My Lords, the amendment is in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. On our previous day in Committee, we discussed regular reporting and had a good debate. This amendment is slightly different, because the emphasis is on independent peer review. I remind noble Lords that this project has been around, discussed in another Parliament, for probably 10 years and things have moved on. We have learned a lot. There have been changes, which we all know about. It is probably time for Parliament to commission an independent review so that it knows what has been asked for, what will be built, how much it is going to cost and so on. In particular, we have had a lot of debate both on the Floor of the House and in the Select Committees on the environmental impact, costs, forecast revenue before and after Covid—well, not after yet—the economic impact, the engineering and the governance.
I do not wish to express any opinion on whether what we have now is good or bad. What is needed is an independent opinion—independent of government, of HS2 and of the various contractors. The experience
in the Oakervee review last year was that when we tried to seek independent opinions on whatever we were looking at under the terms of reference, we found it quite difficult to identify people or organisations that were not or had not been in some way linked to HS2 or the Department for Transport. I am not being critical, but it is pretty important if one wants an independent review that those conducting it are independent and not worried about where the next contract will come from, for example.
I shall not say much more except to remind noble Lords that probably one of the most important things that I am focused on is costs. There have been three or four times when Department for Transport officials or HS2 staff have basically said that they do not know what the costs are. One HS2 executive, when asked why they had not been transparent on costs, memorably replied:
“If we’d told Parliament the real costs, they’d probably have cancelled the project.”
That is a very bad reason for going ahead with a project. I know that my noble friend Lord Adonis will say that I am trying to get it stopped, which I am not; I just think that it is time now to get a one-off, independent review so that Parliament and other people can then monitor progress and hold the Government and HS2 to account if they feel it necessary. I beg to move.