Letters to HS2 Ltd, Philip Hammond, and DEFRA

I have written more letters to various Government Departments and HS2 Ltd regarding High Speed Rail.  They cover the following issues:

1. A letter to Philip Hammond regarding the absence of the new Berryfields residential development from an official HS2 map.

2. A letter to Alison Munro, Chief Executive of HS2 Ltd, asking whether the Appraisal of Sustainability published by HS2 was the product of any work in the field (as opposed to at a desk).

3. Another letter to Alison Munro regarding the claims made in the maps published by HS2 Ltd regarding the effect that noise mitigation measures will have.

4. A letter to Richard Benyon, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, regarding how the plans for HS2 fit in with ’Planning Policy Statement 7′ (a Government document dating from 1997 concerning national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, and other rural areas).

Copies of the letters can be viewed below.  I will post copies of the responses when I receive them.

Better Broadband for Bucks: A Letter to the Culture Secretary

I recently wrote to Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media, and Sport, to support the application of Buckinghamshire Business First (BBF), in conjunction with Buckinghamshire County Council (BCC), for funding from Broadband Delivery UK to provide superfast broadband capabilities to the whole county.

Buckinghamshire well deserves its name as the Entrepreneurial Heart of Britain, however in order to retain this status it needs a communications infrastructure fit for the twenty-first century.  This is why I have asked Mr Hunt to look upon BBF and BCC’s joint application favourably.

A copy of the letter can be seen below.

Letter to Philip Hammond regarding the ‘North-South Divide’

On 15 April I wrote to Philip Hammond on behalf of a constituent, about the best way to bridge the ‘north-south divide’.  Specifically, the letter asks whether the optimum way to achieve this might be by investing in improved public transport within Britain’s major cities, as opposed to building a high speed rail network between them. 

A copy of that letter can be seen below.  I will post the reply as soon as I receive it.

Letter from HS2 Ltd about Noise Maps

I recently wrote to Alison Munro, the Chief Executive of HS2 Ltd, to ask about obtaining paper copies of the noise maps for HS2.  Ms Munro has now written back to me, and I have pasted a copy of her letter below.

Five More Letters to HS2 Ltd

I have written five more letters to Alison Munro, Chief Executive of HS2 Ltd, to pass on the concerns of my constituents.  The letters cover the following issues: leaving feedback at the HS2 ‘roadshows’, advertising the public consultation in the media, noise maps which display isochrones, the level of detail in the ‘Noise – Summary Note’ fact-sheet, and the role of the consultant ‘Booz & Company’ in advising HS2 Ltd. 

Copies of all five letters can be found below.  I will post the responses as soon as I receive them.

Red Tape Challenge

 

The Coalition Government wants to be the first government in modern history to leave office having reduced the overall burden of red tape and regulation, instead of increasing it.

To help it achieve this, the Government has launched the ‘Red Tape Challenge’.  It is asking members of the public to suggest regulations which affect their daily lives at home, at work, or in the community, and which they think should be cut.

While well-designed and proportionate regulation is of course sensible and needed, I do feel that giving the public a chance to have their say on the less worthwhile regulations that affect their everyday lives is an important step forward.

More details can be found on the ‘Red Tape Challenge’ web-site.

Back to earth!

Douglas Hurd once said to me when he was Foreign Secretary that one of the  strongest reasons to support the British system of having one MP for each constituency (a lot of democracies use proportional systems with multi-member constituencies) is that it kept your feet on the ground. For him, it was having to come back from international meetings with the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and talks about the end of the Cold War, to sit in a draughty church hall in Oxfordshire while people came and shouted at him about the Poll tax.

It was a bit like that this Friday. After three days in the States, I was back (rather jet-lagged) to a full constituency programme. I started in High Wycombe, where (along with my colleagues Dominic Grieve and Steve Baker) , I was briefed by the leaders of Wycombe District Council about housing, planning and economic development issues. Then to Aylesbury for an update from Arla on their plans to build a  huge new dairy just off the A41 Aston Clinton bypass. The company is making further changes to its proposals in response to local comment and intends to submit a formal planning application to Aylesbury Vale District Council in a few weeks’ time. I’ve told them that when they have settled on their final plan and submitted it, I will want to visit the site to get a clear idea of what the visual and noise impact the new development would have on the local area.

