High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill — House of Lords, 2019-09-09
Topic: Transportation
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on her opening speech. As I will point out in a moment, there is a big problem with the conflict between that speech, which was full of enthusiasm, and the setting up of a fundamental review, which could lead to the cancellation of HS2. There is a clear left hand/right hand problem in the handling of this project at the moment, which will only serve to add to costs and delays. None the less, the noble Baroness’s speech was excellent and set out the whole case against having a fundamental review of HS2. My noble friend Lord Berkeley who, to my amazement, has agreed to serve on this extraordinary review, is not in his place this afternoon. However, I will recommend that he reads that speech and ceases his work forthwith. I also note the presence in the Chamber of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, who chaired the hybrid Bill committee on the London to Birmingham Bill. With the scale of the work required and the dedication of its members, that was one of the most heroic endeavours which any noble Lord has undertaken in recent times. It showed this House at its very best. I am looking around the Chamber to see who will be volunteering for the next hybrid Bill committee. My noble friend Lord Snape is nodding; maybe he will chair that committee. We would certainly welcome that The noble Lord’s work played a very significant part in taking this big infrastructure project forward, as did the work of the noble Lord, Lord Birt, when I became Secretary of State for Transport and devoted myself in a serious way to looking at the case for high-speed rail. He and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred to France, but of course it is 55 years, more than half a century, since the Japanese opened their first and transformational high-speed line between Tokyo and Osaka. They started construction 60 years ago, so we have been taking some to catch up, but it was the noble Lord’s strategic review which put it in my mind that I should be looking very seriously at the case for a high-speed rail network in this country. This is a very good example—and we do not have many, I fear, in this terrible Brexit crisis—of constructive public policy which is factually based, learns from evidence and learns from international experience. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson said, almost all the rest of the industrialised world, apart from the United States, has high-speed rail, and even the US is halfway through constructing a line from San Francisco to LA The noble Lord mentioned China. China has more high-speed rail than the rest of the world put together and has been building a network at great speed. When I was Transport Secretary the Chinese Transport Minister offered to build our high-speed line. He said to me over a very long dinner in the Transport Ministry in Beijing that he would build it for half the cost of the Germans—I assume that he assumed we were about to give a contract to the Germans. I said, "We have this thing called Parliament, Minister, and it has to agree to all this before we can start the construction, but by all means let us have a conversation in a few years’ time". I regret to tell your Lordships that that Minister is now in jail under a suspended sentence of death for corruption, so although the Chinese are able to construct these projects quickly, there are downsides in the way they conduct their affairs in Beijing. I am glad that I am with your Lordships and not currently at Her Majesty’s pleasure The background to this is a great sense of urgency, as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, said, to see that our infrastructure matches that of other industrialised nations, all of which, apart from the United States, have been investing in high-speed rail to link their major conurbations. When the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, said that this has been conducted without parliamentary consent and scrutiny, that is, of course, palpably untrue. There have been exhaustive debates. The work of the committee of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker, and that of the Select Committee in the other place was absolutely exhaustive.