16/10/2011 The Politics Show Yorkshire and Lincolnshire

Here at, or we look ahead to tomorrow's Hillsborough debate in

Parliament. Should cabinet discussions about the disaster be

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 1495 seconds

made public? And is this the age of Coming up: As Parliament prepares

to debate the Hillsborough disaster tomorrow, we ask whether Margaret

Thatcher's cabinet minutes in the aftermath will be published. And

what will the high-speed train link do for us? With an estimated cost

of more than �1,000 per household, we look at claims that existing

rail services will suffer. It has been described as a victory for

people power. Almost 140,000 people signed an online petition calling

for the release of Cabinet papers relating to the Hillsborough

disaster in 1989. The success of the campaign has triggered a debate

in the House of Commons, which will take place tomorrow. 22 years on,

MPs will discuss the circumstances surrounding the tragedy at

Sheffield Wednesday's ground and the response from Margaret

Thatcher's government in the April 15th, 1989. A day to remember

it for all the wrong reasons. 96 fans, at all and Jong, were crushed

to death right in front of the TV cameras. Police and ambulance

services were engulfed and left helpless. -- bald and Jong up.

tragedy that took place and those that died. Thousands have been left

grieving since that day. I think things had to change. This man was

the Sheffield Central Labour MP at the time. His worst memories are of

visiting the ground early the next morning. I have seen these barriers

there were on the terraces just bent. You asked the Engineer what

it would have taken to do it and he said nearly half a ton. Human

bodies had been pinned on that and pushed and crushed and had pushed

that Bath forward. Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister,

turned up. It was horrendous. Margaret Thatcher's visit started

what has become a 22 year mystery. What exactly did she and the

Cabinet hear about the causes of the disaster? Was at police crowd

control mistakes, runs' behaviour or poor grand design? -- fan's

behaviour. Cabinet papers have been left sealed ever since. But that

could change because of this petition calling for all government

documents relating to Hillsborough to be released. It had thousands of

signatures, and the total climbed to over 139,000. It has triggered a

debate in Parliament. It has taken the fight and the family's to

battle for 22 years to get to this stage and this will be the first

debate on Hillsborough in the Chamber of the House of Commons and

it is the first want bad results from the fact that we got 100,000

people or more signing the petition in a couple of weeks. I think that

governments of all colours should have acted a lot sooner. There has

already been a major judicial inquiry which brought about a

report. The result was saved for all-seater stadiums like the one

hearing Doncaster. But standing and overcrowding has never been

entirely accepted as the whole story by France. There is a depth

of feeling in this country about the tragedy and a lot of supporters

are still upset and concerned about the effect it has had on football.

To see it put to bed and discover the reasons why that tragedy

occurred is the right thing to do. We are here we are, having a debate,

in 2011, about those papers. Why has it taken so long? I have been

in government for 10 years but I can't answer that question. The

Secretary of State and Andy Burnham have been campaigning. Let's hope

that this will be the last chapter of releasing that information. If

it is, it will satisfy a lot of people. I see no downside to it and

I think it will help the families and will say that we need to keep

football saved. The coalition government, too, has not been keen

on releasing the papers. It challenged a recent BBC Freedom of

Information Act request. But with a debate looming, it now says there

will be made available to a panel that has been re-examining the

disaster for the past two years. The victims' monument at

Hillsborough declares they will never walk alone. In this

demonstration of fan power, that is clearly still the case.

Our guests today are the Labour MP for Sheffield south-east and the

Conservative MP for Pudsey. You are a Sheffield Wednesday fan and were

at Hillsborough on that day. What can be revealed about the disaster

that we don't already know? I don't know and that is the key issue

about why the papers should be out there. The families and friends of

those who lost their lives are the important ones. We have had

inquiries, but there are still family members who feel they can't

let the matter rest, that there may just be something there that gives

them a better explanation and more information about what happened.

