My Lords, I thank the Select Committee and the chair for the report. At least two colleagues who are speaking to this amendment—the noble Lords, Lord Snape and Lord Liddle—were on the Select Committee and I think it did a good job. My only concern is that the House has not had the opportunity to receive the report formally and debate it, but that is something for a different day.
I do not support this amendment, but not for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, might think. Whatever the timings of phase 2a—we can debate those at length—I think the Government are right to think again on 2b, particularly the east side. I hope they will also think again on the last part into Manchester. Several noble Lords have talked about the importance of regional services and I suppose my vision would be to see the north—and the Midlands—get a rail service that is as good as the commuting service around London. I think most noble Lords would agree that there is a big difference between them at the moment. That really affects the customers. You have to remember that most rail customers in those areas are doing short or medium journeys every day—or they were before coronavirus—and a lot of them are doing them by car. If the services were better, more reliable and more frequent, maybe, I think a lot of them would transfer to rail, which is good for the environment.
We have to debate whether it is more important for people in those centres to get to London more quickly or to go elsewhere. I was struck, going around with a short consultation for the Oakervee report, how many of the people we talked to in the regions were actually just as interested in going north—from, say, Leeds to Newcastle—as they were in going to London. As my noble friend Lord Liddle has said, he can get to London very quickly but he could not get to York quickly if the House ever moved there. He is actually arguing, with me, that the importance of regional services needs to be incorporated into the rethink of HS2—if this is what is happening.
The other thing about the present HS2 design is that it is wrong to terminate at buffer stops at Manchester and Leeds. The trend across Europe for many years has been not to have buffers if you can run trains straight through, because that saves a lot of space and perhaps a lot of cost, and gives much more flexibility. Of course, it is better for the passengers, too. Brussels, Lille and Lyon Satolas are examples. I could explain them all, but I do not think I need to. I hope that the Government will therefore take the time to listen to the various interests in the north and the Midlands and come up with a plan that integrates local and regional services with any faster link to London that they plan.
My other reason for wanting to speak today is to do with money. I am not going to start arguing about how much HS2 might or might not cost, but there is a question about how it might be financed. My understanding has always been that government would like to see HS2 financed in the private sector, certainly when the construction has moved forward. Of course, this is what happened with HS1, which, I think, was sold off to the private sector for about £2 billion.
HS1 is now in quite serious financial trouble because its revenue from Eurostar is evaporating, as are the Eurostar services. I am told that there will be only one return journey a day to Brussels and one to Paris from the beginning of December. Okay, the Javelins are still running, thanks to government support for domestic services, but I have to ask what the Government are doing to preserve the Eurostar service and HS1 while the coronavirus is stopping people travelling.
As the Minister will know, I have been asking for a long time how much money the Government are giving to the different modes of transport internationally from the UK to other parts of Europe and the Republic of Ireland. I am always told that that is confidential, but I can help her with that if she does not want to tell me. I can tell her from publicly available information that the Government are spending about £1.4 billion on helping the ferry services and the ports support Brexit, which I have no complaint about. There was the £12 million for the non-existent ferry service, which noble Lords will remember. Ministers seem very keen to spend a lot of money on the airlines. The Secretary of State made a speech on 19 October on sorting out airport slots. I am not sure why we need to sort out the slots, because nobody is flying much these days. The Government are spending £55 million on furlough for aviation employees, deferring loans and taxes, and providing £1.8 billion through Covid corporate financing, which, apparently, is 11% of total national funding under that programme, covering the whole sector.
We have to ask: why are the Government not doing anything to help the cross-channel passenger rail service? Noble Lords may know that, across Europe, the Commission has recommended that every member state reduce infrastructure charges or eliminate them entirely. France has done it for freight, and I hope it will do it for passengers. Eurostar, however, is losing £1 billion in revenue this year. This really cannot go on. What will it do? If it goes bust, presumably, it can sell the trains to the Germans because they work in Germany quite well. If ever anybody wanted to start going by train across the channel, it would probably take five years or so to get new trains. Surely there is a solution. HS1, when it was owned by the state, made about £2 billion for the Treasury. Surely the Treasury could give a little bit of it back.
I raise that issue in the context of this amendment to question gently: what is the point of building a new high-speed line north of London—be it 1, 2a, 2b west or 2b east, in any order we like—if the Government show so little support for high-speed rail as to allow HS1 possibly to go bust? If that happens, who in the private sector will invest in HS2 when they see the shabby way the Government are apparently treating the investors and owners of HS1 and Eurostar? I look forward to the Minister’s response.
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