrounded the construction of many of the now indispensable parts of our nation’s transport infrastructure, such as the M25, the Jubilee line extension to Canary Wharf and High Speed 1 itself. High Speed 2 is not a scheme being built for the future based on the travel behaviours of the past. We stand firm in our belief that High Speed 2 is the right choice for Britain in the 21st century, just as the railways were the right choice for Britain in the 19th century. Amazingly, back then, those opposed to the railway claimed that it would terrify country folk, turn cows’ milk sour, stop hens laying and lead to an invasion of town folk into the country; and that travelling at speeds of more than 25 mph would cause the engines to combust and the passengers to disintegrate.

The doubts of today are the only true hindrance to realising our vision and the benefits it will deliver, and I am sure that future generations will look back at these doubts in the same way as we look at the doubts of those opposed to railways in the 19th century—and, ironically and using a shorter time scale, the doubts that the people of Kent had in the 1980s and ’90s, which they now totally reject. One of my hon. Friends mentioned that Maidstone successfully avoided having a station, which went to Ebbsfleet instead, and Maidstone is now begging to have a station because the town is losing out on the regeneration that a station delivers.

High Speed 2 is a vision that we have to realise. Over the past decade, about half of economic growth has been concentrated in London and the surrounding regions. While High Speed 2 will shrink the distance between our great cities, the vision for High Speed 2 is to extend the benefits that it will deliver far beyond the actual network. We estimate that over 70% of jobs created by High Speed 2 will be outside London. High Speed 2 will redress the imbalance felt acutely by millions of people in different parts of the country. Britain cannot afford to burden the economies of great cities such as Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham with an overcrowded railway that will be almost 200 years old by the time that High Speed 2 opens and which has no spare capacity.

It is time that Britain—the country that invented the railway—raised its aspirations and ambitions by building that world-class, high-speed rail network. I am confident that the House will recognise the core objective of High Speed 2 to create an engine for growth that will unlock massive potential and opportunities for UK cities such as Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and others along the route. It will link eight of Britain’s 10 largest cities, serving one in five of the UK population. People will be able to travel from Edinburgh to London and back in the time that it takes to drive one way. The network will be fully integrated with the nation’s airports, with stations serving Manchester and Birmingham directly, an option for a spur to Heathrow, and short connections to East Midlands airport from Toton station, which is halfway between Derby and Nottingham. That will radically redraw the economic geography of the nation, bringing our cities closer together and rebalancing growth and opportunities. In doing so, High Speed 2 will rewrite the economic fortunes of this country.

It is imperative that we do not delay the project, and the expenditure powers that we are seeking in the Bill will allow us to move forward with this ambitious investment in infrastructure. I have to say to right hon. and hon. Members that dithering is not an option if we want to maximise the economic potential of the country. By building High Speed 2, we will demonstrate that Britain still has the ambition and vision to build world-class infrastructure to support a world-beating economy. For those who do not believe that there will be acute regeneration around the stations and depots, I suggest that they go to Japan to see what has happened in places such as Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, where there has been massive regeneration, with shops, leisure activities, hotels and businesses, not simply in the immediate vicinity of the stations but beyond in the wider community.

We have to move forward to show that we still have ambition. At its heart, that is what HS2 is all about: jobs and growth—jobs and growth for this generation; jobs and growth for future generations. That is the legacy that the House is being asked to support today—a legacy that will support this nation’s zeal for hard work and its determination to succeed. We must have the courage and conviction to make bold decisions. We must be bold now, and it is for that reason that I urge right hon. and hon. Members to support Second Reading and to reject the amendment.

Question put, That the amendment be made.