‘Catastrophic’ if the East Midlands doesn’t get HS2
HS2 supporters and opponents believe the line’s eastern leg could still terminate near East Midlands Airport despite spiralling costs and a Whitehall leak suggesting the whole eastern section will be axed.
Work is under way on the first part of the high-speed railway – between London to Birmingham – but there are fresh concerns over the section joining Birmingham to Toton on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border, and on to Sheffield, then Leeds.
One Whitehall insider was reported as saying: “They have run out of cash. There’s no way we’re going to see this built in our lifetimes.”
The Government is reviewing the eastern leg, while a National Infrastructure Commission report at the end of last year suggested finishing the line at East Midlands Parkway – a few miles from the airport.
One supporter of HS2, who works in the industry, said cancelling the eastern route would be “catastrophic” as it could form the “backbone” of more localised infrastructure improvements.
But North West Leicestershire MP and long-time HS2 opponent Andrew Bridgen said there was no value in an eastern leg, with latest estimates suggesting the whole HS2 programme could cost more than £150 billion. The original budget was £32.7 billion.
He said the eastern leg would cut through his constituency, but would provide no local station and no local benefit.
He said an announcement could be made in September “at the earliest” but believed the leaked
Whitehall report was “credible” – cutting the eastern leg, he said, could save £40 billion.
The Tory MP said: “The eastern leg has been under threat for a long time and I’ve always said there will be no money left for it.
“If it is cancelled, and I hope it is, we need it fully cancelled, not just mothballed, because that would just leave us with the blight hanging over us.
“It has already held up hundreds of jobs in my constituency, and we need that blight lifting so that the land can be released for development, otherwise it’s the worst of both worlds.
“Toton was always a site agreed by committee between Nottingham and Derby – but East Midlands Parkway would made some sense because it’s equidistant between Nottingham, Derby and Leicester and is close to the M1, airport and on the Midland Mainline.
“I think the leaks from Whitehall are credible – there has been a delay in the final decision because they don’t know what to cut, and the fact it is taking longer for a decision to be made suggests to me a lot more will be cut.”
Mr Bridgen said rather than supporting the Government’s “levelling up” agenda, upgrading links to the capital via HS2 would drain money and talent from the regions.
He said: “About 90 per cent of my constituents don’t want it. It’s going to benefit a very few people who travel to London. And if it was there to level up the country they would have started it in the north. Instead the faster you can get to London, the more money it will end up sucking out of the Midlands. It had a very shaky business case to start with and post-Covid it has none.”
One industry insider, in an organisation that has been backing the eastern leg, said it was critical that some of the route goes through.
Even building it as far as East Midlands Parkway, they said, would provide the impetus for investment in links making it easier to travel between cities such as Leicester, Nottingham and Coventry.
They said: “The way it’s been reported suggests the whole eastern section is going to get scrapped, but I think there’s pretty much zero per cent of that happening. If the East Midlands doesn’t get HS2 it will be catastrophically terrible.”