Alun Thorne: Time to backtrack a bit?

Feb 26 2010 By Alun Thorne

There was a fleeting moment last week when I thought I was going to have to say something nice about a politician.

It’s not something I’m especially proud of but every so often an elected representative will make an utterance so steeped in common sense that I just can’t help myself.

I had a similar sensation only a few weeks ago when watching Liam Byrne on Question Time, but found that an hour of Piers Morgan interviewing the Prime Minister soon restored my natural equilibrium.

This time it was the Tory’s shadow transport minister Theresa Villiers who had me feeling all fuzzy inside. Just as the momentum for a new high speed rail link between the Midlands and London seemed unstoppable, Ms Villiers appeared to suggest the Conservatives had cooled on the idea when she said the party would not be accepting a Labour invitation to view the white paper on the so-called HS2 project before it was published for all to see in the coming weeks.

Now of course, if this had been true – and alas it was not – then the first and most obvious response would not have been congratulations but that the Conservatives had undertaken a quite monumental U-turn in its purported support for a new high speed rail link that may or may not include Heathrow and may or may not include Birmingham International, or a completely new site nearby.

When David Cameron graced Dudley with a visit earlier this month at the invitation of the Richardsons, his message of austerity and self-flaggelation was only tempered with his vociferous support of the project.

However, it soon became clear that Ms Villiers was not sounding the death knell for a new high speed rail line under a Tory administration, she was merely keeping all options open in terms of the exact route any such high speed project would take. What she essentially meant was that no communities between the capital and the second city would be damned while there were still votes to be won and lost.

So in the end it was fairly bog-standard political expediency as opposed to a much-needed intervention in a project that has grown from a few rumblings in Whitehall to the saviour of the UK economy in less than two years.

It is clearly not a project without some merit, but it is difficult to understand how this multi-billion pound scheme has morphed from aspirational to essential in what seems like the blink of an eye.

The project has, unsurprisingly, garnered significant support in Birmingham, not least from the airport which has been lobbying furiously over its own merits compared to a Heathrow with a third runway.

A recent survey of passengers suggested that a majority would rather fly from Birmingham via a high speed link rather that struggle their way to Heathrow.

But the west London airport has argued that should any new high speed rail line run via Heathrow, as the Tories would appear to support, then the flow of passengers is just as likely to flow south as it is north. The chief executive of BIA, Paul Kehoe, admitted at the end of last year that the business case for his own airport’s proposed runway extension was marginal in the current economic environment so a new high speed link from anywhere that stops at BIA is certainly their best-case scenario.

Birmingham itself also doesn’t want to miss out, and the talk of the potential for a new Grand Central-style station at Eastside, further speeding up access to and from the capital, would undoubtedly enhance the city, both aesthetically and commercially.

But, like the other major infrastructure projects such as the runway extension, the business case for a new high speed link between Birmingham and London just doesn’t seem to stack up.

The obvious and clearly fundamental issue in the entire debate is whether it’s affordable.

Whichever camp one falls into on how best to tackle the UK’s budget deficit, be it immediate cuts with a large blunt instrument or chasing income through further investment in public services (followed at some point by significant cuts with a large blunt instrument), a new rail link is going to be eye-wateringly expensive to deliver.

With politicians falling over themselves to out-frugal each other, it seems an ambitious project to champion considering our track record at delivering large capital projects this side of eternity and at less than the GDP of half of the developing world – those potential voters that Ms Villiers appears not to want to upset have a habit of objecting rather vociferously when 200mph trains are planned to pass through their back gardens.

But, whatever the benefits of a new high speed link, and as previously stated they are many and various in a utopian land of co-operation and plenty, can it really be justified after the tens of billions that have been invested in the West Coast Mainline (not to mention the money currently being invested in New Street Station) to bring trains from between Birmingham and London to around an hour and a quarter?

The Chambers of Commerce have recently called for the Government to continue to invest in transport to the tune of £30bn over the coming decade while cutting back on other public spending with a focus on the third runway at Heathrow and high speed rail but with a view to improvements to the East Coast Mainline, not a brand new high speed rail link as being currently proposed.

If it happens then, of course, Birmingham needs to be on it, but with the massive pressure on public spending and the billions already poured into existing high speed rail, it’s difficult to see why the main political parties are so enthusiastic on a new high speed rail link. Should they change their minds, I have my compliments at the ready.