My Lords, I perfectly understand the need for the Committee to have a break and a stiff drink after any of my speeches; it is just a pity that we cannot get the stiff drinks any more. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on this group. I wish the Government had implemented his report rather than the Oakervee one, but that train has long since left the platform.
I will speak first on Amendment 9, on which I declare my interest as in the register. I am embarrassed to be so high up in the speakers’ list when there are so many experts, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and my noble friend Lord Randall, who are better qualified than I am to talk about ancient woodlands. This is a modest little amendment, calling
simply for an annual report on the impact of the work on ancient woodland. I also support Amendment 4 in this group, which is much more demanding than the modest request in Amendment 9.
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I have some substantial points to make today but I assure the Committee that I shall not trouble it again either today or on Thursday. First, I congratulate HS2 on its promise to plant new woodland. I want to see even more, not just trees but a similar habitat on the embankments of the areas of line that the line cuts through, and not just random bushes but appropriate replacement flora.
Why do ancient woodlands matter? They are not just all trees that you can replace with new ones. Ancient woodlands have been mapped for over 400 years, and some have origins going back to the last Ice Age. These woods support a whole range of other species, from mosses to lichens, from plants and fungi to insects. Since they have been completely undisturbed by human action, they contain the most biodiverse species that we have lost in most of the rest of our cultivated land. As the Woodland Trust says, you can restore ancient woodlands by stopping the spread of rhododendrons, Himalayan balsam and other invasive species but you cannot plant new ancient woodland once it is gone. We cannot wait another 1,000 years in the hope that the multitude of species in our current ancient woodlands will replicate themselves in new woods by 3021.
As I said earlier, I welcome the fact that HS2 will plant more trees, but its policy of “no net loss” does not go far enough; it must be changed to “net gain”, as will apply to every other major development in this country except national infrastructure projects. Indeed, I pay tribute to the Government for adopting the policy of 10% net gain for all developments—except for national infrastructure ones. Frankly, I find that exception bizarre. Every private developer building no matter what in this country will have to create 10% biodiversity net gain in order to get planning permission, but not the Government on big projects. Of course I accept that if all one is doing is electrifying the line from London to Swansea or boring Crossrail or the Thames Tideway tunnel, these things in themselves bring net environmental gain and we need not demand that they do more to achieve net gain. Indeed, Crossrail has used 3 million tonnes of spoil to create the massive nature reserve at Wallasea, while I am always impressed by the number of trees that Highways England plants on the embankments alongside every road that it constructs; road verges are excellent wildlife corridors and I would be surprised if Highways England did not already achieve 10% biodiversity net gain.
There is thus no good reason why these large above-ground national construction projects should be exempt from the net-gain requirement. In this area the Government should be setting an example, as they have been doing on so much else—the 25-year plan, the marvellous 2030 pledge and the announcement last week of the first massive Nature Recovery Network. So I suggest that it is inconsistent, and a bit of shooting in the foot, for a Government who have driven forward a dynamic environmental agenda to settle for “no net gain” for national infrastructure projects.
Railway lines are potentially the best wildlife corridors, with no interference from humans. That requires careful tree selection so that Network Rail does not hack everything down; on my train journey down today, I saw it cutting down trees that were nowhere near the track. Of course, we cannot have trees that bring down lines or deposit the wrong leaves, but even I could select the right native and indigenous trees and bushes that would keep Network Rail happy and create excellent habitats for native wildlife.
Admittedly, HS2 has gone further than the Government require by promising no net loss. You can cut down 20 acres of 50 year-old trees and replace them with 20 acres of new trees with no real net loss. If you cut down 10 ancient woodlands in phase 2a, including 14 acres of ancient trees at Whitmore Wood in Stafford, you get big net loss, no matter how many acres of new trees you plant. It is not a matter of one ancient acre out and one new acre in; HS2 needs to go much further than that. We need the information that the excellent amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, calls for. Even the experts in the Woodland Trust are unsure of the actual acreage that will be lost, so we must have accurate reports from HS2.
I urge the Government to insist that HS2 achieve biodiversity net gain for this section and, indeed, the whole line. I understand that if HS2 upgrades its policy from no net loss to net gain, the overall cost would be 0.1% of the total cost of the railway, which is £106 million out of £106 billion to create a fantastic wildlife corridor and potentially create one of our finest new nature reserves. I ask the Government to insist that, if one acre of ancient woodland has to be lost, HS2 should fund the Woodland Trust or Natural England to restore at least two acres of ancient woodland that is under threat.
