1
Revised transcript of evidence taken before
The Select Committee on Economic Affairs
Evidence Session No. 16 Heard in Public Questions 182 - 191
Witnesses: Councillor James Lewis and Ian Williams
Members present
Baroness Blackstone
Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach
Lord Rowe-Beddoe
Lord Shipley
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Councillor James Lewis, Chair, Transport Committee, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, and Ian Williams, Director of Policy and Business Representation, Leeds Chamber of Commerce
Q182 The Chairman: Thank you very much for joining us. We are running just a little short of time, so concise answers would be very much appreciated. Mr Williams and Councillor Lewis, perhaps I can start off by saying that support among the public has not been as great as support from the leaders of councils and the like. It would be interesting to get your perspectives on that. Secondly, what reservations and concerns do you have about HS2, particularly in so far as it affects Leeds and West Yorkshire? An allied question is: to what extent do you believe HS2 will generate economic activity in Leeds?
Cllr James Lewis: If I could lead on that. I have a perspective on this that Mr Williams does not, because, as an elected politician, I have this curious habit of knocking on doors and asking, out of the blue, for people’s views on current affairs. HS2 has been a talking point on the doorstep. There are a number of things. First, the public are seeing a big overall cost for the project—a global cost for building all three legs and ancillary works—at a time when there is a deficit in public spending in the economy. Secondly, if you are standing on a basic suburban rail station in West Yorkshire waiting for a two-car rail bus that may turn up late, will be overcrowded, where you sit on a bench seat, not on an ordinary seat, to commute into work, and you are doing that every day, something that happens 20 years in the future may not seem the most relevant project. Thirdly—I say this specifically for the area I am a councillor for; I represent the ward that the route is proposed to go through—the people who are directly affected by the route have expressed their objection to the scheme very strongly, as people do when any major infrastructure project is proposed. We have wind farms in the area, motorways, open-cast coal mining and things like that. A change in the environment understandably creates a negative reaction from people who are affected by it. That has occupied part of the debate.
I have answered the first part in three parts. I will have a go at the second part, which was about my reservations about the scheme. I have two. First, I am concerned that the eastern leg has the least political consensus. You referred to other leaders of local authorities as evidence of support. I think the eastern leg has the least consensus about it. Even authorities that support it—you have heard from colleagues from South Yorkshire and the east Midlands—still have concerns over station locations. I worry that it would be the section of the route that would be easiest to withdraw or to put on hold. Secondly, whereas the Government and the Opposition Front Bench show great determination on delivering HS2, the ability to deliver some of the other aspects of transport investment—improving the local rail network, improving the road network and other transport schemes—the delivery mechanism and funding is far more opaque than the funding for HS2. We need the complete package to release the full benefit.
Ian Williams: Thank you very much. Before I answer your question, please could I pass on the apologies of Nigel Foster, the president of the chamber of commerce? Unfortunately, Nigel has not been well over the last few weeks. He very much wanted to come along this morning. In fact, I met him at York station. I advised him that he did not look that well and that he should not be travelling, but he did want to make sure that you were aware of his apologies.
You mentioned public support for the scheme; obviously I come from an organisation that represents the business community. This chamber of commerce has very much been behind HS2 from the word go. As much as we would like to think that we influenced thinking about a Y configuration of HS2 coming north when it was initially proposed—possibly going through Manchester and across the Pennines—that was because we firmly believed that this would firmly be about connectivity, about improving capacity and about travel times. So it is a package; it is not one or the other, but a whole package.
When we initially asked our members whether they supported those sorts of improvements, more than 90% of the businesses that responded said yes, they supported HS2 coming to Leeds. Similarly, I have heard from chambers of commerce, not necessarily in Leeds, about their concerns. They say, “Okay, we can see it coming to Leeds, but how are we going to benefit if our business is not located in Leeds?”. That is why a serious piece of work has been undertaken to look at connectivity within the Leeds city region, to see how everyone can get the benefits that HS2 will bring. That is a major piece of work that is being undertaken at this moment.
