I take your admonition, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am trying to use these amendments to make the points that my constituents would expect to be made in the House. They do not understand that we have to try to stick exactly to the final letter, but I do understand that, so I shall attempt to stay in order and not try the patience of the Chair too much.
Lords amendment 11 updates references to environmental regulations, but I am afraid that HS2 continues to be environmentally unsound. The promoters of the project will never be forgiven for the violation of a nationally protected area of outstanding natural beauty, when the technology and capability exist to have tunnelled the whole of that protected area. In fact, the line emerges now from a tunnel near the railway’s highest point.
The derision with which campaigners have been treated is no better reflected than in the words of Lord Snape during the Lords debate. He said that what extra protection was achieved in the Chilterns through tunnelling was
“as a result of demands, including semi-hysterical demands from a then member of the Cabinet, which in the view of many of us who have taken an interest in the project has added unnecessarily to the cost and makes travelling by train less pleasant.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 January 2017; Vol. 777, c. 84.]