High Speed Rail Bill Select Committee: Statement by the Chair

Order, order.  Welcome back to the HS2 Select Committee for this afternoon’s session.  Just a short announcement, next month, we’ll hear from people who will be affected if Phase 2 of HS2 proceeds and it might be helpful to say this; in a process as significant as the building of a new railway, it’s important to be inclusive.  We also recognise that some issues decided by this Committee may set a benchmark for the whole project.  Strictly speaking, however, people on Phase 2 of the line should be heard when the Select Committee on Phase 2 Bill happens.  The compromise we will strike here will be to focus on the one or two areas of our Bill that directly anticipate Phase 2, namely clauses 50 and 51, and on blight and compensation. 

These are matters of current concern right now, or may become so soon.  We do not particularly want to hear about noise or ecology or the Code of Construction Practice and the like, because these points can equally well be made by our own Phase 1 petitioners.  Phase 2 petitioners will get their chance to talk about these generic matters in due course. 

We also do not want useful time spent on points of principle, such as power consumption, overall project costings.  Again, these are coming up in Phase 1.  But finally, specific points on Phase 2 route and geography will be heard with interest as a break from our southerly trajectory, but of course, we cannot do anything about that, as we only effectively have powers to deal with Phase 1 with the strict guidance from the House. 

Thought I’d set that out at this point and I’m sure we will have some useful sessions, but we need to be focused on what we want to get out of them.