HS2 must be built despite change in travel habits, insists Shapps

THERE is “no doubt whatsoever” that major projects such as the High Speed Two rail line should continue despite the reduction in travel caused by the coronavirus pandemic, transport secretary Grant Shapps has insisted.

He said the HS2 line linking Birmingham with London, Manchester, the East Midlands and Yorkshire would be used for decades and possibly centuries to come, while the damage to the economy caused by Covid would be temporary.

And Mr Shapps insisted that video-conferencing, which has become common practice for many people and organisations, would never replace face-to-face contact.

Speaking to the Commons Transport Committee, he said the West Coast Main Line, the existing line between London, Birmingham and

Manchester, had been built in 1837 and was still in use today.

Mr Shapps said: “If you think about other railway lines that were built 150 years ago, the West Coast, East coast rail lines, not two world wars, recessions and depressions, not Spanish flu, none of these things stopped the inexorable growth in the need for people and goods to travel.

“The need for the projects themselves, because they are so long term – we are talking about the next 100, 200 years – I think that is unequivocal.

“When we stand back over the decades and look at this, we will still be very pleased – as we are very pleased that the Victorians bothered to build the infrastructure for us – that we built it not just for ourselves but for future generations.”

Mr Shapps said it was true that people were currently travelling less than they used to.

But he said he had “absolutely no doubt whatsoever” that demand for rail services would increase in the long term, adding: “Apart from anything else we all know that being behind a video screen is a poor substitute for actually meeting people.”

The Transport Secretary said: “Unless the Department for Transport invents teleportation technology in the next few years, people are going to want to meet people, and I don’t think that will change.”

Rail services were also used to transport goods, he added.

And he made it clear construction of HS2 would continue, saying not only that work on phase 1 was under way – the section between Birmingham and London – but that future phases were also being built.