HS2 will join our nation back together

EVERY FEW months – and more often recently – comes the call to scrap HS2 and spend the money on something else.

And we’ve had it again last week from the editor of the influential ConservativeHome website, reiterating previous suggestions that the Midlands and the North would be better served by investment in regional transport links.

But however tempting it might be to spend the budget of a few billions per year on something else, there is little more the Government could do to jeopardise the economic prospects of cities like Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds than scrap a project which is so fundamental to their future economic development.

For the most important thing to understand about HS2 is that it is not just a railway. It is an economic regeneration project – and the most important economic regeneration project in Britain for decades – which is catalysing a whole host of other investments in its wake.

What holds Britain back today is not the connections from big cities to London, but poor connections between the other big cities. Services between cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle are slow, unreliable, and overcrowded – and HS2 is absolutely integral to tackling this.

In Leeds, you have major new investment from Burberry and a whole South Bank regeneration to which HS2 is intrinsic. There are similar stories in Manchester and Liverpool too. And then ask the city leaders, from all political parties, how important HS2 is to triggering that investment, and unanimously they will tell you it is vital.

HS2 is about giving our great cities of the Midlands and the North the springboard to be the economic powerhouses of the future. Put harshly, without HS2, Britain has no strategy to grow our regional economies and no industrial strategy worthy of the name.

For HS2 trains won’t just reach those cities where the new line is being built. They will link into the rest of the network too, meaning that the services will reach eight of the 10 biggest cities in Britain, including destinations like Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh that are far from the construction of the line itself.

That’s not to say the other transport investment people call for isn’t needed too. It is. And the Government is to be supported in the priority that it is attaching to the Northern Powerhouse Rail project to improve east/west links across the North. But far from being an alternative to local transport investment, HS2 is a pre-requisite for it to be successful.

To take one example, the West Coast Main Line is presently jam-packed. Passenger numbers on the route have more than doubled since it was last upgraded just 15 years ago, and there is simply no space to add new trains whether for commuters and inter-city travellers or for more freight off the motorways.

Building HS2 will move the intercity traffic onto the new line, freeing up capacity for vital local, regional, and commuter services, so passengers in places such as Milton Keynes and Coventry will benefit from HS2 as it will improve their commutes into London and Birmingham respectively.

More widely still, the benefit of HS2 supply chain contracts are already being felt across the UK. Already more than 2,000 companies have worked on HS2. There are archaeologists from Bristol, ecological experts from Cardiff, and earth-moving contractors from Buckinghamshire. HS2 is a truly national project with truly national benefits, and those benefits will only grow over the coming years.

For these businesses, the costs of cancelling HS2 right now would be enormous. Over 7,000 people are working on the project already, and that will become tens of thousands over the next couple of years, with 70 per cent of those jobs outside London. Cancelling it now would literally mean filling-in the freshly dug holes in Birmingham and Euston, and laying off all the apprentices working on site. Is that a serious proposition?

HS2 is about joining Britain back together again. It is essential for the UK, and even more vital still for the Midlands and the North which stand to gain the most.

The train has started its journey. Let’s makes sure it reaches its destination and that taxpayers wring every last ounce of benefit from it.