My Lords, I listened with interest to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. In general, while of course one should uphold the idea of best practice in these circumstances, we are never going to get to a situation where best practice is perfect practice.
I have seen the law on compensation tightened over many years and become more rigorous and more extensive. The present situation is that it is backed up, in the case of the hybrid Bill procedure, with the opportunity for an individual, community or business to bring their grievance to Parliament. The HS2 Bill has been through that process in the Commons and in the Lords.
One should remember that there will always be two parties to any negotiation. Our committee listened with great sympathy to many of the points that were made to us. Our job was to try to push both sides together to reach an agreement. Many an agreement was made, some of them without the petition having to be brought as far as the committee. Some claims seemed slightly far-fetched—that must be honestly admitted—whereas others were deeply emotional and it was difficult to find the absolutely correct way of addressing them.
I have seen various things in my political lifetime relevant to a discussion of this kind. In my first constituency, Middleton and Prestwich, those two towns were suddenly separated by a six-lane highway, the M62. That project finally tipped the Government of the day into recognising that it is not just land-take that should be measured in circumstances of that kind but that there are various other factors, such as noise disturbance, obviously. That led to the Land Compensation Act 1973.
For most of my political life I was the Member of Parliament for the constituency in which it was designated that London’s third airport should be established, at Stansted. The battle over where the third London airport should be put was fought for over 40 years. I was the unlucky person who was finally overridden in the campaign by the Government of the day. But I saw a whole host of types of grievances that arose and there is nothing more potent than aircraft taking off a mile or two away from where you live. One understands that the very concept of a high-speed railway gets people on the defensive, quite rightly.
However, I honestly do not recognise that from my recent experience on the HS2 hybrid committee. I think a great measure of justice has been done, as far it as can be when you are talking about the construction of a railway of this magnitude. I say to the noble Earl that I do not recognise too much of what he has just described to the Committee. What other colleagues who were alongside me on the committee would say
I do not know but I think it was our general recognition, as may be judged from the report, that we were able to get accords in many difficult situations. Not all of them—maybe one or two of the claims were extravagant —but by and large petitions kept being withdrawn because an agreement was reached.
I just do not know whether it is possible at this stage to put into legislative form a compensation system which will ever be universally acceptable. There will always be consideration of the other side. If there is going to be wider public complaint about the rising cost of great infrastructure schemes of this kind, there has to be some sort of control on the level of compensation given, which will not, alas, fully satisfy every single person affected by the project. So I honestly do not see the need for an amendment of the kind proposed.
5.30 pm