I rise to speak to the amendments to motion 4 to which I have lent my name as I have some particular local and regional reasons to support them.
Although I did not lend my name to amendment (a), it contains a regional aspect that is important in my constituency. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) seeks
“to provide complete protection to any areas of outstanding natural beauty”
and areas of special scientific interest. The first interchange station outside London is proposed on green-belt land in my constituency at the juncture with Birmingham international airport. It is perhaps not an area of outstanding natural beauty, but the Meriden gap is the green land that holds the cities of Birmingham and Coventry apart. Throughout my 17 years as an MP, there has been constant pressure to build in that gap, which is only 5 miles wide at its narrowest point but contains a lot of transport infrastructure.
Right at the centre of the gap is something known as the golden triangle, which comes under the auspices of the Solihull planning authority. Great concern has been expressed by the Campaign to Protect Rural England that the imperative of this infrastructure may lead to the loss of green-belt land in that triangle without due consideration. My local authority, which supports high-speed rail in principle, with certain conditions attached, very much wants me to put on the record that it wants to maintain control of carefully planning what comes into that most sensitive of green spaces. In respect of amendment (a), the Select Committee needs carefully to consider what happens when green-belt land is at stake.
I put my name to amendment (b) to motion 4 specifically because I want the Committee to consider the statutory and non-statutory provision for compensation. As I said yesterday, I welcome the fact that the Government have produced a revised compensation package. To be perfectly clear, it is a significant step forward from the statutory compensation currently available, because constituents really only get compensation one year after a project is finished. Considering that this project is expected to end in 2026, folks would be waiting an awfully long time without the revised package, which successive Secretaries of State have worked towards.
However, the revised compensation package contains an important omission: compensation for people affected by construction works. The revised package represents a step forward, because the area of eligibility has been extended beyond 120 metres from the tracks to a taper
of 300 metres in rural areas, but construction compounds and sites might not be adjacent to the tracks, so they slip through the net of the revised compensation package.
Significant parts of the route, at both the London and the west midlands ends, will see many years of extensive construction work. The environmental statement highlights that around the interchange station at Birmingham airport we can expect construction work to continue for over five years. People are every bit as blighted by being opposite a construction compound or next to a spoil heap as they are by being 60 metres from the tracks. That is why I have put my name to the amendment.