A committee of MPs has warned that the government has failed to satisfactorily minimise the environmental impacts of its controversial High Speed train project.

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The government claims a high speed rail link, initially between London and Birmingham, with branches later extending to Manchester and Leeds, will lead to economic growth and potentially reduce the country's north-south divide. However, opposition to the plans has been widespread.

Last year, Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said "The Department for Transport has yet to present a convincing strategic case for High Speed 2… It has not yet demonstrated that this is the best way to spend £50billion on rail investment in these constrained times, and that the improved connectivity will promote growth in the regions rather than sucking even more activity into London."

The high price of travel on HS2 has also been an issue.  John Whitelegg, a member of the Stockholm Environment Institute, and professor of sustainable transport at Liverpool's John Moores University, went one step further than Hodge when he called HS2 "A rich person's folly… a socially regressive project to transfer cash from poor to rich and to reward the rich with faster journeys to London."

Critics have also suggested the proposed high speed line risks being especially environmentally destructive as the high speed trains will require several straight sections of track to run properly.

Following an investigation into the environmental impacts of the scheme, the Environmental Audit Committee declared on Monday that better safeguards need to be implemented against damaging the environment. Committee members called on Parliament – acting as the planning authority for HS2 – to ensure that it "minimise[s] damage to ancient woodlands and SSSIs," as well as taking another look at compensation.  

Committee Chair Joan Walley said, "The Government needs to show real commitment to dealing with the impact that HS2 will have on our countryside and wildlife. Ancient woodlands and other hard to replace sites of natural value should not be subordinated to crude economic calculations of cost and benefit."

Walley continued, "It is imperative that an infrastructure project on such a large scale implements proper environmental safeguards and ensures that impacts are minimised. This means adopting stringent, enforceable standards and setting aside adequate funding. That won't happen if HS2 Ltd can avoid implementing safeguards if they consider them to be 'impracticable' or 'unreasonable'. There needs to be a separate ring-fenced budget for these safeguards and for compensation, separate from the rest of the HS2 budget, to prevent the environment being squeezed if HS2 costs grow."

Loopholes in the environmental protection rules could be used to undermine commitments to nature or the wellbeing of communities along the proposed route, according to the influential committee, which expressed concern that adjustments made by HS2 have to be 'reasonable' and 'practicable'. They also concluded that lack of a ring-fenced budget for environmental protection could increase the potential for corner-cutting if the overall budget needs to be brought down.

The Committee of MPs found that, given the proposed scale of HS2, realising the government's pledge that it will result in "no net biodiversity loss" will prove "challenging". Joan Walley added, "The Government's aim of 'no net biodiversity loss' on HS2 is not good enough — it should aim for environmental gains that the Government promised in its white paper on the Natural Environment. In any case, the Government can't demonstrate it will cause no net harm because it has still not surveyed 40% of the land to be used."

The Committee's report will be used to inform Parliament when the HS2 Bill goes for its second reading on 28th April. The EAC did not make a statement either for or against the policy, but instead looked only at its implications for the environment.

The NFU, which has expressed overall support for HS2, welcomed the EAC's findings this week.  NFU President Meurig Raymond claimed that several points raised by the union had been included in the Committee's report. He said, "As the NFU highlighted in its response to the consultation, the committee's report has noted that mitigation planned away from the line should only be on farmland out of production or of low inherent fertility. We should not see any more productive farm land lost in the development of HS2 than is absolutely necessary.

"The committee has also highlighted as an example that 250 hectares of woodland lost to the scheme should not by offset by planting 650 hectares of woodland on prime agricultural land."

Biodiversity offsetting

Mr Raymond said that biodiversity offsetting options should be made open to farmers. Though some landowners could stand to gain from biodiversity offsetting as part of the HS2 project, and offsetting has been supported by EAC in its past reports, the practice remains hugely controversial. Conservationists have warned that offsetting, as pursued by the government, will amount to giving developers a license to trash the environment, by "permit[ting] the commodification of nature" in a bid to speed up the planning process.

In the UK, the government claims that there is much to learn from pilots conducted at home and in Australia, however, these projects are either incomplete (and the results have been far from satisfactory) or are judged to have failed. Experts who have advised governments on the mechanism have said that, in practice, projects have often betrayed the principles behind offsetting. The idea was initially intended to constrain development to sites where biodiversity could be offset without having significant impacts – thereby reducing the area available for development – but in reality governments reluctant to do this have oversimplified methodologies to examine biodiversity and weakened protection available (UK governent proposals on biodiversity offsetting initially suggested it would take just 20 minutes to assess the richness of biodiversity in a given area).

Last year EU development organisation counter-balance warned that, "Once you put a price on nature in order to protect it, you may find someone willing to pay slightly more in order to destroy it."

On Wednesday, responding to the EAC's recommendation that HS2 compensation should bring benefits to local people disrupted by the railway, the NFU President said, "While we agree this should be the case, we want to see HS2 looking for the best place to develop new habitats and not simply try and replace lost habitats along the HS2 route. It is critical that Government strikes an appropriate balance between what is best for nature and what is best for those affected."

Mr Raymond added, "Since the beginning of this process we have argued that these proposals have failed to take into consideration the very real impacts the development of HS2 will have on those agricultural businesses affected.  While the report said that better safeguards were needed for ancient woodland and wildlife habitats, for example, we have urged them to consider safeguards for productive 'food-producing' land so that it is not taken out of farming to create new woodlands and grassy areas especially given the amount of farmland which could already be lost to create the line itself."