West Midlands MPs have vowed to continue fighting against plans for a new high speed rail network with Birmingham at its heart as it emerged a public consultation came out two to one against the £32 billion line.
But the Government’s decision to press ahead with the project has been enthusiastically welcomed by MPs, councillors and business leaders in Birmingham itself, and council leader Mike Whitby declared it would give the city the biggest economic boost it has enjoyed “for generations”.
However, MPs in the surrounding area, many of them Conservatives, continued to attack the scheme, which will come to a vote in the House of Commons in 2013.
Documents published by the Department for Transport revealed Ministers have ignored the findings of a public consultation which ran for five months last year and received 54,909 responses.
Asked whether the Government’s plan for a national high speed rail network from London to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester would provide “the best value for money solution” to the need for better rail services, just 15,257 respondents agreed without reservation and 1,108 agreed with caveats – but 31,789 respondents said they disagreed.
Asked whether they agreed with the proposed route of the high speed line, which will run from London through Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire up to Birmingham, just 2,178 said they agreed, 604 agreed with caveats and 28,163 disagreed.
Nearly 15,000 consultation responses were identified by the Department for Transport as part of “organised submissions” sent by campaigners. In other words, they were identical or nearly identical to a large number of other responses.
Transport Secretary Justine Greening insisted the new rail network, known as High Speed Two or HS2, would be “the backbone of a new transport system for the 21st century”, as she told the House of Commons she had given the project the green light.
Trains will run between London and Birmingham by 2026, and a second phase with two lines connecting Birmingham to Manchester and to Leeds will be running by 2033.
Journey times from Birmingham to London will be cut to 45 minutes, from one hour 24 minutes today, while Leeds will be only 57 minutes away, compared to two hours today, and journeys to Manchester will take 41 minutes, from one hour 30 minutes today.
There will be two new stations in the West Midlands – Birmingham Interchange, close to Birmingham Airport and the NEC, and Birmingham Curzon Street, in the east of the city centre.
According to the Department for Transport, high speed rail will create 8,000 jobs in Birmingham, including 1,400 at Curzon Street and 400 at a rolling stock depot, likely to be created in Washwood Heath.
But a series of changes to the proposed route, designed to reduce the impact on surrounding towns and villages, appeared to have failed to win over critics.
Around 22.5 miles of the line between London and Birmingham will now run through tunnels, and around 56.5 miles will be partially or totally hidden in cutting.
Tory MPs lined up to challenge Ms Greening in the House of Commons. Mark Pawsey (Con Rugby) said: “May I advise the Secretary of State that today’s announcement will be heard with concern in Rugby?
"We currently have an excellent service to London on the recently upgraded West Coast Main Line, but we will be completely bypassed by High Speed 2.”
Dan Byles (Con North Warwickshire) pointed out that a report by the Commons Transport Committee last year “raised a number of serious questions about the business case and the technical assumptions behind HS2.”
He asked: “It also made the clear recommendation that the Secretary of State should not make a decision on HS2 until she had addressed those questions. Can she explain why she has chosen to ignore that clear recommendation?”