You asked whether I or the chamber of commerce had any reservations about the project. It is a lot of money and a significant amount of investment. It is important that we look at this as investment, not necessarily as a cost. Again, talking to the businesses, they do not expect that it will be blank chequebook that will be passed and that if we want any more money it will be forthcoming. It has to be well managed. We have a good track record on that—look at the Olympics. That really raised the status of UK plc’s management and project capability on the world stage. HS2 cannot be an open chequebook. We would expect it to be built on time and on budget. We would expect regular reports back to hear how things are progressing.
On economic benefits, sometimes we focus too much on the regeneration benefits that HS2 will bring. Yes, it will bring regeneration benefits. It will also be a development opportunity for many places. If I were an investor based outside the UK and looking at where to put my investment in cities, I would look at those that are well connected. Certainly, I would see HS2 coming to your city as one of the ticked boxes that would be looked for in terms of where you would get the best return on your investment. That is hard-headed business people saying, “Where would I get return on my investment? That city region is well connected; I’m afraid that one isn’t. That’s where I’m going to put my money”.
Q183 Baroness Blackstone: I am interested in what you just said, but I will go on to the question that I want to ask. It has been said that there is danger that greater connectivity with London and Birmingham will suck economic activity away from Leeds, rather than bring it to Leeds. What is your view on that?
Cllr James Lewis: First, I note the chairman’s comments about brevity. I will just say that I agree with everything I heard Councillor Collins say in the previous session about the high cost of doing business in London and the disproportionate amount of economic activity that appears in London. I add one further point. Certainly from a Leeds city region perspective, we have specialisms in the economy that are not a duplication of what happens in London. Some aspects of our economy may reflect London, particularly in financial services.
Baroness Blackstone: Can you say what those specialisms are?
Cllr James Lewis: Yes. The Leeds city region has more modern manufacturing jobs than any other city region in the country. To give you a little example, two-thirds of the world’s turbochargers for car engines are manufactured in the Leeds city region. We have two of the big four supermarket groups headquartered in the area: Morrisons and Asda. In the financial sector, we have a significant number of building societies located here. There are specialisms in our area that would benefit from better connectivity and are perhaps not at risk from the drain effect that you referred to because they are parts of the economy that occur only in our part of the world.
Ian Williams: Going on from that, again recognising what has been said before, if we connected up the Midlands, the Birmingham area, the east Midlands, the West Midlands, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, there is a massive manufacturing base for UK plc. As we have heard, Leeds city region has the highest manufacturing concentration in terms of jobs. If we can better connect those areas, just think of how much more business those places could do, just by being able to reach each other much more quickly. I speak from personal experience: it took me three and a half hours to get to Birmingham from Leeds by road the week before last. That was just one way. So on a motorway network I averaged just over 30 miles per hour. That is not really what should be happening in modern times, but that is often the dilemma that many businesses face if they want to talk to clients—to customers in the Midlands, in the Birmingham area. If I go by train, it is two hours; if I try to risk it on the road it takes three hours plus. Yes, there are lots of roadworks, but business needs certainty. It needs to be able to say, “If I have a meeting in Birmingham at 10 o’clock, I can get there at 10 o’clock”, not at 11 o’clock, which I unfortunately experienced. That certainty is key for many businesses.
Baroness Blackstone: So as regards what appears to have happened in France, which is that Paris is developing more from the TGV than quite a lot of the regional cities that are linked to Paris by the TGV, are you both saying that you are not worried that London may benefit more from HS2 than Leeds or some of the other cities that will be linked up?
Ian Williams: I think that there is a slight risk. As you heard from Councillor Lewis, we have expertise and specialisms in the city regions and in other parts of the north—
Baroness Blackstone: Which you have without HS2, as it happens.
Cllr James Lewis: Indeed.
Q184 Baroness Blackstone: May I move on and ask what your views are on having a new station in Leeds rather than HS2 coming into the existing Leeds Central station?