Until the papers are out in public, I don't think that they will feel

like everything is there for them to make a judgement about. They

should give them the information so that they can reach a conclusion

themselves. Nick Clegg, the Sheffield MP, said that all the

papers relating to Hillsborough should be released. Why has the

government rabbit seals? I don't know but I agree with Clive. The

fact is that this petition has brought about an opportunity for

this to be debated properly in the House of Commons. We have got to

make sure that we treat this sensitively, because it is an

incredibly sensitive issue. There is some division between the

family's us to watch it happen. Some want the Pope has to go out to

the public straightaway but others would rather like -- the papers to

go out straight away but others would like it to be just to the

families. Whoever was in government, the fact is that there are lessons

to be learnt and we need to learn them because we do not want to see

that again. I knew somebody who was there and they described that

horrible feeling of being in that crowd as it was surging towards the

fences. We have to learn these lessons and I don't care which

government it was. Clive, the Labour government set up the

Hillsborough information panel a couple of years ago. I thought the

original plan was that they would release the findings next year and

decide which of those papers should be made public. The panel is going

through it and one of the jobs they are going to do - I met one of the

representatives of the panel - and it is incumbent on all

organisations to release medical record as far as they did relate to

it it's individuals and emergency services and police records, and

those things have to be in the public domain. One of the jobs the

panel will do is to trawl through and remove a lot of duplication of

documents. I had a look at my own records and there are lots of

duplicates. But in the end, it is the decision to withhold certain

papers that is going to leave a feeling around that those are the

papers that really contain issues that are not in the public domain

yet which could help explain what happened. Anything that leaves

certain papers in secret is not going to mean that this issue can

be put to bed. Electronic petition has - thousands of people are

signing various petitions. We have 100,000 people calling for lower

fuel, people who want a referendum on leaving the EU and people who

want to bring back the death penalty. To what extent should the

government bowed to these calls? are giving the public the

opportunity to tell Parliament that they were meant to debate issues.

There was one this week on the riots and that is a good thing for

the engagement between Parliament and the electorate. The backbench

committee in the House of Commons seems to be picking and choosing

which is used to debate. You could get a situation where you had so

many petitions you could not possibly debate them all

immediately. But there is a weak connection between the public and

Parliament. When I first went into Parliament, the questions that

answered were put down two weeks before. A major event would happen

and we would carry on asking questions that ignored it. So to

have parliament responding more and more to up-to-date situations and

the speed allowing more urgent questions and the electronic

editions, this is a good example of something that would not be debated

a couple of years ago. Parliament is getting more in tune with people.

We are going to be talking trains now. The hour of the journey time

from Yorkshire to London and lead to huge economic benefits, we are

told. -- it could take an Abbott of the journey time. -- an hour off.

Every day, thousands of passengers travelled to London from stations

in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. It is a journey future travellers

could enjoy a much quicker time. The argument for high-speed rail is

tackling capacity constraints. East Coast main line is full

between 10 and 12 years. This is the best way to tackle it. The

Times savings are the icing on the cake Abbe bring additional economic

and regeneration benefits. It is proposed the first leg of the route

will run from London to Birmingham by 2026. By 2033, the line will be

extended north on one side of the country to Manchester and on the

other leg to Yorkshire, cutting the journey time from Leeds to London

to just 80 minutes. The total estimated cost is �32 billion.

opportunity by connecting the regions to London and the Midlands

better and faster is important. The best way of investing in new

capacity is to do them in high speed and by doing that, you create

capacity in other lines to benefits it is not directly served by the

high-speed network. Many argue that cost simply can't be justified in

the current economic climate. It has a price tag which equates to

more than �1,000 per house holds. A lobby has created his website

warning taxpayers it could mean deeper cuts to police numbers and

hospital wards shut down. The concern among some campaigners is

that the new high-speed rail link will suck money away from the rail

network in areas which went directly benefit from the service.

-- which will not directly benefit. So spending on existing railways

should not be cut back to fund this, so any planned improvements to the

basic network should still take place. We should not find those

disappearing. The one we are really worried about his alleged refining

the Midland Main Line continuing from Leicester and Nottingham up to

Sheffield. If this is one of the scheme is that they decide is not

needed because of high-speed, then Sheffield could be another 20 years

before they get a decent service to London. I don't think that's likely

to be the case. We chaired a meeting with the Secretary of State

for Transport and he made it very clear that the funding would not

impact on general transport for the rest of the country. The Department

of Transport is pursuing a programme of electrification across

the country. They are electrifying the Great Western route and there

are some plans now emerging for the Midland Main Line and Trans Pennine

as part of their improvement of the railways. At present, the only

high-speed link in the UK runs from London to the Channel Tunnel and

when it comes to sip a fast rail links, we lag behind many of our

European neighbours. -- super fast. The argument now is whether we can

justify the cost of creating a new age of the high-speed train.

