Mike Kane

Well, it was the former Prime Minister who came to Manchester during the party conference to scrap HS2 from going from Manchester. I have never known quite such a political insult. It was supposed to balance up our country, yet we will have reduced capacity and there is an impact on Northern Powerhouse Rail. The handling of the project over a number of years has had effects both on the constituencies it is going through, as the hon. Member has so passionately extolled, and on those that are not getting it. Let me get back to the point that the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire is here to talk about. Following discussions with St Mary’s in 2016, during the passage of the High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Act 2017, the church was given an assurance and commitment that the project would support it in improving its noise insulation. The assurance provided very clearly for a contribution up to a maximum of £250,000, with no provision for inflation. There are many other HS2 assurances on the public register, including commitments to fund particular works or activities. Some of those explicitly provide for index-linking; others do not. The one given to St Mary’s does not. It is worth noting that the House of Lords Committee set up to hear from petitioners against the Bill considered the case of St Mary’s, and took the unusual step in 2016 of reporting that the £250,000 offer was generous. Furthermore, I am pleased to report that, since the assurances were given, HS2 has made other improvements to its plans for noise mitigation in the locality of the church. That will reduce the amount of noise reaching the church in the first place. Taking all that into account, it is not considered appropriate to increase the amount of public funding offered to the church or to increase any other financial mitigations that were fixed, not indexed, at the time they were agreed. There is no evidence that the sums are no longer sufficient. We have inherited a difficult situation on HS2, as the hon. Member said, and our priority now is to get a grip of the cost to the Government.