Claims of HS2 never reaching city ‘are nonsense’
THE DEPARTMENT for Transport has hit back at claims that HS2 may never reach Yorkshire as a rail union today renewed its calls for an end to privatisation of the industry. According to the Sunday Telegraph, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling had said that the second phase of the high-speed line was “not in the bag”. Due to begin construction in 2024, this part of the controversial rail route would allow HS2 services to continue on from Birmingham to Leeds.
The newspaper said his comments to rail industry figures represented a “major departure” from the Government’s previous insistence that construction would proceed as planned, despite mounting questions about its costs and value for money.
But a DfT spokesman yesterday said: “The Sunday Telegraph story is absolute nonsense. It takes statements out of context that were made at an event several weeks ago not attended by the newspaper. It is completely and utterly untrue to suggest the Transport Secretary does not think HS2 will be completed – as we would have made clear to the
Sunday Telegraph had the paper contacted the DfT for comment.”
Meanwhile, the country’s biggest rail workers’ union will stage a protest today to mark the 25th anniversary of rail privatisation and call for a return to public ownership of the railways.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union will launch a fresh drive to end the “privatised rip-off ”, saying it has left passengers paying the highest fares in Europe to travel on overcrowded, unreliable services.
Speaking ahead of the protest in Westminster, the RMT’s General Secretary Mick Cash said: “We now have the ludicrous situation where the vast majority of our railways are in foreign state ownership with the profits they are racking up siphoned overseas to subsidise their own domestic rail operations. Meanwhile, the British people are being bled dry, paying the highest fares in Europe to travel on rammed out, extortionate and unreliable trains.
“We demand the repeal of the 1993 Act and the end of the Great British Rail Rip-Off.”
Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald said it was clear rail privatisation had been a “catastrophic failure”, adding that Labour would take the railways into public ownership to improve services and cap fares.