Amendment 4

Part of High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill - Report (1st Day) – in the House of Lords at 5:00 pm on 30 November 2020.

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Photo of Baroness Vere of Norbiton Baroness Vere of Norbiton Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport) 5:00, 30 November 2020

My Lords, I will address these amendments, how they are worded and what their consequences would be, because I am not sure that that fully came out in this debate, which was much shorter than I had anticipated. When I first looked at this speaking note on Saturday, it had 2,585 words. This is not to suggest that I intend to bore your Lordships into submission but to illustrate that there has been a huge amount of consultation, and that there is a huge amount to say about it.

The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, would mandate just one more round—like one more wafer-thin mint—as if it might yield what? Would it yield different results to previous consultations, when works have not even started, and impacts are not yet being felt? I agree with what I think lies behind the noble Lord’s amendment: that HS2 Ltd must engage with and consult local communities, not once, not twice, but on an ongoing basis, before, during and after the project. I have condensed 20 minutes of words into something slightly less, but I warn noble Lords that there is still a fair amount to say.

I have a huge amount of respect for the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, who is exceptional in his diligence and one of the hardest-working Members of your Lordships’ House, but I was saddened that just a few examples were being used to show that the entire consultation process therefore has not worked. That is not the case. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, also said something like, “Well, I hear reports that consultation hasn’t gone brilliantly.” If there are specific concerns about lack of engagement, I encourage any noble Lord to bring them forward to Minister Stephenson. We will build this project successfully if engagement happens before, during and after the project. We have a way forward, and therefore the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, is not needed; nor would it even be helpful to the progress of the Bill, I am afraid.

Ten years ago, there were consultations that led to the initial identification of the preferred route. Five years ago, further consultation carved out phase 2a as a separate project to bring the benefits of HS2 to Crewe sooner. That led to the further round of consultations. In spring 2016, HS2 Ltd undertook a consultation on the scope and methodology to be used in producing phase 2a’s environmental statement and equalities impact assessment. In September 2016, HS2 Ltd launched consultations on the phase 2a working draft environmental statement and the working draft equalities impact assessment. At the same time, the phase 2a design refinement consultation was conducted by the Department for Transport. These consultations were open to everyone, including the people of Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire, and were publicised widely by letter, email, notices in local newspapers, posters in doctors’ surgeries and libraries, press releases to local media and, of course, social media.

The consultations included information about the impacts on the natural environment, including ancient woodland. They included information about construction routes and road diversions and closures, so that people could understand what might happen to their local roads and transport infrastructure. They included alternative options and asked for feedback. The consultations closed in November 2016. The responses were collated, taken into account and, where relevant, design changes were made. The report on all that work was published alongside the deposit of the phase 2a Bill in July 2017. It took over a year, but that is not all.

In July 2017, when the Phase 2a Bill was laid, it was accompanied by the environmental statement and the equality impact assessment. These two documents were also open to consultation and covered agriculture, forestry and soils; air quality; climate; community; cultural heritage; ecology; electromagnetic interference; land quality; landscape and visual assessment; socioeconomics; sound, noise and vibration; traffic and transport; waste; and water resources. In the final documents, these topics were presented on a route-wide, area-by-area and community-by-community basis. There were engagement events, in which local people had the opportunity to meet experts to discuss all these matters. A huge amount of written material is available for people to read if they wish, and summaries in plain English. The consultation on the environmental statement deposited with the Bill received 16,768 responses.

The Bill itself, including the design of works, was also open to scrutiny by those directly affected by phase 2a and their representatives, such as local authorities, local interest groups, and parish councils, as well as environmental and transport NGOs. They were able to bring their concerns directly to a Select Committee in the other place. I might skip over this bit, as we have done Select Committees, but noble Lords will know that a huge amount of scrutiny goes on. Environmental reports and statements are prepared for any provisions added by the Select Committee, and an enormous amount of consultation has happened as a result of those environmental statements.

There has not been a lack of consultation to date; nor has that consultation failed to deliver a particular response—that surely people want X, Y or Z. Perhaps the concern posited by this amendment is that now the Bill is near to being finalised, local communities will not hear from HS2 Ltd again or be able to have their say. That is not the case. This Bill gives certainty to those who are directly affected, and we do not want to delay it. It is certainly not the end of the engagement story.

This Bill provides only deemed planning permission for the scheduled works. Further approvals are still needed from elected local authorities. Various processes are outlined in Schedule 17. Local authorities have all sorts of powers to approve or request conditions on a range of works, including construction arrangements, lorry movements and design works. Local communities will get very involved in that, and HS2 Ltd has also committed to engage with local communities on design features such as viaducts, tunnel portals and maintenance bases, and on developing standards for road bridges, foot bridges and noise barriers, and will engage on local environment management plans and local traffic management plans.

I could go on. There is a hotline, there are two commissioners and the HS2 Minister, to whom people or their MPs can write. We must draw the line somewhere. While I am fully in favour of constantly communicating and engaging with people, I am not sure that asking them similar questions again and again is particularly productive.

There is also the point on timing. I noted earlier that previous consultations had taken well over a year to do properly. They took up a huge amount of resources and effort, and they were well worth it, because they were good consultations and produced good outcomes. However, to produce another environmental consultation that was worth the paper it was written on, deliver it, analyse it and then provide a considered response by 1 May 2021 is an incredibly tight deadline, and I say that generously. Therefore, I cannot support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. It just would not make any sense. However, I understand where he is coming from and I believe that we can do a lot to help him on that journey and keep him content.

I would like to point out that I was saved by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, who made some excellent points on why local transport connectivity is an issue for local people and local authorities, with of course government stepping in to provide guidance, funding and the regulatory framework where needed. I am the Minister for Roads, Buses and Places. I know how to fund a road, but the reality is that I do not come up with a blueprint deciding who gets which road. People come and ask me because the local people want a road in a particular area and it makes sense to have one. Therefore, I do not think that the Government should interfere in local transport connectivity studies. Those are for pan-regional bodies such as Midlands Connect. We will certainly do what we can on roads and buses—we have the bus strategy coming out—and local authorities will look at how to put together integrated transport plans, as indeed is their role.

I turn quickly to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on connectivity. Connectivity is one of the fundamental aims of HS2. The Government are not willing to accept the amendment, but I thank the noble Baroness for it. The Bill before your Lordships’ House today concerns just 36 miles of track from Fradley to Crewe. Crewe is a key rail gateway. It was opened in 1837 and linked the Liverpool and Manchester railway with the London and Birmingham railway, and Crewe station became a major hub. We believe that it will be able to build back even better from the huge heritage that it has. There will be extra rail capacity, which is envisioned to transform Crewe. The growth strategy of the Constellation Partnership, made up of a group of two local enterprise partnerships and seven local authorities, has developed plans to deliver a significant number of jobs and homes across the whole of Cheshire and Staffordshire, and I urge the noble Baroness to look at that.

There are all sorts of ways in which we can take the railway forward, but providing an annual report on a railway on which construction has not even started and which will not be operational for some time is possibly not the best way to do it. However, I reassure the noble Baroness that the Government are doing many reports on connectivity on an ongoing basis, and I encourage her to respond to the union connectivity review, which is being led by Sir Peter Hendy and is currently open to calls for evidence. I have difficulty in seeing merit in the amendment from the noble Baroness and I trust that I have been able to satisfy her.