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High-Speed Rail

We have these generalisations, and people talk about a classic British compromise. We have all these platitudinous, stupid arguments, with people saying, ““The Germans have one””, ““We've got one”” and ““My dad's bigger than your dad.”” I have never heard anything so daft. We should look at the facts and figures and study these things objectively. If the hon. Gentleman cannot, the people in the Department can. One Government Member has said that the terms of reference mean that the whole process has been hijacked by the pro-HS2 lobby, and there it has stayed. Nothing else has been analysed objectively. The OBR was set up to make sure that the Government's general finances, economic policy and investments at the national level that are unrelated to infrastructure are properly evaluated, and the case for doing the same for infrastructure projects is stronger still. The Government should introduce such a body, and I would commend them if they did. The green case has also collapsed. There is no net benefit in terms of the reduction in carbon from the scheme. The movement from air traffic constitutes only 7% of the eventual traffic to be carried on HS2, which is terribly small. Most importantly, this project is so long term that all the forecasts are meaningless; they have to be. Many of us will have heard Robert Chote on the ““Tonight”” programme saying that forecasts are very difficult. Robert Chote has all the power of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and all the stuff that he has brought into the new OBR, but the OBR has not got a forecast right from the Budget last June, to last November's pre-Budget report, to the Budget this month. In about 10 months, it has changed its mind three times. To justify their demand forecasts, the Government have pushed them out 35 years; they have added 10 years on to get the volume increase they need to justify the project. What they are doing is so obvious, and that sort of stupidity is invalidating their case and making all of us who will be affected by this project, including those whose homes will be torn up, increasingly angry.