Once again the right hon. Lady is absolutely right and I value the work she does on the Environmental Audit Committee. When the Government have the report of the Select Committee that has been appointed today, they will bring forward environmental proposals on Third Reading. There is ample time for the Government to take account of how we can have something in place that makes up for the lack of strategic environmental assessment—we have not had that—and which could still look at the detail of the environmental impact assessments that we need. In the evidence that we received from many NGOs—from the wildlife trusts, the WWF and a host of other organisations—they all said how much they wanted to work in collaboration to find ways of having the mitigation that is needed, and also to look at implementing offsetting in ways that could be truly transformational. There are all kinds of implications for the detail of the engineering works on the route as well. If there is no way for all that to be brought together and taken on board, I think Parliament will be accused of having total disregard for the environmental aspects that should have been included and still need to be.
Finally, I want to refer to the Supreme Court. It made it clear that it is for Parliament, not the Government, to decide the parliamentary procedure for the hybrid Bill, and therefore for Parliament to decide what is reasonable and practicable when it comes to environmental protection, mitigation and compensation measures. It is entirely appropriate that the Select Committee should have the instruction to ensure that it is able properly to consider environmental issues and not leave what is “reasonable and practicable” to HS2 to decide, which in my book would be likely to mean a much lower level of environmental protection being applied than is required.
The cost of such environmental protections is a necessary cost if such a scheme is to go ahead. We heard about the huge ambition of HS2. That ambition needs to be equalled by environmental ambition. We should be doing everything to avoid impacts first, before we mitigate or compensate for them.