Our MPs are still here and we have been joined by a guest who runs one

of the main campaign groups against high-speed rail, who has come up

with the website showing the cost of the project. We have had some

pretty grim unemployment figures in the past few days. Why are you

denying many people here in the North what some say is a vital

economic lifeline? And I am in favour of investing in

infrastructure to create jobs and growth but a high-speed rail link

is not going to do that. It may even exacerbate the North-South

divide. We are spending �800 million in the current Parliament

to pay a few expensive consultants which is not going to create jobs

and growth. We need to invest in the real transport priorities like

Light Rail into Leeds. No one can say that the government can afford

both. We are talking about the next government and the government after

that and the story in France is that the ordinary rail system has

been neglected to pay for high- speed rail. We cannot afford both.

If we could, why are the cutting the Madrid by �9 million -- of the

Metro by millions of pounds. A can you justify your constituents

paying more than �1,000 per household? That is highly

misleading because that is the total expenditure and does not take

into account any of the fare income. Our capacity is becoming a real

problem now and will be even worse in the next 20 years. We have got

to deal with it. We could tinker around with the edges but as I said

yesterday in the debate we had in Parliament, it would be like fixing

a broken leg with a sticking plaster. We have a huge problem to

deal with and high-speed rail is the way to deal with it. Clive,

some suggestions that the Midland main line between Sheffield and

London will not be allowed to fight because of the money spent on this

new project. Does that bother you? I think the Midland Main Line could

be electrified much more quickly. The town speed - but the timescale

for high-speed rail means there is plenty of time. You need to improve

other transport services to get the benefits of high-speed rail. France

has had a very long periods of very successfully investing in high-

speed rail. I went from one small from city to another this summer

and they had high-speed rail there. They are investing in high-speed

rail and crimes as well. The French model works so why should it not

work here? Unemployment in at a particular area of France has gone

up in relation to the rest of the country since high-speed rail.

Places cannot wait until 2026 Aug 2033 for this. We need to invest

now. Capacity can be improved substantially simply by increasing

the number of standard class carriages on the west-coast

mainline which would double the number of standard class seats. But

his 100% growth against a 2% demand. When I went to your Tory party

conference, I travelled on the train from Leeds to Manchester and

stood all the way. Surely the government should be investing in

rolling stock. And they are! That is the point. They are investing in

rolling stock across the North of England and around the country. We

are not saying it is high-speed rail or nothing. We need to invest

in the infrastructure that we have now, but we also have to say speak

about the future. Rail passenger numbers have doubled in the last 10

years. If that happens again, where are these people going to sit?

Adding a few extra carriages does not deal with the peak time problem.

It is an interesting issue. It has united Labour and Conservatives

together and add even more surprising, it has united Sheffield

and Leeds! This is a big, expensive project which is going to cost a

lot of money, but if we took your attitude we would never have built

Concorde, and isn't bad thing to -- is unbarred Kingdom Brunel might as

well never have got out of bed! think we should invest more in

broadband because I am starting to use Skype calls more than physical

meetings. But that will not affect growth. We need to take a high risk

root and go down a path that has led to a lot of bankruptcy. -- and

not go down a path. This is very expensive not just to build but

also to subsidise. We should not be subsidising transport for a few

rich people. We should be picky about buses, light rail, Intra

conurbation journeys. We should not be thinking about journeys between

London and Leeds. Manchester to Liverpool is 45 mph. Those are the

ones we need to work on. By it is why that line is going to be

electrified. Be his issues are already being addressed by the

government. If the Victorians had behaved in the way he is suggesting,

where would we be today? There would not be any railways. We have

not spent enough on transport in this country, historically,

particularly railways and light rail systems, and we have not spent

in the North against the South. This is a chance to rectify that

and then build on it. We don't just need corrections to London.

Yorkshire should stand on its own feet and not be propped up by the

South. I wonder if people in 2033 we look back on the debate we have