Indeed, everyone who mattered to the project from a decision-making perspective was present in the House of Commons, either in the chamber itself or the public gallery.
“Whether they were speaking for or against HS2, I thought that was a genuine exchange of views. I thought it was a really important debate and it was important we had that debate at that stage. The result was resounding support for the project, and obviously I think that has helped to add momentum.”
Kelly clearly feels there is no room for any sense of exceptional superiority, despite that achievement. “That overall majority I do not take for granted, or will ever take for granted. We have to keep working to keep all sides of HS2 supportive, and that means we have to keep explaining to people why it’s necessary.
Real and positive change
“I think, however, the other development we’ve seen in the last year is local government leaders and local enterprise partnerships have begun to realise that HS2 can deliver real and positive change to their areas, if they think strategically about it. The key is to think strategically, because the experience of Europe is that if people think strategically about how high-speed rail can benefit their particular area, they get a real multiplier effect.”
Kelly points to localised examples where this happening: “I think you’re beginning to see that - whether it is in Birmingham, where they’ve done a lot of work thinking through how they do Kirkland Street; whether it’s in the East Midlands, where Nottingham and Derby are both collaborating in thinking through how to change; or whether it’s in South Yorkshire, where there may be disagreement between Sheffield and the region, but again people are thinking through how they can use HS2 to regenerate their area.
“Above all, I think in Leeds people are beginning to think through: how do we design the future of Leeds - not only in itself, but also as a hub for that entire area?
“So I think people have begun the process of actually thinking it through - not just HS2 as a standalone project, but HS2 as an integral part of regenerating both the local and national economies. And that’s how it should be.”
But how is HS2, as an organisation, managing the tensions? For example, the debate about whether the station in Sheffield is at Meadowhall (on the outskirts of the city) or in the city centre, particularly if another city is seen to have a more optimum station? There will inevitably be disagreements about where those stations are placed. What is Kelly’s view?
“I think the wrong thing to do would be to pretend that those tensions didn’t exist. Of course they do. And they exist for perfectly understandable and justifiable reasons. People want the best for their community, for their city, for their region. And in South Yorkshire there is undoubtedly a discussion going on between the rest of the region and Sheffield.
“We said in Rebalancing Britain that the incentive is to find balance, but on the whole that Meadowhall - as things stand at the moment - is the better option. You get exactly the same tension between a region and a particular city on the Western side between Stoke and the rest of that region. And on into North Wales, and Liverpool, and so on.”
Many of the big decisions ultimately rest with politicians, and Kelly says: “The important thing is that we are clear about the criteria by which we offer a recommendation, but equally that we’re clear that in the end it is not a decision for us, it is a decision for the Secretary of State. That is the right way it should be, because only a Secretary of State has the electoral mandate to make such an important decision that will influence the future of the particular regions and particular cities.
“And we have to be absolutely transparent about why we make certain recommendations, but that in the end it is a decision for the Secretary of State.”
Kelly returns to the theme of Higgins’ most recent report: “We have to keep putting the case, both in terms of connectivity and capacity, again and again. And we have to justify why such a strategic intervention in the life of the country is worth it.”
The development of major transport networks over the last three centuries, as pointed out in Rebalancing Britain, goes some way to making that strategic argument - with the development of HS2 particularly significant as the Victorians didn’t exactly have a central planning department for the railway.
Says Kelly: “In the 19th century the railway transformed this country. I think that you could argue in the 20th century the network of motorways transformed the country again. I think we’ve now reached the point, with London under severe transport and housing pressure and the challenges that the North and the Midlands face in terms of connectivity in particular, that we need to transform the country again.
“HS2 will not do that on its own, but it can be a catalyst to bring that kind of change. And the irony is that for all the power of social media, for all the digital connectivity that we now have, we’re slowly beginning to realise that in a knowledge economy, meetings matter.
RailReview had offered Kelly the opportunity to talk over the phone - or perhaps through some other remote means, given the possibilities that videoconferencing or Skype offer.
But Kelly replies: “I much prefer to do this face-to-face. The same is important in terms of daily meetings, because in a knowledge economy where Britain has an edge, ideas matter. Ideas flow better face-to-face. But for that to happen, it has to be easy for people to get from one place to another, to collaborate.”
