My Lords, I fundamentally disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, on the issues he has raised in relation to HS2. He dismisses the speed issue, whereas every piece of research reveals that journey times are key to people deciding whether or not to use rail; so journey times need improving.
On capacity, it is the case that existing lines are full. Capacity is about not just how many people are on a train but how many trains per hour there are on the railway, and we badly need extra capacity in order to move the short-distance travellers off the long-distance lines and to allow freight to use the existing long-distance lines to provide enough capacity for all the freight that needs to go on the railways nowadays in order to save our planet. At the moment very low percentages of people in the Midlands and the north choose to travel by train. That is because of the capacity issue—because of problems with the service. We owe it to them to improve the options for them and to make it possible for them to travel in an environmentally friendly manner.
HS2 has often been its own worst enemy. On our Benches there is firm support for the project, as I have made clear today and in many previous debates. But that does not mean that we are not critical of the way the project has been managed so far. The Oakervee report was designed to review the project and point the way forward but that way needs to be a lot less scrappy than the process so far.
I have a general observation to make about this group of amendments, particularly Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. It is long past time for our approach to major infrastructure developments to be fundamentally rethought. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle: for decades we have proved incapable of making clear strategic decisions, costing them realistically and managing them effectively. The National Infrastructure Commission was supposed
to give us the longer view required, which short-term government horizons inevitably fail to provide. However, we still do not have a system that works in a modern democratic economy.
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At the very least—this is relevant to Amendment 8 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser—the Department for Transport needs to develop a new approach to cost-benefit analysis. Its current approach simply counts what exists: the people who currently travel and the current journey times. It does not take into account the regeneration potential of railway projects. The Borders Railway in Scotland illustrates that the regeneration potential and the popularity of new projects can well outpace the counting of the existing situation.
I do not think that the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is the right way to ensure that the path ahead is smoother than in the past. HS2 itself needs to reform and it needs to get on with it as swiftly as possible.