With volcanic ash silencing our skies and thousands of folk stranded FactCheck thought it might be time to have a look at what promises each of the main parties are committing to in terms of high speed rail links around the UK. Will we get it? And, if so, when?
The claims
“At the heart of our growth plan is the commitment to a new high speed rail line, linking North and South. Built in stages, the initial line will link London to Birmingham, Manchester, the East Midlands, Sheffield and Leeds, and then to the North and Scotland … We will consult fully on legislation to take forward our high speed rail plans within the next Parliament.”
Labour manifesto 2010
“A Conservative government will begin work immediately to create a high speed rail line connecting London and Heathrow with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. This is the first step towards achieving our vision of creating a national high speed rail network to join up major cities across England, Scotland and Wales.”
Conservative manifesto 2010
“Set up a UK Infrastructure Bank to invest in public transport like high speed rail … Some of the revenue from lorries would be used to fund further extensions of high speed rail through the UK Infrastructure Bank.”
Liberal Democrat manifesto 2010
The analysis
The Department for Transport issued a command paper last month which outlines the government’s policy on high speed rail, subject to full consultation.
The paper explains that High Speed Two Limited (HS2 Ltd) – a company set up by the government to consider the case for high speed rail – have developed details for a high speed line from London to the West Midlands, “and assessed a range of possibilities for a wider network which could stretch to the North and to Scotland.”
The paper says that the “initial core high speed network should link London to Birmingham, Manchester, the East Midlands, Sheffield and Leeds, and be capable of carrying trains at up to 250 miles per hour.”
But it also makes clear that this is a long-term vision, and that the Crossrail project (to link Heathrow Airport, the West End, the City of London and Canary Wharf) comes first:
“Construction would not start until after the Crossrail scheme is completed from 2017 … This could see the London-Birmingham route opening by the end of 2026, with the legs to Manchester and Leeds opening over the succeeding years, although that is clearly dependent on securing Parliamentary approval.”
The Conservatives’ plans for high speed rail are different to Labour’s, and would include Wales. They also say they would start construction 2 years earlier than Labour, by 2015.
Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers told the House of Commons last month that the Tories “welcomed Labour’s change of heart on high speed rail with their establishment of HS2, but we made it clear that we regretted the fact that the remit they gave to HS2 lacked ambition and focused only on the west midlands as stage 1, whereas we want to go further and faster with our guaranteed, costed and timetabled commitment to take high speed rail to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds – as that crucial first step to a national network. The second step should, of course, be a connection with Scotland.”
Meanwhile, the Lib Dems’ manifesto goes into little detail about a prospective high speed network but promises the creation of a UK Infrastructure Bank to invest in public transport “like high speed rail”.
Last month, party leader (and Sheffield Hallam MP) Nick Clegg welcomed the government’s plans for a high speed rail route to link Sheffield with Birmingham and London.
A Lib Dem spokeswoman told FactCheck:
“We would at least seek to do what is set out in the [government’s] command paper in terms of timescales. We would be happy with sticking to a similar kind of timescale. It’s tricky with big projects; often until it starts you don’t have a firm grip on how long it would take but we would seek to do it as quickly as possible. With the UK Infrastructure Bank we would have access to finance quite quickly, so we would get it done as fast as physically it could be done.”
So agreement from all the parties that high speed rail is the way forward, albeit not for some time and certainly not for at least another decade or more.
But what could cause widespread signal failure on this project?
“HS2 have rigorously fulfilled their terms of reference,” says Stephen Glaister, Professor of Transport and Infrastructure at Imperial College London, “but it has only been done in detail looking at London to Birmingham; it is not therefore a view about a network.”
He said that high speed rail would have to involve extensive public consultations, and that future governments will have to calculate costs in advance, adding:
“All this has to be done to fairly rigorous standards because if it’s not it will be challenged in the courts. To short-circuit this would be counter-productive. To have a proper process you have to have assessed the cost and the benefits because you have to know the precise line of route – without that you don’t know who is going to be affected.
“The other aspect to timing is funding – how are you going to find the several tens of billions that will be required? Some of the parties are trying to fudge that a bit by saying ‘we’ll involve the private sector’ but that is a mirage. You can of course involve the private sector once you’ve got the fundamental funding in place, but that has to come from the taxpayer.”
The verdict
If anyone is hoping that a high speed rail project will be up and running swiftly then they’re in for a long wait on the platform.
At best, the projects will be underway in five to seven years with no passengers set to get onboard for at least another ten years after that.
And that’s all assuming that the promises made in the Labour and Conservative manifestos don’t suffer any legal or financial setbacks.
As for the Lib Dems – their manifesto doesn’t actually commit to a high speed rail network but they have said they would endeavour to follow the Labour policy.