Cllr James Lewis: I think it is a matter of record, going right back to our earliest engagement with HS2 Ltd from a Council and transport authority perspective, that we are very keen to have a single station in Leeds. We warmly welcome the recommendation by Sir David Higgins in his recent report that we work very closely with HS2 and Network Rail to bring that about, it is important to reflect that—again, making the point that if there was no HS2—if it just remained a twinkle in somebody’s eye and never moved any further, we would look at significantly rebuilding the station. It is not fit for a city of the status of Leeds in my view. There are certainly huge capacity constraints on the number of trains that can get in and out of Leeds station, so providing an additional station to the city which is the largest city in England with only one station, would be a huge benefit. People may be familiar with Leeds station; actually the current Leeds station is two stations from the Victorian era that have merged. Merging in a new HS2 station is absolutely critical to our aspirations as a city, and I am very pleased that we have been asked to work on achieving that. But however you look at it, Leeds station needs new platforms. My final point is that our experience in the late 1990s and early parts of the 21st century, when the last big rebuilding of Leeds station took place, shows that you can spend huge amounts of time and money and have a disruptive influence on the rail network that echoes for months and months, but then very quickly you end up with a station that is full to capacity. We need a step change, not an improvement, and that is very much where we are heading with this station.
Ian Williams: I think that it is an opportunity for the city to remodel quite a lot of its transport infrastructure. We do not just see Leeds city station as a facility for HS2 or the passenger network—we would like closer integration with the local bus network, and possibly with the tram-train network. So we look at some form of modern transport interchange that can accommodate those various modes of transport. There is no doubt that there will be significantly increased demands on local, regional and national services, and the station we have at the moment cannot cope with that.
Q185 Lord Shipley: Could you say something further about the complementary policies that are required for Leeds to maximise the economic potential for HS2. Councillor Lewis, you said earlier that it is all about the complete package; you talked about road-rail, existing rail and the road network infrastructure needing things to be done. I shall assume from that, and I would like you to confirm it, that you have things elicited and that it is pretty clear what you want to happen. I would like you specifically to say how you think these will be funded. Does Leeds City Council have the powers and the funds required to implement that package of policies that you want to see developed?
Cllr James Lewis: I shall start by talking about the actual package of improvements. As regards where we start with this, we had a city region transport study done in 2007-08. Unfortunately, Nigel Foster was the author of that and he cannot be with us today. However, I will talk about some of the things that were included in that. Fundamentally, it did not mention high-speed rail, but it did mention improved east-west and north-south connections, and I think high-speed rail delivers that. It also talked about a significant step change in the inter-regional services on the rail network. People familiar with West Yorkshire will know that we have some very good suburban and short train journeys, for example, the Ilkley and Skipton lines, which has modern electric trains. We also have some very poor-quality local and inter-regional rail services. A hobby-horse of mine is the Pacer railbuses. You can bounce your way from Leeds to Bradford to Manchester—three of the cities in the north—on what is effectively a 1980s bus on rails, in a very long journey time, travelling very slowly. So we need to pick up the inter-regional rail network as regards linking together all the centres of West Yorkshire. We also need to make passenger-focused improvements; for example, having an Oystercard-style single ticketing system for West Yorkshire would be a huge improvement to connectivity. Again, we need to look at the efficiency and capacity of the highways network. We still have significant centres in West Yorkshire, Halifax, for example, which link to the motorway network with one single carriageway roads that wind their way through the hills. So there are still some constraints on the highways network that we need to address as well.
The second part of the question was how we fund that. We took a proposition forward for having a West Yorkshire transport investment fund, but we said that we would raise the transport authority levy in people’s council tax bills, and we were prepared to take that as a proposition to the electorate. In the spirit of localism, the current Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government said that we could not do that, so we worked with the Treasury to secure what is effectively a capital grant to achieve some of those objectives for about £1 billion of transport investment in West Yorkshire. Again, I do not want to repeat the point that previous witnesses have made about the imbalance in investment, but we need to work with central government funding streams like that and look at our ability to raise money locally through retention of business rates and, as I say, through the transport precept that is already charged from people’s council tax bills, to be able to fund a package of investment.
The final point, particularly on the railways, is on securing devolution of the local rail franchises as well, so we have not only greater ability to determine how local train services are specified and run, but because, unlike other aspects of public policy, public transport has a ticket income, and when more people use the transport network, we are able to retain that income in the north of England to improve our services rather than it being kept as the operator’s own, or put into a national pool.