Pre-committee agreements
Looking at those tensions on a more local level, newspaper reports highlighted how HS2 Ltd seeks to deal with specific issues and aspects of the route before they get to the High Speed Rail Select Committee, with engineers turning up to petitioners’ houses to prevent them going all the way to Committee Room 5.
Is this just a sensible way of dealing with things before they get elevated to that committee level? Can the legislative process be made easier by having engineers visiting people’s houses and saying: “look, we’re putting a zebra crossing here”, because it might make things a bit easier further down the line?
Kelly responds: “In the petitioning process there is a normal process of talking to people as we go through the process, and that’s what we’re doing. Now we need to be careful that we talk to people in a respectful way, that they understand the impact it is having on people’s lives.
“My view is that always you should never criticise people for objecting if something’s going to affect their lives, because if we were in the same position we would do exactly the same thing.”
However, Kelly defends the pre-committee agreements that have been struck: “Equally we need to have rational, reasonable discussions with people, and try to reach rational compromises. And that’s the process we’re going through. It’s a difficult process, it’s disruptive for people - I accept that, and we shouldn’t hide from that. But it is part of a normal process, when you’re trying to do a project like this. I don’t think a project has been invented that will not in some way affect someone’s life and that’s the way we have to deal with it.”
Kelly has had an interesting career - his own experience in politicised situations is helping to prepare HS2 Ltd to steer this through Parliament and through public scrutiny from all sorts of quarters. So how does his experience in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s onwards compare with the task he has been entrusted with in 2014?
“I joined the Homeland Office six weeks before the Good Friday agreement. On the morning of the Good Friday agreement, I was very tired because I’d been on my feet for 48 hours without any sleep. Obviously as someone who lives in Northern Ireland I was elated by the agreement, but also slightly depressed because I thought I’d done myself out of a job.”
But the following nine years were to prove that the path to peace was far from a speedy accomplishment for the politicians involved.
“Nine years later, I sat in the gallery at Stormont, the Parliament building in Belfast, alongside the IRA Army Council and leadership of the paramilitaries, watching Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness being sworn in as First and Deputy First Ministers.
“The lesson I took from that is if you’ve embarked on a strategic project - and HS2 is a strategic project - it takes time. It also takes endless discussion and conversation. Not for the sake of it, but to not only explain to people what you’re doing, but also to fine-tune the process so that you actually deliver the best result for people.
“You have to recognise that this is a marathon, not a sprint. The danger is that we think ‘oh, it’s now inevitable that HS2 will be built’. It’s not.”
Any close observers will know that there remains a considerable degree of scrutiny. The House of Commons Transport Select Committee has conducted several inquiries into the case for HS2, while the Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee has been doing the same.
“We know better today both why we’re doing it and how we’re doing it, particularly on the ‘how’ in Phase 1. But we need to keep having that conversation with the nation, with Parliament, with Whitehall, with local representatives, about both why we’re doing it and how we’re doing it.
“If the two reports have done anything, I think they have at least taken steps in that direction - but it’s steps on a very long journey, and we need to keep that going.
“We haven’t built a railway like this for 150 years. There isn’t a manual that you can take down from the top shelf telling you this is how you do it. So we’re working it out as we go along. It is inevitable that is going to involve a lot of discussion, a lot of uncertainty at the beginning as to how you’re going to do it. Our aim is to gradually add certainty to that process.”
He continues: “There wasn’t a manual as to how you did the Northern Ireland peace process. If there had been the equivalent of the Major Projects Authority, it would have given us a ‘red’ right through to the very end, because it wasn’t until the very end that we were able to know with certainty that we could deliver all the measures that were necessary to implement it.
“That doesn’t mean in any way that we should say to whoever’s asking the questions to go away and not bother us - it’s precisely those people we need to keep with us as we do it.”
That was the case with Higgins’ first report, HS2 Plus, where a lot of the content came from conversations with people - some of them supportive, some of them not.
“That’s the nature of a project like this. You have to listen as well as inspire. And we have to listen to the rail industry as well, as part of that. And beyond that, the transport industry. Because HS2 has to be seen as an integral part of an overall strategy for transport.”
