Orders of the Day — Channel Tunnel Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 5 Rhagfyr 1973.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Mr Robert Ellis Mr Robert Ellis , Wrecsam 12:00, 5 Rhagfyr 1973

I am sure that the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) will not object if I say how refreshing it was to me, as a "young pup" of an engineer, to listen to such practicalities from an hon. Member who has clearly had long experience of the technicalities of engineering.

I have the rather dubious pleasure of claiming for my constituency the distinction of having located within it the site of the registered office of the first Channel Tunnel company registered in this country. As the Minister said, the Channel Tunnel project has a long history. The first proposals came from one Albert Matthieu around 1802. But by 1867, one William Lowe, who lived in my constituency, conceived the grandiose idea of having a Britain-India railway, the first part of which necessitated a Channel tunnel. He registered his company and his office in Wrexham. In view of that one might have supposed that I should be in favour of that proposal and support it on Second Reading. But for a number of reasons I cannot do so.

There are all kinds of arguments—we have entered into many of them over the last few weeks and months—by which this project can be viewed and questioned. Examples are its effect on Kentish roads, the question of the practicalities of the project, the sheer technical engineering feasibility, its financing, the effect on our ports, and so on. But the one issue on which to judge the tunnel would be that which the hon. Member for Edinburgh North (Mr. Alexander Fletcher) touched on, in what I thought was an admirable maiden speech, namely, the tunnel's effect on regional development.

I want to look closely at this problem because it does not seem to have received the consideration that it deserves. The Bill mentions it not at all. The issue of our regional economic disabilities is one of the fundamental key issues, not only for Britain but for the whole economy of Europe.

When the Green Paper was introduced earlier this year the Government pointed out that there would be several intermediate decision points built into the project. It is to be seriously questioned whether anything like the necessary study of the economics of the tunnel—by that, I mean economics in its widest sense—has been undertaken in the period between publication of the Green Paper and publication of the Bill.

In May of this year, I asked the Prime Minister whether, In view of the paramount need to eliminate regional economic disparities across Europe and in view of the failure of all Governments so far to reverse the centripetal pull to the central golden triangle", he would ask the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and the Environment to assess the effect of the Channel Tunnel upon the Welsh and Scottish economies, not in absolute terms but relative to its effect on the South-East, and to couple that with an assessment of proposals to improve direct sea and air communications between the peripheral regions of Europe."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st May, 1973; Vol. 855, c. 987.] As a result of that question, the Prime Minister kindly wrote me a letter to elaborate on some of the points that he had mentioned in his reply. In the letter, he said: … it may not be possible completely to isolate and quantify the effects of the Channel Tunnel on particular parts of the United Kingdom. There may be some sense in that. Despite all the techniques that have been available to economic forecasting, it is obviously no easy matter to make reasonably accurate forecasts.

I do not want to claim that I know for certain what the effect of the tunnel will be on the regional economic disparities in this country, but the Prime Minister went on to say that the tunnel would not offer a major incentive for relocation of industry in the South-East". With the greatest respect, I simply do not believe him. The facts of geography, history and economics speak to the contrary. More and more trade will be "chunnel-led"—I suppose that is the word-through the South-East and the influence of that trade on the South-East of England and the North-East of France will be enormous.

It is not for nothing that the population of London at the beginning of the 18th century was 2 million and that of the next largest town in Britain—Bristol—was only 30,000. That gives a measure of the centripetal pull. I know that the Industrial Revolution, with its emphasis on mineral deposits, changed that situation, but now that industry is not based so much on minerals, these old geographical and economic centripetal pulls are reasserting themselves and the tunnel will add to this effect.

The next words of the Prime Minister's letter were staggeringly complacent: … planning controls, and particularly the IDC system, would ensure that any pressures for new development in the South-East would be consistent with local and overall regional policy. No one would claim either here or in any other European country that regional development policies, energetic and powerful though some of them have been—tantamount in some cases to the direction of industry—have wholly overcome, to the benefit of the regions, these natural economic pulls towards the central golden triangle.

Yet the Bill does not even acknowledge the need to find out a rough estimate of the effects of the tunnel on this crucial economic issue of regional disparities. I do not want to go into a long economic lecture, even if I could, but most people will probably accept that this is one of the key economic issues in Europe.

All this is not to argue against improving and increasing travelling facilities between Britain and the mainland. I suppose that most of us are all for that. But there may be better ways of doing that in terms of overall economic and social benefits than a Channel tunnel from Dover to Calais. I should like to see studied, for example, the effect for South Wales and for Britain of an improvement of the South Wales ports and the services sailing from those ports and of similar improvements at Glamorgan Airport.

I was struck by the suggestion of the non. Member for Edinburgh, North about the need for regional airports. This kind of thing should be considered along with the whole question of the tunnel's economic effect. Until that study is made, we simply do not know. Recent work carried out jointly between Newcastle University Systems Dynamics Group and IBM (UK) Scientific Centre is very promising, I believe, in showing the potential of new techniques in the study of influences on regional economic disparities. A complete new methodology is being developed. Indeed, I would say that it has been developed; certainly it is in its pilot stage. It is known as systems dynamics methodology.

I shall not bore the House with an account of the technique—again, I am not sure that I could—but until this kind of work is done and this kind of provision is written into the Bill, we must give attention to the need for such a study so that the fundamental importance of the tunnel's effect on our key economic problems can be quantified before the next built-in decision point is reached. However, I am inclined to agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley) that these built-in decision points will at the end of the day probably be far more theoretical than practical.