PUBLIC SESSION MINUTES OF ORAL EVIDENCE taken before HIGH SPEED RAIL COMMITTEE On the HIGH SPEED RAIL (LONDON – WEST MIDLANDS) BILL Wednesday, 16 December 2015 (Morning) In Committee Room 5 PRESENT: Mr Robert Syms (Chair) Sir Peter Bottomley Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Mr David Crausby Mr Mark Hendrick _____________ IN ATTENDANCE Mr Timothy Mould QC, Lead Counsel, Department for Transport Mr James Strachan QC, Counsel, Department for Transport Mr Robin Purchas QC, Counsel, UCL WITNESSES Ms Marina Arnold Mr Prabhat Vaze Ms Susan Massey Ms Roxy Wilding Mr Jeremy Lewison Ms Michelle Hannoosh Mr Richard Janko Ms Caroline Schuck Mr Dave Lawrence Mr Anthony Kay Ms Ellin Stein _____________ IN PUBLIC SESSION INDEX Subject Page Marina Arnold Submissions by Ms Arnold 3 Response from Mr Strachan 5 Closing submissions by Ms Arnold 5 Belsize Residents’ Association Submissions by Mr Vaze 6 Submissions by Ms Massey 11 Response from Mr Strachan 12 Closing submissions by Mr Vaze 18 University College London Submissions by Mr Purchas 19 Response from Mr Mould 22 Jeremy Lewison, et al Submissions by Mr Lewison 25 Evidence of Ms Schuck 31 Evidence of Ms Hannoosh 35 Evidence of Mr Janko 37 Response from Mr Strachan 40 Closing submissions by Mr Lewison 48 Adelaide Nature Reserve Association Submissions by Mr Lawrence 50 Response from Mr Strachan 55 Anthony Kay Submissions by Mr Kay 57 Response from Mr Strachan 62 Ellin Stein Submissions by Ms Stein 63 Response from Mr Strachan 69 2 (At 10.00) Marina Arnold 1. CHAIR: Order, order. Welcome to the HS2 Select Committee. We start off with petitions again. 1588, Marina Arnold. Welcome. We’ve got a lot of business to transact today so we’d appreciate if you could try and stick to your 15 minutes, thank you. We’ve got you up on the map as well where you are. 2. MS ARNOLD: Right, hi. So my name is Marina Arnold and basically it seems to me that this whole thing has come to just spoil the remainder of my life. Anyway. So I begin with saying that I fully support everything that’s been said throughout the process regarding ‘we don’t want the pollution, thank you’, ‘we don’t want the noise, thank you’, ‘we don’t want the vibration, thank you’, ‘we don’t want the reduction in our amenities, thank you’, ‘we don’t want the disruption to our lives, thank you’. Please will you do everything you can to minimise it. So that’s the first point. 3. So can we move to the second of my pages, please? Thank you. Right. So most of what I’m going to say is about technology. There’s been huge advances in technology and that’s something that’s ongoing and what I suspect is that during the planned 17 years – however many it actually takes for this project to come to fruition – what’s being done now, what will be achieved, is something that will be out of date by the time it’s available to the public. So that’s the first point I’d like to make. 4. Can you move on to the second picture, please? Right. Also technology-wise, we live in a world where communications are changing. Improvements are being made almost by the day. Meetings are rarely conducted like this with everybody actually present. They’re very much more often conducted by the phone, by computer, whatever. So I do think that there’s a question of how many people, and who those people are, who are actually going to need this railway once it is up and running in 20 years’ time when all those new advances, etc. have been made. 5. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: During the development of the internet and mobile phones and all the rest, rail use has gone up by 40%. 6. MS ARNOLD: Sorry? 7. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: During the decade-and-a-half of the development of 3 the internet and mobile phone and all the rest and video conferencing, use of the railways has gone up by 40%. 8. MS ARNOLD: And during that time what percentage has rail-using population, you know, the possibility, increased? And what percentage of increase might be due to general encouragement that we use public transport rather than private transport? 9. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It’s a mixture of all kinds of things: population increase, greater prosperity, incomes go up and people travel more. I don’t want to delay your presentation but I think that you should get off this point onto how you’re affected by the railway. 10. MS ARNOLD: Sure, but point is that while other things may be increasing rail use, also many business meetings are held in a different manner than they used to be. 11. Can we move on to the next picture, please? So this really is about the way we’ve moved forward on chemicals in our world and the way we look at them. Currently, lung disease in response to air pollution and so on is moving up in the list of top killers and it’s predicted by 2020 it’ll be the number 2 top killer. So we ought to be looking at pollution in a slightly different way. In view of this, I think we need to re-evaluate the benefits of future users versus the detriment to existing inhabitants and other users of the areas: people who work, people who play in the area of the decided railway. 12. And we ought to consider where the onus of responsibility lies for minimising the detriment to all those people. I think we need to consider a new way of looking at the standards and the duty of care. Currently we have a system whereby whoever’s building, constructing, digging, tunnelling, whatever says ‘we’ll try our best’ followed by ‘whoops, that was unfortunate’ and then anybody who breathes whatever it is or when the level of pollution rises people with breathing problems are advised to stay indoors. And I wonder if this means that we’re going to be prisoners in our homes for the duration. One of the things that some people have asked is that double glazing be installed where it doesn’t exist. And my personal view is that double glazing might be very nice and it might keep out some of the noise and some of the dust but I’d still quite like to be able to go out and take a walk, do my shopping in real life, etc. 13. So in this case I think that the onus should be on HS2 to ensure that there aren’t 4 any failures rather than theoretically making amends afterwards which means that whatever failures there are effectively the people pay for it; the people breathe in, the people lose their lung capacity, the people lose their lives for the sake of this railway. If the onus were on HS2 rather than them building in to their budget an amount of money to pay for ‘oh dear, whoops, we’ve made a mistake’. For example, they could be working on sealed containers to take the spoil instead of heaping it on a truck which they close but there’s dust everywhere and the dust falls and re-falls and everybody breathes it in, etc. 14. So that’s basically what I wanted to say. 15. CHAIR: Thank you. Do you want to pick up on any of those comments, Mr Strachan? 16. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): I just refer the Committee back to our overall mitigation measures. I showed you P1313(5) on the screen a moment ago just to identify the location of the petitioner. The petitioner’s just off Adelaide Road. And you’ll see the yellow areas are the parts of the scheme that have been deleted in consequence of the HS2 / HS1 link being withdrawn from the Bill. Other than that, the line is in tunnel as it passes close to the petitioner’s property. 17. CHAIR: Okay. 18. MS ARNOLD: It is, but there will be a considerable amount of traffic carrying spoil going by plus, although that’s where I live, it’s not where I spend 24 hours of a day. I like to get out and about, spend my days busily doing things. And so to say that that bit there is by where the tunnel is underground, even if I simply go to my library at the other end of Adelaide Road, it means passing the vent where apparently there won’t be venting all the time but there will be venting whenever there’s a fire; which we all know from the King’s Cross disaster is not every few years – it’s perhaps every few days. It’s very frequently that there are small fires that need to be vented. 19. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I think that’s your concluding remark, thank you. 20. MS ARNOLD: Sorry? 21. CHAIR: Thank you very much for your contribution today. 5 22. MS ARNOLD: Thank you. Belsize Residents’ Association 23. CHAIR: Are your people here? No? In that case 946, the Belsize Residents’ Association, Prabhat Vaze. It’s not taken in any order; we’ve taken the order that we want. We won’t be too long. Thank you very much. You said you wanted 10 or 15 minutes so that’s why we’ve called you a little bit earlier, because we’re waiting for some other people to come through, we can deal with University College London.