Q186 Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach: Last week, the Mayor of Liverpool told us that he would prioritise east-west links over HS2. Could you comment on that please?
Cllr James Lewis: Mayor Anderson is a great character and advocate for Liverpool, and has never shied away from speaking for the city. The view I take on that is, first, he is on the western leg of HS2, where, as I said, the certainty of delivery is much stronger. Once again, I think once the recommendation of building to the Crewe hub is complete, Liverpool will have its connection to HS2 pretty much guaranteed. So he is in a different position from us in terms of the status and deliverability of the project. The second thing is that for us in Leeds, HS2 provides significant interregional connectivity, which in effect is what east-west links are about. Reducing journey times from Leeds to Sheffield from 50 minutes to an hour down to 19 minutes—or around that depending on the final decision on the station—and bringing the travel time from Birmingham down from over two hours to under 45 minutes represents important regional connectivity for us.
The final point is that HS2 delivers access to London, which is a global economic city in the way that no city in the north of England is. That is pretty unique. When the Government sort themselves out over their London airports policy, that will give us access to one of the world’s biggest and most important hub airports. Again, east-west connectivity, important though it is, does not give us that. There are important interregional links from HS2 that maybe are not as important to Liverpool. HS2 also gives us access to London and international gateways, but east-west does not.
Ian Williams: This is not an either/or. It is not, “You can have HS2 but not HS3; you can have HS3 but not HS2”. We want the lot, because our connectivity is poor. As you have just heard from Councillor Lewis, Leeds, as the major regional capital it is, needs those London links as well. When I speak to my members, they tell me that connectivity to London central is important, but equally we want to be able to access Heathrow so we can get those international connections as well, to those long-haul destinations that are not well served from other places. But yes, east-west is important, and it would be wrong of me not to say that. We want both, not either/or.
Q187 Lord Rowe-Beddoe: I have a two-part question at this stage of the day. One is for northern cities in general. What co-ordination do you think the Government need to, or should, undertake to help realise the economic benefits that HS2 proposes to achieve?
Cllr James Lewis: There has been a great deal of focus on devolution and decentralisation down to northern cities. I will not start a debate on that, but in terms of some of the transport infrastructure we need to deliver, collaboration is actually tremendously important. Forming Rail North as an organisation to bring together 30 transport authorities across the north of England to co-ordinate our work on awarding the next Northern and TransPennine rail franchise demonstrates that we can bring that co-ordinated and strategic approach to bear on transport questions. I believe, over time and through the One North report published in August, it will become a more strategic, Transport for the North-style body that can provide that co-ordination. The trick that we have to pull is to aggregate out the correct level of decision-making. For example, local bus services are something that will probably always be determined on an authority-by-authority level, whereas looking at how to link Liverpool to Manchester to Leeds to Hull to Newcastle is something for which you need a powerful level of collaboration—not just between the big cities on the route but between all the transport authorities as well, crossing over some of the regional boundaries. Having a Parliament for Yorkshire would not answer that. We need to work with the north-east and Lancashire, as those links are as important as what happens within the boundaries of Yorkshire.
Ian Williams: I think that we are on the cusp of a really exciting time, because the northern cities are beginning to flex their muscles. We heard earlier that the disparity in the level of investment between the capital and the south-east on the one hand and the north on the other has long irked many of us in the north. However, that is where we are; now is the time to look forward. We could have bodies that take those strategic local decisions rather than for ever having to go down to the DfT and explain our case and justify why we want the investment for anything over £5 million. We should be able to do it locally.
From the chamber of commerce’s point of view, it will give us an organisation that we can hold to account. If it says that it is going to do X, Y and Z, we will want to see that it does X, Y and Z. So I very much welcome that opportunity for that decision-making capability in the north. As I say, we are on the cusp of some very exciting times, if that goes ahead.
Q188 Lord Rowe-Beddoe: Gentlemen, a Leeds-specific question if I may. What estimate or assessment has been made of the time and the cost of the new station?