The afternoon brought the usual three hours of constituency surgery cases (letters to dictate over the weekend) and then in the evening I went to the public meeting organised by Stoke Mandeville Parish Council to discuss HS2. There were well over 200 people present. The Eskdale Road Community Centre was full – not just the hall but the two small meeting rooms as well- and people were standing in the foyer and outside the windows of the hall too. Obviously people were very worried about the local impact if the scheme goes ahead, especially since the Secretary of State has now confirmed (see earlier posts) that the current plan involves re-routing both the A4010 Risborough Road and Marsh Lane over the top of the HS2 line, something which , because of masts and gantries needed for the railway, would involve a high flyover. But both the presentations from the platform and the questions from the hall focussed on the business case and the claimed national interest justification for this proposal. People asked about the forecasts of passenger demand, whether ordinary families could ever afford an HS2 fare, whether the project could be afforded, whether it would regenerate northern cities or just draw more jobs to London and whether other improvements to rail and road networks could provide a less costly and less environmentally destructive answer to the need to provide additional capacity. Throughout, the tone of the meeting was calm, focussed and serious. These were not people who can be dismissed as NIMBYs.

US travels

I set off last Sunday afternoon for a three day visit to Washington and New York. My main purpose in going to Washington was to talk to people in the Obama administration and in Congress about the Balkans (the USA maintains a strong interest in countries like Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo and Albania), NATO and US-EU relations. I also gave a speech to the Atlantic Council about the Trans-Atlantic Relationship and visited the US Chamber of Commerce to discuss trade relations and the prospects for the Doha Round of global trade negotiations.

My visit coincided with tense negotiations between the President and Congress, Senate and House, Democrats and Republicans about the federal budget. A deal was finally concluded but the US federal government was only a few hours away from a total shutdown that would have left all but essential federal government services suspended and staff sent home without pay. Representative Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who chairs the House of Representatives sub-committee on European affairs, welcomed me to his office with, as you can see, a magnificent view of the Capitol.

Then it was a three hour train ride to New York arriving on Tuesday night. Besides being America’s financial and business capital, New York is also home to the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly. The UN is playing a key role in helping to facilitate talks between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots with the aim of achieving a settlement to the Cyprus dispute. I am hoping to visit Cyprus a bit later this year and it was helpful to be briefed by senior UN officials on how they saw the situation on the island.

A little later, I took the United Kingdom’s seat at a meeting of the Security Council for a session on Haiti. As you’ll remember, Haiti, already one of the most desperately poor countries on earth, suffered a devastating earthquake in 2010. The UN has a humanitarian interest in Haiti and also has a peacekeeping force deployed there. Haiti has just completed the first round of a presidential and parliamentary election so that this was an appropriate time for a bit of stocktaking by the Security Council. The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, had appointed former President Bill Clinton as his special representative for Haiti, and on Wednesday we heard from President Clinton and the outgoing Haitian President, M. Preval, about the reconstruction work that had been completed – and about how much more remained to be done. During my own speech, I confirmed the United Kingdom’s support for Haiti and emphasised the need not only for economic development but also for the reform and strengthening of the courts and the police in Haiti. Public order and confidence in the rule of law are key to attracting the international private sector investment that Haiti needs to provide jobs and a route out of poverty for her people.

 

The other part of my day in New York was a bit of commercial diplomacy. The Government has identified the promotion of Britain’s prosperity as one of the three key objectives of our foreign policy. The British Consul-General in New York is in charge of all our efforts to help British companies to sell to the United States ( and to encourage US firms to invest in Britain). Besides New York and Washington DC, he has small teams operating in Boston, Houston, Chicago and Los Angeles. I visited our Consulate General and later had dinner with a group of New York businessmen and women.

Stoke Mandeville: Discrepancy in Official HS2 Maps – Minister’s Response

You may recall from my post of 30 March, entitled ‘Stoke Mandeville: discrepancy in official HS2 maps’, that I recently wrote to Philip Hammond about the route of HS2 near Stoke Mandeville.  This was after Stoke Mandeville parish council made me aware that maps 9 and 10 published by HS2 Ltd show different versions of the impact of HS2 on the village.

I have now received a response from Mr Hammond, which can be viewed below.

Chiltern Countryside Group’s HS2 Consultation Guidelines

The Chiltern Countryside Group has published its guidelines on responding to the public consultation on HS2, which can be viewed below.  This document is a useful resource for those writing a response to the consultation, although as the document states, it is important to remember that the most effective responses will be personalised ones, as opposed to copied-and-pasted ones.