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High-Speed Rail

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). This is, indeed, a most important debate, and I would like to thank the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who is a member of the Backbench Business Committee, for giving it to us. As he made clear, we had wished for a debate on the Floor of the House, and he almost promised us one once we are further into the consultation period. I am pleased to see such a good cross-party alliance forming here against HS2, and I hope briefly to follow the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire in setting out some of the reasons why it is a monumental waste of money and diversion of scarce resources. I assure my hon. Friends who represent certain London and home counties constituencies, and others such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), that those who oppose HS2 absolutely recognise the need for more capacity. We recognise that greater connectivity would be of great benefit, but we believe—I agree here with the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire—that Rail Package 2, which was worked out by Atkins, as the Minister knows, offers a much better prospect for being able to do that in a shorter time and on a much more cost-effective basis than HS2. I will say a few more things about that in a moment, if I may. Those who represent Manchester and Leeds will naturally have an interest in seeing their constituents and businesses able to come down to London much more quickly than they can at present. I urge them to read about and get into the alternatives in RP2. It does most of what they could reasonably expect, given the scarcity of resources for capital projects, and all other areas of revenue expenditure as well, that this country faces in this difficult period. The project mysteriously appeared at the tail end of the previous Government's tenure of office, and was somehow or other—remarkably quickly—brought to the fore by Lord Adonis. One has to congratulate him on his coup in that respect. To many people, it came out of the blue, and provided the preponderant Tory part of the present Government with a marvellous reason for being able to cover their strange decision against the Heathrow extension—I know that many people had an interest in it. They managed to cover it by being able to say that they would replace it with HS2 going up to Birmingham and on to the north. It does not really do that at all. It is a great pity that the coalition Government missed the opportunity at least to subject this huge expenditure to a proper review. Instead, they jumped on the bandwagon to justify their stance over Heathrow. As for the justification for HS2, I pay tribute to the work done by the HS2 Action Alliance against the project and I recommend its papers to everyone in the debate—I am sure some of them will be available, and Members should study them. For those of us who are against the project, it is a relief not to have to fix the numbers or to choose the numbers that suit our case best, as all Governments and Oppositions do, because every time we look at the Government's numbers, they collapse. The Department for Transport brought some numbers out last March, and they brought some more out this year. Every time they bring numbers out and we examine them—there is no party political point in this—they are downgraded, just like current Government forecasts. At the end of my speech I will return to the point about what the Government should do in the present situation. If one adopts some realistic assumptions on demand for HS1 and on the time benefit, the net benefit ratio is now down to 50p per pound spent. No time presently spent travelling by rail is counted at all, but the entire time spent on HS1 is counted at an annual rate of £70,000 a year, and every minute is brought into the so-called net benefit ratio. That is a monstrous distortion. One does not have to calculate other figures; one simply has to expose what the Government and the Department are up to. Another point that has been made is that there is no alternative. I will deal with the subsidiary points in a moment. As I said, there is an alternative: it is called Rail Package 2, and it is in the Atkins alternatives. Before the Department published the revised forecast earlier this month, we urged it to study RP2. Instead, it bundled it together with two or three inadequate alternatives and tried to tar them all with the same brush. What we need the Government to do—they have made a useful start in this respect—is to set up an office to objectively and independently consider major infrastructure projects, in the same way that they set up the Office for Budget Responsibility. We do not have such an office, and nobody has looked at this issue other than the Government and the Department, whose minds are set in favour of HS2. What we are embarking on is not consultation; those who are against the project and those who are in favour of it can put their points, and ne'er the twain shall meet. The outcome, of course, will be a Division in the House in due course. The Government are not listening; their mind is made up. Instead of just putting forward the same old flawed figures, why do they not look at the situation again, study RP2 objectively, try to develop it and see what alternatives emerge? They should do that productively and positively, not so that they can dismiss RP2 before they have made a decent analysis of it.