Ian Williams: We are in very early days there. We were initially looking at an add-on to the existing station facility, but we are now talking about a complete remodel. A group has been established in which the chamber of commerce is represented, so the private sector has a voice around that table, looking at what Leeds really needs to happen. We very much welcome Sir David Higgins’s report saying that we really need to have a rethink. We certainly want to have that transit time between the classic network and HS2 as small as possible. What we do not want to do is to improve our local connectivity so, let us say, you have 30-minute travel times for anywhere around the Leeds city region but you then have a 20-minute walk. That defeats the object surely, so we very much welcome the opportunity to remodel Leeds city station. It needs it, as you heard previously from Councillor Lewis. We are virtually at capacity, certainly in terms of train services and, at peak times, in terms of passenger numbers as well. So we welcome that opportunity to remodel. It is just a bit too early to actually say what the costings might be.
Cllr James Lewis: I would add to that by saying that, fundamentally, part of this is also about remodelling a large area just outside the city centre in Leeds. The centre of Leeds is expanding southwards with two significant brownfield sites just to the south of the city centre. The Yorkshire copper works and Tetley’s brewery have moved out of the city centre and we have significant regeneration potential. We know that employment in the city centre is going to grow and that there is an appetite for future office development. We also want to make the city centre more liveable, so that maybe some of our 1960s urban motorways should no longer be part of the transport aspect and we have a more of a walking, cycling and public transport-friendly city centre. Rebuilding the station is a significant part of that.
In terms of the likely timescale, Mr Williams is right that we do not know. What I would like to see is for us to be able to start work on some of the wider projects as soon as possible. Like I say, the comparator that some of our land use planners use is that the area of the city centre that could potentially be regenerated through the high-speed station is equivalent to the New Town in Edinburgh. We are talking a significant scale of development here and the station is a part of that.
In terms of numbers of passengers using it, at its highest and incorporating other local transport aspects including bus services, you could be looking at a transport interchange that is larger than Gatwick Airport. The amount of land it could alter and improve, and the amount of people who would use it, are significant, and we would like to start work on that as soon as possible. That is very much the case that we made to Sir David Higgins. Leeds comes towards the end of the HS2 programme in terms of when the trains will roll into the city, but the work we can do on improving the city in the time between now and then is significant. We have to start that sooner rather than later.
Baroness Blackstone: What has Sir David Higgins’s response been to this request? Has he said, “Go ahead and get on with it; you need it”? Or are you going to suffer a sort of planning blight, where you cannot do anything until the HS2 project is clear, the legislation is in place and it is on the road?
Cllr James Lewis: Inevitably, there is a statutory process that has to be gone through for the powers to run HS2. We are in phase 2 of that, so it has still not entered that process. However, there have been positive aspects. I am at the risk of making two contradictory statements here. Going back to our early engagement in 2011, we were very clear about the need for a single integrated station. It has taken until 2014 and the Rebalancing Britain report for that to be accepted by HS2 and for us to now be asked to do some work on making that happen. We appreciate the breathing space we have had effectively to try to remodel and reshape HS2, which could affect how the line runs through other parts of Leeds and some of the areas where there are lots of concerns for residents. However, once you come to a conclusion about where, it should not take too long. We would like to be able to start as soon as possible on being able to plan around that, to work with significant landowners in the city centre on what their regeneration and redevelopment plans are and, again, to look at how the regeneration vehicle that is running with HS2 can support the work we are doing in the city centre as well. So I say “as quickly as possible”, but we also want some time to get it right. I hope that is not too contradictory.
Q189 The Chairman: You made the point about the station being full to bursting. You described the rather antique nature of some regional and local connectivity. They are things that need to be dealt with quite quickly. The argument for HS2 is capacity—and HS2 is possibly not a big issue at this stage, although it may become a big issue if the growth projections are correct—so would it not be your preference to get the local problems sorted out first rather than wait until 2033?
