John Spellar (Warley) (Lab):...We have also seen work patterns
change. We see that here, with many people working from home. They
may not continue to do that all the time, but they may well be
working split weeks. That will have an impact on demand. Far more
meetings are now conducted by Zoom That process has accelerated
dramatically in a way that nobody, not even the founders of such
companies, anticipated. If those meetings patterns change, what
will that do to daytime inter-city travel?...Request free trial
(Warley)
(Lab):...We have also seen work patterns change. We see that
here, with many people working from home. They may not continue to
do that all the time, but they may well be working split weeks.
That will have an impact on demand. Far more meetings are now
conducted by Zoom That process has accelerated
dramatically in a way that nobody, not even the founders of such
companies, anticipated. If those meetings patterns change, what
will that do to daytime inter-city travel? Will there actually be
the demand? Will having the west coast main line and HS2 not
actually mean that both become unviable?
(North
Shropshire) (Con) [V]:...It really is important that
we have a proper consultation and that the Minister, as he is bound
to by Lords amendment 3, listens carefully, and that he ensures
that those mitigation measures are pushed through and financed by
HS2. We plan to spend, apparently, £80 billion, according to the
House of Commons Library. It was £30 billion when I was in the
Cabinet. I was told we were going to link it up to HS1 and go to
Heathrow, but we are not; we are going to somewhere called Old Oak
Common. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham
(
) and the right hon. Member for Warley () said, this
project is now completely out of date. We can use Zoom and Teams.
It would be far better to spend £30 billion of that giving every
single household in this country top-class superfast
broadband...
:
Is one of the main drivers not peak-time capacity and daytime
capacity? Inter-city travel is very much driven by business travel.
We have seen how remote conferencing—Zoom we call
it, but there are all the other companies as well—has changed the
ways in which people are undertaking those meetings. Might that not
really drive down use, so that we do not need that peak-time
capacity? In the evenings, there is no problem at all, and that may
be when people travel for leisure. Has there not possibly been a
significant change?
The Minister of State, Department for Transport ():...This matter really needs its own
debate—I am sure it will get one—where we can go through these
things in some depth. What I will say is that if we look at the
aspirational growth plans of some of the cities we intend to
connect, we see that Leeds, for example, intends to double the size
of the city centre. We are going to see different people wanting to
use transport. We are certainly going to see changes. How long
those last for, who knows? We have all in this House spent many
months now on Zoom I cannot wait for us to
return to normality and to get back to face-to-face meetings. This
is a debate for another day, however, and with your permission,
Madam Deputy Speaker, I will try to get back to the topic and the
amendments in hand. I am more than happy to debate this topic with
the right hon. Gentleman at another
stage...
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