Fit for the next century

By Mike Katz

It’s a word that gets bandied about a tad too often, but today’s announcement on high speed rail by Lord Adonis can truly be called historic.

For a start, it’s a welcome attempt to restore Britain to its historical per-eminence when it comes to building railways. The sad fact is that there is more than 3,000 miles of high-speed track in mainland Europe, but only 60 miles in Britain. That must change.

And in terms of the ambition of the country and the time it will take to complete the lines, we need to have a historical perspective. This won’t be built overnight – construction won’t even start until 2017, so it is only right that Lord Adonis has tried to move this issue outside the political cycle. Even the Tories’ plans don’t see steel going down until 2015 – right at the end of the next term of government, whoever is in power.

Yet their shrillness on the high speed rail debate has more to do with losing political advantage than any deep policy differences. Yes, the Tories want the line to go via Heathrow whilst today’s plans opt for an interchange in West London with Crossrail. The independent HS2 team couldn’t make the business case for a Heathrow airport stack up. Yet Adonis has leant over backwards to encourage political consensus and has asked former Tory transport secretary Lord Mawhinney to look again at the Heathrow question.

For all their faults, the Lib Dems acknowledge this and were happy to discuss the government plans prior to publication. Tory refusal to do so was petty and more concerned with creating dividing lines than railway lines. It does them little credit.

But the future prize for the country is truly worth bearing with these ebb and flow of pre-election politics. A report from the Greengauge 21 lobby group has estimated that high speed rail could boost annual economic output in 2040 by between £17bn and £29bn and create between 25,000 and 42,000 additional jobs in Britain. The new lines would free up capacity on the existing routes for more passenger and freight services. And, of course, the potential for carbon savings is immense.

Lord Adonis is right: this is one policy worth not having an argument about. Now that the high speed rail express has left the station, every party needs to get behind it if we are to have a railway fit not just for this century, but the next.

Mike Katz is Chair of the Labour Transport Group. He writes in a personal capacity.