On Report, I intend to table an amendment stating that all the works in Clause 2 must achieve 10% biodiversity net gain. We cannot create new ancient woodland, but we can act decisively to restore and protect what is left. I therefore support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe.
I turn to Amendment 4. My remarks here have nothing to do with my interests as registered. In 2017, the then Secretary of State for Transport presented a paper to Parliament on the costs of phase 2a. It stated that the cost of HS2 phase 2a would be £3,479 million and it was signed off by the chief executive of HS2 Ltd but with a note that said that all the figures were at first quarter 2015 prices and that the estimate included an “optimism bias” of 40 %. Surely that is a bit of a misnomer. Should it not be called a “total fantasy bias” of 500%?
Let us recall that the cost of HS2 in 2015 was £32 billion but is now £106 billion—a 300% increase. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has produced evidence that the costs will be £170 billion—an almost 600% increase. I am afraid that the noble Lord is wrong; I reckon it will be well over £200 billion. However, let us leave that aside and run with the current figure of £106 billion. If HS2 has had a mere 300% cost increase since 2015, only a fool or HS2 would argue that the costs of HS2 phase 2a will not have a similar increase, making the costs over £10 billion, or almost £20 billion on the figures of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.
The intriguing thing about the phase 2a cost is how HS2 Ltd can apparently build this part of the line 700 times cheaper than the London to Birmingham part. As I understand it—I am happy to be rubbished if I am wrong—London to Birmingham is 140 miles and costs £106 billion, which is £750 million per mile. Birmingham to Crewe is 36 miles and costs £3.5 billion, which is less than £100 million per mile. Surely my noble friend the Minister should sack those building phase 1 and replace them with those who are going to build phase 2 at a price 700 times cheaper.
We know now that, like all railway costings, these figures are based on pure fantasy from rail enthusiasts who know that no Government in their right mind would ever agree to a project if they told the truth about the real costs up front. They know that once they can con the Government into laying the first mile of track, there is no going back. Designers, contractors and all involved can start ramping up the costs, claiming that they were unforeseen and ripping off the taxpayer with impunity.
I was in government in 1996 when we were assured by the railway buffs at the Department for Transport that the cost of upgrading the west coast main line would be a maximum of £2 billion. It turned out to be £12 billion and the National Audit Office says that it cannot find where £1 billion of that went to. This was not a new route where marshes, solid granite or any other unforeseen hazards were suddenly encountered. It was known backwards, as the engineers have worked it since 1880, but the truth about the cost of the upgrade simply was not told. You cannot be 600% out and claim that that is because of cost overruns or unforeseen difficulties.
Take the Great Western main line. In 2012, the Government announced that it would be electrified from London to Swansea at a cost of £900 million. By 2014, that cost was £1.6 billion and, a year later, it was £2.8 billion. After the lopping-off of the last 60 miles from Cardiff to Swansea, it finished four years late at £2.8 billion. What were the excuses this time for the cost increases? They discovered—after the project was approved, of course—that 137 tunnels were a bit leaky and that water dripping down on to the electric wires was not desirable. We are asked to believe that railway engineers, technical experts and the contractors who bid for the work did not know beforehand that these tunnels have had leaks since Isambard Kingdom Brunel completed the line in 1841. He built the whole thing in five years, whereas Network Rail could not even electrify it in seven.
I quote these examples as justification for supporting Amendment 4 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. We know what HS2 is like. The Government will give approval and HS2 will crack on. A couple of years later, it will tell the Government that there is a little problem with phase 2 and the costs have gone up a bit. The Government will then call for a report and we will find that the costs have doubled or trebled.
We cannot leave it to HS2 to come clean or for the Government to call for reports. HS2 must be under an obligation to publish figures as per Amendment 4. It is bound to have the figures; it would be a scandal if it
did not. It must have monthly and quarterly expenditure tables. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is not asking it to create large new databases that it does not have already. All he is asking is that it publishes its managerial cost and other control figures. It cannot say that this is commercially sensitive, as it has a monopoly on running this contract and no competitor can step in.
I conclude by saying that, over the past 30 years, the history of railway construction and upgrading in this country has been one of massive cost overruns and taxpayer rip-offs. The amendment would not stop the construction or hinder it by one day, but at least the taxpayer would get a regular update on the extent of the rip-off.
It is high time now that your Lordships had a break. I regret that you can no longer get a stiff drink after my contribution.
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