HS2 will now cost £88bn... and won’t arrive until 2031
PM urged to scrap ‘white elephant’ as bombshell report reveals:
FURIOUS Tory MPs urged Boris Johnson to scrap the HS2 ‘white elephant’ last night after it emerged it is running up to £32billion over budget – and seven years late.
Amid growing speculation about the soaring costs of the high-speed rail link, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps published a searing assessment by HS2 Ltd’s new chairman, Allan Cook.
The report – slipped out on a tumultuous day in Westminster – concluded that both the budget for HS2 and timetable for building it were ‘unrealistic’ from the start. Mr Cook said he did not believe the new line could be delivered within its official £55.7 billion budget, which is based on 2015 prices. He predicted the true cost was likely to range between £72 billion and £78billion, again based on 2015 prices.
Telling MPs he wanted to provide them with the ‘full picture’, Mr Shapps said this was equivalent to between £81billion and £88 billion when adjusted for inflation. The original budget for the rail line when work began a decade ago was £33 billion.
Mr Cook also said the timetable for delivering HS2 was also not ‘realistic’. He predicted that the entire line connecting London with Birmingham and onward to northern cities including Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield may not be fully completed until 2040 – seven years later than scheduled.
And he recommended an opening date of between 2028 to 2031 for phase one between London and Birmingham, up to five years after the planned 2026 opening date.
Mr Cook was adamant that ‘HS2 remains the right strategic answer to join up Britain more effectively to meet the transport needs of the 21st century’, and said the ‘transformational benefits it will deliver for the country’ had been underestimated when the project was conceived.
But he said the original plans did not take ‘sufficient account’ of building a high-speed railway through a ‘more densely populated country with a more difficult topography than elsewhere’.
In a written statement to the Commons, Mr Shapps hinted that
‘The final nail in the coffin’
HS2 could be cancelled. He said while he and the Prime Minister supported transport investment, they had been clear that the ‘benefits of big infrastructure projects must stack up’.
He added: ‘I want the House to have the full picture. There is no future in obscuring the true costs of a large infrastructure project – as well as the potential benefits.’
Last night, one Tory MP said the latest report was the ‘final nail in the coffin’ for HS2, while Labour claimed that successive ministers had ‘misled Parliament and the public’ about its costs.
Former Cabinet minister David Davies, the Tory MP for Haltemprice and Howden in East Yorkshire, said: ‘These latest findings reinforce the fact that this project needs to be cancelled as soon as possible.’ Sir Bill Cash, the Tory MP for Stone in Staffordshire, added: ‘HS2 must be stopped. We need to scrap it and save an enormous amount of money.’
Andrew Bridgen, Tory MP for North West Leicestershire, said: ‘If this government were to act in the national interests, this would be the final nail in the coffin for this white elephant project which is growing ever larger on taxpayers’ money.’
But business leaders continued to back the high-speed rail link.
Confederation of British Industry spokesman Tom Thackray said the problems were ‘disappointing’ but insisted it ‘promises to bring huge economic benefits’.
He added: ‘The message from business on the project remains consistent – build it, back it, benefit from it.’ An independent review launched by Mr Johnson will determine whether HS2 should go ahead or whether it should be scaled back. It will publish its recommendations later this autumn.