Professor David Begg, director of the Campaign for High Speed Rail, rebuts the latest right-wing small state madness from the Institute for Economic Affairs.
Professor David Begg is the Director of the Campaign for High Speed Rail
This morning the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) released their assessment of the proposed high-speed rail project, co-authored by Dr Richard Wellings and Kyn Aizlewood. The IEA’s report (pdf) reflects an old-fashioned, free-market-obsessed ideology that wants to spend Britain’s transport infrastructure investment predominantly on roads in the South East.
These sorts of ideologues have no appreciation of the important external benefits that a modern high-speed national rail network would bring for jobs and regeneration.
It is not surprising that the IEA has come out against HS2, when you read about some of the authors’ other thoughts and background. From their past work, the authors are clearly obsessed by roads – particularly in the South East – and would happily privatise the railways on which Britain’s families and local business people depend.
The co-author, Kyn Aizlewood, does not disclose that his views are clearly effected by the close proximity of his house to the proposed rail route and that he is a member of an anti-HS2 action group.
In January 2009, Wellings wrote:
“High-speed rail also offers poor value compared with roads. £30 billion would perhaps buy 1,000 miles of motorway, which, if sensibly located, could be expected to carry more passengers and freight than the entire rail network. And the funding could be entirely private, paid for by tolls, particularly if competing routes were also priced.”
In May 2011, Wellings wrote:
“As long as Network Rail and other individual railway firms remain in receipt of taxpayer-funded subsidies, there will be little incentive to drive down costs and to provide a more efficient service.
“It is right that passengers should pay a greater proportion of the cost of the services they use; but it is also right that taxpayers should not be forced to pay for services that are grossly inefficient and are used by only a small proportion of the population. Allowing rail operators to own the infrastructure could transform Britain’s rail network.
“The government must stop tweaking with a fundamentally flawed model and instead unshackle the railways, and the railway operators, from the dead hand of state control.”
We also note with interest that Wellings’ co-author, Kyn Aizlewood, also appears to live on the proposed route.
In a number of comment threads and letters on the subject of high-speed rail, Aizlewood reveals that he is a resident of Kenilworth. In fact, Aizlewood appears to not only live along the route, but is also the organiser of one of the local Stop HS2 opposition groups.
In an interview with the Coventry Telegraph, he reveals his position as the official organiser of the ‘Keep Burton Green’ action group, as he promotes the wine-tasting evening the group hosted to raise funds to oppose the high-speed rail project.
The Coventry Telegraph reports:
Organiser Kyn Aizlewood said: “Our wine group has helped to bring the community together, meeting regularly to improve our appreciation of wine. The high speed rail line will cut our village in two, literally destroying the heart of the village and we will need funds over the coming years to fight this project. This will be an entertaining evening and we welcome your support.”
The IEA have completely failed to grasp the wider benefits of the high-speed rail project, which will create jobs, boost investment and spread the economic wealth of this country to places outside of the TPA heartlands of London and the South East.
I would expect better from an otherwise reputable think-tank than to parrot misinformation and repackage the discredited views of opponents to the project who are clearly motivated by a mixture of small-state ideology and ‘not-in-my-back-yard’ attitudes.
They should be ashamed of themselves for abusing their research credentials to produce such a thinly veiled propaganda piece.
44 Responses to “High Speed Rail: Deconstructing the right wing dogma”
Jerry Marshall
Professor Begg is as clueless about Kyn’s role in an action group as he is about whether HS2 would have any benefit in terms of jobs and wealth. Kyn started a very friendly wine club in his village years before the HS2 white elephant project was proposed. The fact that the club once held a fund raiser to funds efforts to counter the kind of divisive nonsense David Beggs promotes is irrelevant to a report from a respected independent think tank.
Philip
Let me first declare an interest – I work with Richard. This is a pretty disreputable post from somebody who is an academic on an self-styled evidence-based blog. This is just a series of attacks on the authors with no discussion of the paper. What exactly does the phrase “would happily privatise the railways” mean and why should it prevent somebody from writing a paper on HS2? The operating comapnies are private and few believe that the current settlement for Network Rail is remotely efficient. Evidence-based blogging would involve demonstrating that HS2 would actually bring external benefits greater than the alternative use of the funds spent on the projects – to not agree that this is the case is not to be “not aware” of the existence of external benefits. A rational critique would involve, for example, dealing with points in the paper such as where it is pointed out that the calculation of the benefits of HS2 assumes that all time by business people that is spent on trains is wasted. Thank goodness I am not one of your students. When they defend their masters’ theses, are judgements based on where they live, what they have previously written or whether they believe in the privatisation of the railways or do you actually examine intellectual arguments according to their content?
Philip
I should also add that most productive uses of large amounts of capital have external costs or benefits and the question is whether the external costs and benefits are greater from HS2 than from alternative uses of the money. Furthermore, this is work in progress but the first main chapter of the book we published last week showed quite a bit of preliminary evidence that activist policies to promote growth had insignificant affects whilst the increases in marginal tax rates necessary to finance such activist policies had significant affects on growth through their effects on incentives and entrepreneurship. Has Prof. Begg factored these in or is he just ignoring the impacts of marginal tax rates on growth?
Ed's Talking Balls
Good to see almost unanimous opposition on this thread to HS2, a white elephant if ever I saw one.
I don’t live on or near the proposed route, so I’m not a NIMBY. It’s a terrible idea irrespective of where one lives. As someone said above, this is certainly not a left-right issue and I hope that opposition to this stupid scheme proceeds on a cross-party basis.
I also note the silly attempted smear by Mr. Sensible, who posts a link suggesting that the IEA are in support of things which he opposes (and vice versa). What of it? Regardless of the think tank’s views on other matters, put aside your prejudices and assess this individual case on its merits.
rae sloan
Professor David Begg accuses people of parroting. perhaps he should look in a mirror. All his arguements are re-iterations of Hammmond’s fancy diatribe. They are and insults against opponents and answer any critical questions posed, they lack any detail and exhibit no real knowledge of the detrimental impact of HS2 on the WHOLE country.