BORIS: NORTH WILL GET HS2
PM says Britain must have the ‘vision to dream big dreams’
BORIS Johnson vowed to knock years off plans for highspeed rail to reach the North of England as he gave HS2 the green light yesterday.
The Prime Minister said despite bad management and ‘exploding costs’ that have spiralled to £106 billion, the ‘fundamental benefits’ of the scheme remained.
Works will start within weeks on the first stretch of the line between London and Birmingham, with a second phase going to Manchester and Leeds.
Mr Johnson pledged to ‘restore discipline to the programme’, with a dedicated minister tasked with preventing ‘further blowouts’ on budget and schedule.
In a bid to reward voters in the North of England who backed the Tories for the first time in December, he promised to accelerate a timetable that would see high-speed lines to Manchester and Leeds open by 2040.
The Prime Minister said that ‘condemning the North to get nothing for 20 years’ would be ‘intolerable’.
A High Speed North review will be ordered in days to look into how the northern section of HS2 could be integrated with Northern Powerhouse Rail, a proposed East to West link joining Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle.
A Whitehall source said: ‘The PM is clear he wants it to be quicker. He wants to see benefits in the North well before the mid-2030s.’ Speaking in the Commons shortly after the Cabinet signed off on HS2, Mr Johnson it was the start of a ‘revolution’ for the country’s public transport.
After years of dithering, he said his Government had ‘the guts to take a decision – no matter how difficult and controversial – that will deliver prosperity to every part of the country’.
He added that it was ‘a sign to the world that in the 21st century, this United Kingdom still has the vision to dream big dreams and the courage to bring those dreams about’.
Mr Johnson dismissed calls for the vast budget to be spent instead on local transport projects across the country.
‘Yes, we must fix the joint between the knee bone and the thigh bone and the shin bone and the ankle bone and, yes, we must fix the arthritis in the fingers and the toes, but we also have to fix the spine,’ he said.
The Prime Minister also insisted the scheme would not stop other rail improvements going forward. He said: ‘With many in the North crying out for better East/West links instead of improved North/South ones, some have suggested delaying or even cancelling HS2 in order to get Northern Powerhouse Rail done more quickly.
‘But I want to say this is not an either/or proposition. Both are needed, and both will be built – as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.’
Mr Johnson said a new HS2 minister would be appointed, along with a ministerial oversight group.
HS2 Ltd, the heavily criticised company set up to run the scheme, will be stripped of the ‘grossly behind schedule’ redevelopment of Euston station and the second phase of the line. Mr Johnson told MPs: ‘I cannot say that HS2 Ltd has distinguished itself in the handling of local communities. As everybody knows, the cost forecasts have exploded, but poor management to date has not detracted in my view from the fundamental value of the project.’
The Prime Minister’s announcement follows the completion of a Government-commissioned review by former HS2 Ltd chairman Douglas Oakervee into whether the programme should be scrapped.
The Oakervee Review recommended that ministers proceed with the project, but warned that the final bill could reach £106 billion, compared with a budget of £62.4 billion.
It suggested that the number of trains per hour should be reduced from 18 to 14 to cut costs.
Trains will operate at up to 225mph, reducing the journey time between Birmingham and London from 1hr 22mins to 45 minutes.
Passengers arriving at Birmingham airport will be able to get to central London in just 38 minutes.
Yesterday there was muted opposition to HS2 on the Tory backbenches as MPs seemed resigned to the project going ahead.
But Andrew Bridgen, the Tory MP for North West Leicestershire, said: ‘HS2 is unloved, unwanted and has been grossly mismanaged.’ He warned the Prime Minister that it ‘could well be an albatross around this Government and the country’s neck moving forward’.
Tory former minister Robert Goodwill suggested that Old Oak Common, the railway station in West London that will act as the HS2 terminus for the first few years, should be named after Margaret Thatcher, which Mr Johnson praised as a ‘brilliant idea’.
Work on Phase 1 of HS2, the route between London and Birmingham, will start in April. The first trains are expected to start running between Old Oak Common and Birmingham from between 2029 and 2031.
‘The guts to take a decision’
In the debate over any major infrastructure project, there comes a time when all arguments are spent and a final decision has to be taken.
The line of least resistance is generally to defer and stick with some lightly amended version of the status quo.
But if the proposal could be transformative for the country and change lives for the better, the hard choice must be made. Such is the nature of leadership.
Boris Johnson’s announcement yesterday that he will press ahead with HS2 in the teeth of opposition from both inside and outside his own party was a bold statement of purpose.
He intends for the first zero-carbon trains to be running between London and Birmingham by the end of the decade, by which time the second and third phases to Manchester and Leeds should be well under way. In short, he wants to get HS2 done. Full speed ahead!
Let’s be clear. The Mail has many reservations about this scheme.
We have been appalled by the spiralling cost (£100billion and rising). and we have questioned whether that money could be better spent improving existing transport infrastructure.
But we can understand Mr Johnson’s motivation.
His whole election pitch was that he would ‘boosterise’ the nation – especially its left-behind towns and cities.
He would end the dither and delay, ‘unite and level up’, get all of Britain connected and on the move.
If he had scrapped or downgraded HS2, his term of office would have begun with a massive climbdown.
His new friends behind Labour’s erstwhile ‘red wall’ would have felt betrayed and his whole One nation message undermined. Politically, he had to press ahead. Boris is on a mission. He promises nothing less than national renewal, and that will not be achieved with faint heart.
allowing Huawei to work on the 5G network showed his intent. Yes, it is fraught with risk, but it’s the quickest way to achieve the 21st-century connectivity this country so desperately needs.
There are other big decisions in the pipeline, most imminently on the Heathrow extension and the planned Sizewell C nuclear power station.
Will he similarly defy the doubters on those controversial projects? It would be a brave punter who bets against it.
In Mr Johnson’s favour, he could argue that while all big transport projects attract criticism, it’s often forgotten when they are up and running.
Started under a Conservative government and fully opened by Margaret Thatcher in 1986, the M25 was bitterly opposed by local protesters throughout its construction.
By the general election of 1987 – just a year after completion – it was so popular that every single constituency on its 117-mile route voted Tory.
There’s no doubt that Boris is a man who loves grand projects. But he will be judged on results, not rhetoric.