Brian Monteith: High speed train link the fast track to losing out

UK spending on huge infrastructure projects doesn’t mean we have to take part at the price of losing investment in Scotland

YET another large infrastructure project is being touted in the south of England, this time a high speed rail connection between Heathrow and Gatwick to create a new airport hub called Heathwick, at a projected cost of £5.2 billion.

On the back of the 2012 Olympic facilities, the St Pancras-Eurotunnel High Speed Rail link (HS1) and the London Crossrail project, there is no shortage of ideas of how to spend taxpayers’ money. It is no surprise that many outside the metropolis believe there is an imbalance in public investment across Britain with far too much going to London and the South East.

How then should the Scottish Government approach such massive UK spending? So long as Scotland remains part of Great Britain, should it see these projects as an opportunity, or should it take each proposal on its merits and, where it looks too risky or offers a poor return on taxpayers’ money, argue for alternative investment that would benefit Scotland more?

Those campaigning for independence may think it an irrelevance, for England can go and do what it likes while Scotland makes its own plans, but once started, building infrastructure means there are costs to Scotland either way.

The continued lobbying for the high speed railway between London and Birmingham that will possibly extend to Manchester and Leeds is a case in point. Many in the north of England see the investment as not only vital to their economic interests (although there are genuine grounds to doubt the business case), but also as delivering a fairer share of public sector investment to the English provinces.

In Scotland the same factors are at work, convincing the Scottish Government and many business organisations that HS2 should come all the way to Edinburgh and Glasgow because we cannot afford to be left out of the new economic links and it means the bonus of spending of public pounds north of Gretna.

The economic case for HS2 coming to Scotland should have its own health warning plastered across it – if there was any report for it to be stuck on.

Instead, the Scottish transport minister, Keith Brown, has said the case is “compelling, robust and clear”. If that is so then maybe he would care to publish it for all to see. Passenger forecasts for an HS2 Scottish service have not been done – but passenger forecasts for the next 30 years have, and show a utilisation of only 37 per cent for Glasgow and 42 per cent from Edinburgh on the London service. How will the service pay?

HS2 will not provide any service between Scottish cities; all passengers will be going to or coming from points south. Construction of HS2 will not start until 2016, the Birmingham service will not open until 2026 with Manchester and Leeds in 2033. Reaching Scotland is not anticipated until the 2040s – unless construction starts here earlier going south, but that would require increasing the public expenditure over a shorter period rather than phasing it in at a more affordable level.

At 2009 prices, the costs of the London to Manchester/Leeds HS2 line equates to a £52 million tax contribution per UK parliamentary constituency. On this basis Scotland’s contribution to a network located only in England will be approximately £3.64bn. Could that money not be better spent?

Using a 50 per cent reduction for construction per mile to allow for working over less built-up land, the cost to link Manchester to Glasgow would be over £11bn at 2009 prices (171 miles at £65m per mile); including Edinburgh would take the figure to nearer £14bn.

Last month, Network Rail proposed a total of £699m of spending to enhance the rail system in Scotland between 2014-19. Even if the funding can be found to deliver such projects, they will not be enough to meet projected demand with many services by then operating beyond capacity. How could these inadequate improvements be funded if HS2 becomes a priority?

A Scottish Government, faced with its own demands on the need to improve the rail network in Scotland, would surely recognise – in contributing towards the, as yet, unknown cost of HS2 extending to Edinburgh and Glasgow – that it cannot do everything and that with 92 per cent of Scottish rail users unlikely to benefit from HS2, the priority for spending must be to invest to the maximum advantage of the majority of passengers.

The rhetoric in favour of a tartan link for HS2 continues within the small circle of local authority officials driven by the fear that their cities may be left out, by transport executives following the money by looking for the next large project to be part of, and by politicians searching for the next big monument to their egos.

John Swinney is now saying that he and Edinburgh’s SNP-Liberal Democrat councillors were duped by TIE officials about the trams, while the Galashiels railway, as it should more accurately be known, is now deteriorating into farce (expect more revelations about cost overruns at Falahill).

The Scottish Government should take heed from these painful experiences. HS2 coming to Scotland is a poisoned chalice: it makes poor economic sense in England; there is no evidence to suggest it will be any more attractive in Scotland; and were it even to be built starting from the north going south, it would require all the funding that our current rail investment consumes every year for 15 years, and then some.

The incremental improvement of our railways, by extending platforms so more carriages can be used on trains, developing links between old routes so that new routes become possible, and by improving junctions so that journey times become more attractive, may gain fewer headlines but will improve the lives of many more ordinary Scots on a daily basis. Surely that’s what the SNP wants?

• Brian Monteith is policy director of ThinkScotland.org