My Lords, I want to say how much I agree with the sentiment expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in his comprehensive speech. I was on the committee and, of course, I want this Bill to go ahead, but it is pretty pointless unless we see it as part of a much bigger project, which is to close the gaps between the north of England, the Midlands and London. I strongly support the argument that the eastern arm must go ahead, but I also support the idea that massive rail improvements must be attached to HS2. There must be an HS3-style cross-Pennine route; there must be a lot of investment in the provincial services that would link the towns of the north to the cities with HS2 links. This is a very grand project for Britain, but we have to face the fact that in terms of regional inequality we are one of the worst cases, if not the worst case, in western Europe. We have to do something to address that.
The Government have made a lot of their commitment to the levelling-up agenda. My view is that that agenda is not scattering around odd tens of millions in trying to brighten up town centres in the north of England; it should be a comprehensive plan for improving connectivity across the whole country, of which HS2 is a fundamental part.
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I am speaking to your Lordships from Cumbria, and I am a Cumbria county councillor. A lot of my colleagues say to me, “Why are you so keen on HS2? That’s not going to do anything much for us.” I think it is. Those who say we should be spending our money instead on improving the Cumbria coastal line—well, yes, of course we should, for instance, be improving that; it is a provincial railway that needs much improvement—but the whole point of these local improvements is that we have to have much greater connectivity with the cities, London and the south-east.
I would like to make one point about poor connectivity in the north of England. There was a little flurry of debate over the summer about whether the House of Lords should be relocated to York. It would take me
longer to get from Carlisle to York on the train than it does from Carlisle to London, so poor is the connectivity in the north of England. I would like to see very fast connections to London but also, as part of this, fast connections across the Pennines. This would make the journey to York, and places in the east Midlands, an awful lot quicker as well. We have this comprehensive plan for improving transport connectivity, and we are either serious about this levelling-up agenda or we are not. We need to know from the Government what their position is.