19:37 Richard Fuller (Conservative)

The environmental impact assessment was cursory, falls far short of our net zero expectations and may result in brutal scarring of the Bedfordshire countryside forever. Critical local authority input to the consultation from Bedford Borough Council, upon which the Minister and his Department will rely, was submitted without approval from the council as a whole—a secret plan, containing flaky economic assumptions, airbrushing out references to existing homes that will have to be demolished, and potentially concealing acceptance of additional housing development as the price to be paid for the chosen route.

As I was saying, the CPRE has raised a more fundamental point, with which I agree: the detailed assessment of environmental impact is being done right at the end of the process, rather than being front and centre at the start of the process. It rightly asks how a route that is longer and hillier, requiring significant additional construction and carving its way through open countryside, can have a carbon footprint consistent with our net zero targets? As a result, environmental impact is seen as the guise of mitigation rather than as a full part of a proper assessment. We cannot be a Government committed to biodiversity and protection of our natural habitat if we continue this practice. The Minister—indeed, the Prime Minister—has the opportunity with East West Rail to take a stand on this matter. Will the Minister therefore raise these environmental concerns directly with No. 10 and gain its assurance that this project, with all its changes, has the Prime Minister’s endorsement as being fully compliant with his green agenda?

A number of changes have been made since the origination of this consultation. It originated in Lord Adonis’s Oxford-Cambridge arc vision, as part and parcel of acceding to the provision of 1 million homes in this region between Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire, including Bedfordshire, yet just a week or two ago the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government confirmed to me that that 1 million homes target is no longer a target. We know that the other project of Lord Adonis’s vision, the expressway, is no longer a long expressway; it has been junked in Buckinghamshire. We know that covid has changed crucial traffic assumptions, with greater working from home and with the opportunity for more office space in London to be converted to residential. We know that the vision for East West Rail has been cascading back in history, from his shining, 21st century, forward-looking vision where we connect two—potentially three—of our great universities to one involving a 19th century fuel of dubious merit. The Government have issued a 10-point plan for net zero, yet in some ways there are concerns that East West Rail now stands directly against those ambitions. As I said, we have more examples to show that people will change lifelong voting intentions to express their discontent with top-down projects that fundamentally change their surroundings.

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