Turn on, tune in... and witness the bias against high speed rail

A VERY small acronym in the shape of HS2 has the ability to stir up some very large emotions.

Take Question Time on BBC TV last week. The new chair of the programme, Fiona Bruce, didn’t even have to raise her voice, so biased was the debate against the £55 billion project.

There was only one voice in the audience and one on the panel who had anything favourable to say but, then, the programme was coming from Aylesbury. The HS2 line will pass close to the town but not stop – you can’t have a high-speed trains that make frequent stops – so it’s not surprising that there’s a lot of anti-HS2 sentiment in the area.

There was much the same ambience about the Dispatches programme on Channel 4 in the same week. I recognise that the goal of the programme was to drive up viewing figures through a particular brand of lazy, biased and sensationalist journalism.

And it probably worked as I broke my self-imposed boycott of Channel 4 after they shunned Birmingham to tune in.

The lack of balance in the reporting and the intent to highlight the economic benefits that the project will generate for the country was something I found to be startling and irresponsible.

While the positive economic impact will be felt more quickly and obviously in Birmingham and the wider West Midlands, as we are very much at the heart of this new piece of national infrastructure, HS2 is needed mainly because of the over-stretched capacity on the current service, and not because you will be able to get to London in under an hour.

Many people have commented that the biggest mistake was to call the whole project High Speed 2. And now there are thoughts about reducing the speed to cut costs.

And that underlines that the real need for a new rail link between London, the Midlands and the North is largely about freeing up more room on existing lines for local traffic – not for saving a few minutes on the journey. It will also take traffic of the roads.

None of this was rehearsed on either TV programme, leaving many viewers with the impression that the whole country was against HS2.

Reducing the essence of the project to a binary choice between the Midlands or the North is an irresponsible and ultimately short-sighted viewpoint.

Taking this approach might be an easy win for politicians looking to consolidate their local support base, but it will actually stop us from realising the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to generate prosperity across the country as a whole in a unified and interconnected manner.

As a Chamber, we have fully supported the project from inception and backing for the project is especially high among our membership. Surveying from a Quarterly Business Report revealed that more than 70 per cent of businesses in our region felt HS2 would be beneficial for the local economy.

While it has been suggested that the second phase may be under threat, I very much hope, and understand from sources, that this is not actually the case.

Phase 2A will run from the West Midlands to Crewe beginning in

2027 and Phase 2B will run from Crewe to Manchester and Birmingham to Leeds by 2033 and it is critical that these developments become reality for the sake of the whole nation.

Specifically, HS2 trains will join existing networks and bring widespread socio-economic uplifts to a variety of cities and towns across the UK. For example, local authorities in Darlington, Liverpool, Newcastle and Wigan are just a few of the bodies making HS2 a fundamental element of their regeneration plans for decades to come. In particular, 100 cities and towns could benefit from new or improved rail connections and HS2 will directly link eight of the UK’s ten largest cities.

The full benefits of the project extend far beyond monetary gains. More than half of the benefits from HS2 will emerge as a result of improved reliability, reduced waiting times, fewer cars on the road and more frequent services. In the West Midlands, the project is expected to create more than 104,000 jobs and is estimated to increase productivity in the region by £3.1 billion.

What a pity that none of this came across on two major TV programmes. Maybe producers should think of injecting more balance into their output when they know that such divisive issues are going to be aired. Paul Faulkner is chief executive of Greater Birmingham Chambers of

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