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High-Speed Rail

I understand the exact terms of reference. In holding a strategic inquiry, the hon. Lady and her Committee are doing the House a great service, because the earliest that the House could consider this matter otherwise would be in the hybrid Bill Committee. Such are the curious rules of the House that many of us would not be able to submit evidence to that Committee. This is exactly the time when we need a strategic inquiry into the principles of HS2 and the alternative. As I said, when both Front-Bench teams are in agreement, there is always a danger that things can get overlooked. Let me explain how it is possible for our country, in its understandable desire to incorporate and embrace what was in the 1960s called the white heat of technology, to get things really badly wrong. More than 20 years ago, my first job in Government as a junior Minister was helping John Wakeham to privatise the electricity industry. Part of my brief was responsibility for nuclear power. We had to consider whether we could incorporate nuclear power within the privatisation. I could not understand why no one had thought of the contingent liabilities of decommissioning the nuclear power stations and the cost of nuclear waste. I will not detain the House, save to say that I went back and looked at the ministerial papers and press cuttings of some 20 or 30 years previously, when nuclear power stations were first being built. No one, either in government or outside, had given any proper consideration to the costs of decommissioning nuclear power stations, or of storing and disposing of nuclear waste. We are all here representing the taxpayers. I think this is the first debate in Westminster Hall at which Mr Speaker has thought it appropriate to be present. It was also telling that for quite a long time my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) was in his place. Unless I have badly misunderstood the routing of HS2, it does not affect Isle of Wight strategically, either in a nimby way or any other way. He was here, as we all are, representing taxpayers and the national interest. This is a project that will cost billions and billions of pounds. If we get it wrong, we get it seriously wrong. We all have a collective duty to get it right, so far as taxpayers are concerned. I do not pretend to be a rail engineer. I do not pretend to know or to be able to make a value judgment on the benefits of HS2 versus the benefit of the Atkins or other reports. I hope that the Transport Committee and others will start to give some independent and objective analysis of that. I hope that they will pick up the rather important point made by the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), with a little prompting from me: the scheme could have a detrimental impact on parts of the regions. Birmingham might benefit from the line, but Coventry might not; Leeds might benefit, but Wakefield might lose out. All those things have to be properly assessed. This is not a debate that can be dealt with in set-piece forums such as this. We are talking about an issue that the country will live with for years and years. It behoves Parliament to get it right, and it behoves us, as Back Benchers, to ensure that the structures of the House, and especially the Select Committee, subject the project to the intellectual rigour and investigation that it needs, so that present taxpayers and future generations get the right answers.