Murnaghan 27.01.13 Interview with Cheryl Gillan, former Conservative minister and Maria Eagle, Shadow Transport Secretary on HS2

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, the Minister in charge calls it a great engine for regeneration, critics say it will be a cancer that will cost our country dear. They’re both talking about HS2, that’s the high speed rail link that will run first from London to Birmingham and then beyond. Well to discuss it all I’m joined by the Shadow Transport Secretary, Maria Eagle and by the former Conservative cabinet minister, Cheryl Gillan, a very good morning to you. Maria Eagle, if I could start with you, Labour have been crying out for economic stimulus, given the billions that are going to be spent on HS2 isn’t this it?

MARIA EAGLE: Well it’s something Labour planned and announced in government and we support the building of the Y route from London via Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds.

DM: The Y route because it splits in Birmingham and goes off to Manchester and Leeds.

ME: It splits at Birmingham and goes off to Leeds and to Manchester on different branches and it’s something that we welcome, it’s something that we want to see done, rather faster than it’s happening if anything but it’s something we’ll have to see tomorrow the details whether or not we think it’s being done as well as it can and judging from what’s in the papers this morning, I do have some concerns. One is that we appear to be missing our major cities and connectivity is actually important, connecting our major cities is the point and secondly, the government appear to be retreating from connecting it to our major hub airport, Heathrow, and I think there are considerable concerns about that.

DM: Okay and that could have knock-on effects in terms of runways needed and other things like that, taking passengers from around the country.

ME: It can have major effects, which I’d be happy to go into.

DM: But I want to put that point to Cheryl Gillan, so you support it but you want to see it done more quickly first of all and there are other dimensions, Cheryl Gillan do we need it at all?

CHERYL GILLAN: First of all I don’t support it because I think there are other alternatives but if we are going to have it, then I would take up Maria’s point of connectivity as being one of the most important things because if you’re going to build a new transport system through green land and greenbelt land, you want it to connect our major airports and our major cities. So for example, going ahead with the London to Birmingham route before you know where your hub airport is, is absolutely ridiculous and like Maria, I want to see the details of the announcement tomorrow that has been so heavily trailed and with lots of fluffy PR to try and make people think that …

DM: So are you not really sure we need it in the first place anyway?

CG: No, I’m not because first of all I’m not sure that it’s good value for money. Number two, I don't think it does what it says on the box and that is connects our major transport system.

DM: What about the issue of economic stimulus?

CG: Well if you’re going to have some economic stimulus, I also think that you have got to think which areas of the country need that economic stimulus so why not start with the Y route, why not start with the northern connections and then you would be able to wait for the Davis Report to see where our main hub airport is going to be in the south-east of England and you could actually have a railway that joins places to places for travellers so why not start in the north?

ME: We’re in favour actually of doing one piece of legislation, the government is going to produce a bill at the end of this year just to do the London to Manchester section, we think you should have one bill to do the entire Y route. You could then start building from both ends. I think the issue about starting just from the north is that in reality the West Coast Mainline would be full by the middle of 2026 and it is that capacity issue that makes it imperative to get this right.

DM: Okay, I just want to push you on this point, Maria Eagle, about the speed of it all. Do you think, I mean we’ve got to have inquiries, we’ve got to have planning legislation in this country however much you speed it up, this is going to go through parts of the countryside, affect people’s properties, we can’t do this like the Chinese, we’ve got to spend some time planning it.

ME: Absolutely right. I mean my concern at the moment is that the government inherited this plan but at this rate, by the time we get to the next election we’ll be no nearer actually implementing any of it and I think that is a reflection of the poor grip that the current government have got on driving forward with this. They have botched, let’s be clear about this, they have botched the consultation on the London to Birmingham route, we’re waiting for the outcome of court cases which may mean they have to do that consultation again so my criticism is they haven’t grabbed hold of this and ….

DM: Well would you have run roughshod over them if you’d have been in power?

ME: No, but we would not have lost and not taken account of all the submissions of the major opponents of the scheme which is what the government have done. We also have concerns about the route, about whether or not it’s right to run it through Cheryl’s constituency in a way in which the current proposal suggests and I think that there are issues, if you start building stations away from the heart of cities …

DM: For political reasons?

ME: We’ll wait and see the full announcement tomorrow, we’ve only seen what the newspapers say about this but I don't think having a station outside of Sheffield instead of going to where the Sheffield railway station now is, is what you need for connectivity. I don't think having high speed rail running north but not running to our hub airport is what you need for connectivity.

