We must not oppose high-speed rail for opposition’s sake. HS2 is Labour’s scheme
High Speed Two is Labour’s scheme in origin and conception. Our battle with the Tories should not be on the existing HS2 proposal, but on taking the line right through from London to Manchester and Leeds as a single project rather than stopping at Birmingham as the coalition currently intends.
The danger of opposition is that you oppose for the sake of opposing, whatever the merits of the case. In the case of HS2 this would be especially crass, since HS2 is Labour’s scheme. We have the good fortune to be watching a Tory secretary of state take on the wealthy, self-interested NIMBYs of the Chilterns who would have been making our life a misery, doubtless with official Tory support, if Labour were in government pushing the scheme through. The line has to go through the Chilterns: there is no other sufficiently direct route from London to Birmingham, and the coalition is sticking almost precisely to the plan that Labour published before the election.
The conception of HS2 is as much Labour’s as the route. We favour public transport over yet more motorway building or domestic aviation; new technology over old technology; and growth over short-sighted investment cuts. We also believe in narrowing the north-south divide to share jobs and prosperity more evenly across Britain, without yet more concentration in the overheated south-east.
HS2 is critical in all these respects. Significant extra rail capacity will be needed on the existing north-south West Coast Main Line from the 2020s. The choice is simple: either yet more patch and mend, which, according to official figures, will ultimately end up costing more than a new high-speed line while delivering only two-thirds of the extra rail capacity, or conceive and build HS2 as a single integrated project, delivering not only extra capacity but also big journey time reductions and improved connectivity between London and the major cities of the Midlands and the north.
The city-centre terminus-to-terminus journey time by HS2 is reduced to 50 minutes from London to Birmingham, and barely 80 minutes from London to Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, with through trains to Edinburgh and Glasgow accelerated to three and a half hours. The plan is also for HS2 to link directly – by an interchange station west of Paddington – to Labour’s new £16bn Crossrail line which from 2017 will run through central London to the east, slashing journey times further and increasing capacity and convenience for journeys via HS2 and Crossrail to London’s West End, City, Docklands and Stratford, with connections beyond.
Virtually every socialist government in continental Europe – led by Germany, France and Spain – started building high-speed rail decades ago. The campaign against HS2 is being led by the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, the Taxpayers’ Alliance and Tories in the Chilterns. A recent IEA report wanted HS2 scrapped, with new motorways built in the south-east instead.
Labour must stick to the progressive side of this debate and back HS2 through to Manchester and Leeds as a key infrastructure and social project for national cohesion and prosperity.
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Andrew Adonis is a former secretary of state for transport. For further details of Progress’ campaign for High Speed Two and our conference resolution backing the line visit
archive.progressonline.org.uk/campaigns
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Funny how everyone is falling over themselves claiming HS2 was their idea. The LibDems were up to this last week and I’m sure Mrs Villiers has claimed it for herself too. Whoever sowed the initial seed, there is plenty to be cautious of in the current plan. Leeds and Sheffied would not benefit at all until 2033 at the earliest, and even in 2033 HS2 would save only 15 minutes on the existing London-Newcastle journey.
We should also be cautious of the supposed economic benefits it will bring the north. Prof John Tomaney of Newcastle University recently told the Transport Committee there was very little evidence that it would help close the north-south divide.
Improving local infrastructure, enabling the majority to get to work more easily, should be the priority in my view.
Ummm, labour’s scheme – I don’t think so it was Michael Hesletine as member of the Bow Group who instigated the project! HS2 can not be justified on Economic, Environmental or Moral/priority grounds. Did you not listen to Phillip Hammond telling the transport select comittee this will be a rich mans railway. Hs2 will only benefit those who will profit from the construction. We are talking about one stand alone project which will be beyond the reach of most people in the country. It does form part of integrated transport network. It is CO2 neutral at best – Dfts own figures. We are spending £750 million this parliament on this scheme when we are protesting about cuts. What is needed is local transport for local people with local jobs. I find is astonishing that a labour website can continue to promote a completely capitalist project driven by greed. Encouraging travelling further and faster is ruining our environment and contributing to social breakdown. Get real and ask your members would they rather keep their jobs, pay and benefits or encourage a £33 billion project which is based on completely flawed data. HSR if sustainable YES. HS2 which is not sustainable NO!
Lord Adonis is showing the technocratic approach of new Labour that is now being roundly criticised, even by its own supporters.
He was the minister in charge when his HS2 was announced, but I think it is quite wrong for him to claim it should be supported because it is “Labour’s scheme”. For one, I was never consulted beforehand and I find it hard to believe that Lord Adonis’s say-so amounts to democracy.
I have yet to see detailed costings for the HS2 scheme. What is the background evidence for the statement that “yet more patch and mend…according to official figures…will end up costing more”?
I have gone beyond the stage of taking any official figures on trust. To take a central item, what figure is included in the “official figures” for environmental loss and loss of amenity (which are irreplaceable and are not market-measurable items, which is no reason to exclude them from consideration). Let the supporters of HS2 produce an actual figure in pounds sterling for these losses, so that their arguments can be properly examined.
Let the supporters of HS2 also produce other detailed costings, including items for the saving of time on journeys, based on users of HS2 (presumably, saving a few minutes of time for the few, highly-paid, individuals who can afford to use HS2 will weigh heavily in the “official figures”).
In any case, is Lord Adonis not aware that electronic means allow meetings to take place easily without people travelling? It is not necessary for dominant personalities to be transported round the country at ultra-fast speed, largely, I suspect, to boost their over-large egos and their own lack of capacity to delegate. Furthermore, making access to and from London quicker can only, I would have thought, increase the existing centralisation of power in London.
Lord Adonis criticises ” the wealthy, self-interested NIMBYs of the Chilterns”, but what about the vulnerable residents of social housing in Camden whose properties will be demolished to make way for the new line into Euston?! No guarantee has been given regarding the type of replacement housing to be built.