Cllr James Lewis: Letting the Northern Rail franchise for 2106 will address some of those local problems immediately. Working with Network Rail and the Department for Transport on how the control period of infrastructure investment beginning in 2019 affects our area is the next step of that, and HS2 readiness is a big part of the argument for funding that work. The final point is that HS2 actually solves some of our local problems. I would consider Sheffield, if not Nottingham, as part of our local area, and HS2 is a fairly comprehensive tool for addressing our local connections. I believe that 50% of passenger traffic on HS1, the London to Europe line, comes from north Kent and is people making commuter journeys into London from north Kent. If we see a similar replication—we are not quite there on some of the service plans—on the eastern leg of HS2, it would be an answer to some of our local service problems. We would never build a high-speed railway just from Leeds to Sheffield—I accept that it is part of the wider project—but it gives us some solutions to some of our problems.
Q190 The Chairman: Would you advocate then that HS2 should start in the north rather than the south?
Ian Williams: Yes. We made those representations to Sir David Higgins to have the project started in the north.
The Chairman: Did Sir David enthusiastically embrace that suggestion?
Ian Williams: Yes he did.
The Chairman: So that remains a possibility.
Ian Williams: To echo what Councillor Lewis said on local connectivity, HS2 has been a catalyst to look more closely at how we can improve local connectivity across the city region. That is an important aspect of it: it is across the Leeds city region. It is not all about services coming into Leeds; it is also about connecting Selby to Bradford, Huddersfield to Harrogate and places which have virtually no unemployment to places where there are high levels of unemployment and where one of the difficulties at the moment is travelling between the two. By improving that transport connectivity, we would help those areas and those people who unfortunately at the moment have no employment.
Cllr James Lewis: Again on connectivity, perhaps I am a little guilty of talking about Sheffield and Birmingham, but HS2 has a link north from Leeds and it should be in the forefront of my mind as this section runs through the ward I represent as a councillor. That connectivity linking to York, Newcastle and the north is an important part of HS2. It gives us that link to the East Coast Main Line and services going north as well as providing some additional capacity in the York-Leeds-Sheffield corridor which is quite an important commuter route.
Q191 Baroness Blackstone: Have you done any costing of the disruption that HS2 is likely to lead to in Leeds? I imagine it will be quite substantial. Have you done any work on this? What do you anticipate in broad terms the cost will be?
Cllr James Lewis: In general terms, the experience in infrastructure, particularly rail infrastructure, has often been that where you try to build around the existing railway, the disruption is significant. Although we have not quantified it, because we have not needed to, the last time Leeds station was rebuilt, the impact was weekend closures, night-time closures, limited platform accessibility and the current half-hourly service to London being only an hourly service because of the ability to get trains in and out of the station. The experience of building around the rail network is that it is far more complex and disruptive and potentially expensive—I believe that was the experience on the West Coast Line—than starting afresh and building a new route that is not interrupting existing services and means that you are not having to take possession of the rail network. I believe that we have to get the connectivity right, but there is something in building a brand-new station in Leeds adjacent to—where it is adjacent to is still up in the air—the existing station rather than being under the roof or under the floor—if I can use that sort of terminology—of the existing station where you potentially would have to close platforms and reduce services.
In terms of the wider impact, I think that I painted a bit of the picture. The area of Leeds city centre where the new station and the route in are proposed will be significantly changed in future, regardless of what happens. I feel that that is an area where disruption is a good thing because it needs a lot of work doing to it.
Ian Williams: I was about to add the same comments. The chamber had a proposal from Network Rail about 18 months ago about improvements to Leeds city station, and it literally got laughed out. The city is desperate to see an upgrade to its station. It does not reflect the modernity of the city of Leeds in any shape or form. Certainly, in terms of passengers et cetera, it is reaching its capacity, so HS2 brings an ideal opportunity to remodel the station as we will have to do something anyway.
Baroness Blackstone: Do you know why it was dropped? Do you know why Network Rail did not include in its proposals? Does it have something to do with HS2?
Ian Williams: No, it has now brought back different proposals to the chamber of commerce and the city which it will hopefully start in the new year in terms of some basic improvements but still costing around £100 million. Those improvements are welcome, but they do not go as far as many in the city would like to see.
The Chairman: Mr Williams, Councillor Lewis, thank you very much indeed.