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Transport: High-speed Rail

My Lords, I am so bowled over by that compliment, I hardly know how to begin. The idea that I might be on a par with those great railway luminaries is such a breathtaking thought that I need to let it sink in. Perhaps I should respond before it goes to my head, because it might have a dangerous effect on my equilibrium. I should like to express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, for his warm words and say that I am half grateful to the noble Baroness for the half congratulations she offered me. She asked a number of questions which are covered in the report itself. She asked about cost analysis, funding sources, time-lines, work on the proposed spurs to Manchester and Leeds and planning for Scotland—all of that is covered in the Command Paper. There has been a thorough cost analysis, which is set out in great detail in the report. We also give a clear view on funding sources. There would be a requirement that this would be a state-led project: there is no way it would be possible to fund the project in any other way. However, we will look for significant third party contributions, particularly in respect of the stations, because each part of this route requires a new high-speed station and there is a good deal of experience in generating very significant third party contributions and development gain in respect of stations. We also see public/private partnerships having a role to play, including in the potential for securitising some of the fares income that will be generated by this project. This is all set out in the report. On time-lines, I was very surprised to hear the noble Baroness say that she thought it would be possible to start construction in 2015. That point has been made by her party over the past day. Many noble Lords have experience of taking hybrid Bills through this House. It is, quite rightly, an extremely thorough process because of the nature of the private and public interests which are at stake. The last private hybrid Bill to take the Crossrail project through took about three years to be enacted, and that was after the elaborate process of consultation, which needs to take place, led by the Government, before a hybrid Bill can even be prepared, let alone introduced. It is not, in our judgment, conceivable that you could start construction before 2017 if proper parliamentary and consultation procedures are to be followed. If they are not to be followed and we are to axe consultation, then it might be possible to move sooner, but I assume that that is not the position of the party opposite. Normally, we conduct things in an extremely genteel fashion in the House. But I do, if the noble Baroness will forgive me, want to pick up on one or two points that she raised. She said that she did not have sufficient time to engage with the Statement. Let me make it clear that we offered the Conservative Party the chance to read the whole report weeks ago and it declined the opportunity. The Liberal Democrats accepted the opportunity to read the report and we had very productive exchanges. The noble Baroness also said—I was puzzled by this remark—that we had sought to bully—I think that "bully" was the word she used—the party opposite into "stitching up" a proposed route behind closed doors. I resent that allegation. There was no attempt whatever to stitch up any agreement on a proposed route behind closed doors. There will be full public consultation on any routes. It is right and proper that that should take place, and it is required. All I was doing was offering the Conservative Party the chance to read the report. It rejected that chance, which is a great pity because the response would have been a great deal better informed if it had read that report some time ago. The noble Baroness also asked me about the development work on the branches to Manchester and Leeds. The detailed route planning to Manchester and Leeds will start immediately. It will take between one year and 18 months to be completed, and the Government’s intention is then, subject to them being satisfied that the route is robust and value for money, to consult on that route thereafter in the same way as we are proposing from this autumn to start consulting on the detailed route from London to Birmingham. We would not be setting in train that process of detailed route planning and consultation unless we were absolutely confident that it was possible to take forward this project. As that work takes place, we will also be inviting responses from those who wish to offer comments on how one could develop the network beyond Manchester and Leeds. I have given a commitment in the Command Paper that we would intend to offer through-high-speed services to Scotland from the outset of the high-speed line by following the French practice of enabling high-speed trains to run on both the high-speed track and the conventional track. A majority of the route mileage of TGVs in France is on conventional tracks taking trains through to their final destination, which makes the cost-benefit much better than having to build tracks to all destinations. By adopting this policy, it will be possible to get a three and a half hour journey time from Edinburgh and Glasgow to London once the Y network of 335 miles was completed, were that to be built. That three and a half hours is extremely important because international evidence is that you get significant traffic movement from the plane to the train once journey times between cities can be got down to under three and a half hours by high-speed train. Not only is that then a competitive time, but time spent on trains is so much more productive than that spent having to pass through airports, with all the inconvenience that that implies. The noble Baroness asked me about the new national skills academy for rail engineering. I am glad to be able to tell her that we have agreed to set up that academy. That will now take place. But it is vital to see the high-speed line as the successor project to Crossrail. All the depth of engineering and project management expertise that we have in Crossrail will transfer across to the high-speed line, provided we plan these projects in an integrated way. As to Heathrow, to be frank, a lot of bold statements are being made, which need to be tested rather more than they have been so far. The noble Baroness said that we were not committed to an at-site station at Heathrow. In fact, we are not close minded on an at-site station at Heathrow. The Command Paper, which she said rejects it, does not reject it. It says, because it reflects the work that has been done by High Speed Two (HS2) Ltd, that the business case does not appear strong. That is precisely why we have asked the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, to review the business case and to look at this vexed issue of where a high-speed station at Heathrow would be placed, given that this is a dispersed site with three big terminal centres. He will report in three months on his findings. However, let us be clear, the Conservatives do not have a proposal for an at-airport station at Heathrow either. I have just read the statement on high-speed policy, which the shadow transport spokesperson issued yesterday afternoon. She must be more clairvoyant than almost anyone since the Old Testament prophets. She managed to issue a paper yesterday afternoon commenting on a Command Paper that had not even been published and with which she had not been able to engage. She criticises us for not putting forward proposals for an at-airport station but says herself that they will support a new integrated Heathrow rail hub, ""along the lines of the plan put forward by engineering firm, Arup"." It is vital to understand that the proposal put forward by Arup is not for a station at Heathrow but at Iver, well outside the boundaries of Heathrow, some two and a half miles away on green belt and in a flood plain. If they do not even understand that their own proposal for what they call an at-airport station is not at Heathrow but two and a half miles away involving a transit journey for every passenger to get to any terminal, and on green belt in a flood plain, then they have not even begun to engage with the reality of the issues. I am not even sure that the noble Baroness understands that that is the policy of her own party. We need a mature, sensible and fact-based debate on how we serve Heathrow, not cheap sound bites trying to create false dividing lines which will just put back the cause of high-speed rail by many years.