DM: On that point about building stations outside, you are saying not in my constituency?

CG: Absolutely not, no. The problem is that the government was absolutely obsessed with speed and so they’ve driven a railway line straight through without…

DM: The clue is in the title, HS2.

CG: But you can still have speed but you need to have connectivity, there is no point in bypassing those areas of the country that you’re trying to connect. There are a lot of people going to wake up tomorrow morning, Dermot, they’re going to hear this announcement and their lives, their businesses, their homes are going to be affected by this. It is going to take a long time for this railway to come to fruition, goodness only knows where the money is going to come from to build it and I think it is the wrong railway in the wrong place at the wrong time.

DM: Okay but into the box we’re going to hear a lot more about it when we get the details tomorrow, this is going to key also into the pressure on this government and so much pressure to stimulate the economy by some grand scale project, they’re going to parade this but it doesn’t open until 2023, they’re not going to turn a turf for four years at the quickest.

CG: Absolutely, you’re not even going to necessarily have legislation even for part of it. We have discovered that any link to Heathrow is not going to be in part one, they are going to have two pieces of legislation to go through on a hybrid bill process which is absolutely enormous, nobody is going to really put a spade in the ground until really 2014 or 2015.

ME: 2017 actually.

DM: So Maria, how do you fund it? Do you tap up the taxpayer or do you do one of your new-fangled PFI schemes?

ME: Well look, the money that we’re currently spending every year, capital expenditure on Cross Rail is the money that will go forward once Cross Rail is finished, to pay this money over a period of time during which it’s being built. So it is not, it is just the normal capital investment that we have in railways and I think after many years of big capital investments rightly in London, it’s about time that the north of England got some of the benefit of the connectivity that improved rail links can bring. So there isn’t an issue about finding the money, I think there is an issue about the government being slow, not being very competent because they botched the first stage of the consultation and they may have to do that again. What we don’t want to see is slippage, we want to see the north of England connected, we want the stations to be in the right place, we want our major airports linked in otherwise we’re not going to get the full value.

DM: Just on the slowness, it sounds to me like you want a degree of central planning saying look, somebody is going to be upset and the Transport Secretary has said this, some people are going to be upset wherever it goes. Is that what a Labour government would say, look, sorry, it’s for the good of the country?

ME: Well that is true at the end of the day but that isn’t to say you shouldn’t have proper procedures to go through the proper … the hybrid bill process will do the planning and people will have to be heard but we have to make sure that as politicians we get the correct route, that we don’t end up with a high speed rail link that doesn’t take people where they need to go, that doesn’t connect our major cities …

DL: But one person will say it’s going the wrong way because it’s affecting your view or going through your garden or whatever.

CG: That’s always going to be the case but if you are going to plan for the country into the future you need to have a strategic plan that gets the connectivity. Labour was always on about it in government but never produced it, an integrated transport plan. You don’t want people dragging cases halfway across town, you don’t want railway stations that are outside town blighting the central town areas, you do need to have a degree of sensible planning and I don’t believe it’s taken place with this railway because you’re quite right Maria, we inherited it from you, we seemed to look at it and take the ball and run with it without standing back and saying hold on a second, what do we really need?

DM: What do you think of the plans, that you now think is wrong with them?

ME: They’ve gone slowly, I don't think they’ve chosen the best …

DM: What about the connectivity and the stations and the links to the airports?

ME: They have had a focus simply on, and all governments, the previous government focused on this too because of business case planning, a focus on the time savings when what you should have a focus on is connectivity and making sure that you can stimulate growth throughout the country and get the full benefits of doing this, link in our airports to our railway stations. This is not rocket science, at this rate we are going to have a plan proposed by the last Labour government that’s going to be delivered by the next Labour government and that will not yet have a clear best route that goes via our airports, via our main cities.

DM: Do you agree that this government is not getting it right?

CG: Maria and I have a real degree of agreement on this but I would say that I’m also worried that it’s not good value for money for the tax payer and as I said, it’s the wrong project at the wrong time in the wrong place. If you put a cart before a horse you are not going to get the right outcome. If we are going to have it, although I really query whether this is what we need, then why don’t we start in the north where we do need to rebalance the economy?

DM: Okay, well we’ll find more details out tomorrow and no doubt I’ll be talking to you two about it, well for many years to come, 2033 until we get our first ride on it if it happens.

ME: 2026 you can get to Birmingham.

CG: You hope. I doubt it.

DM: Maria Eagle, Cheryl Gillan, thank you both very much indeed, good to see you.