Revolt looms as HS2 costs escalate

Audit office report claims ministers underestimated the complexity of project as Tory opposition grows

HS2 is over budget and years behind schedule because ministers “underestimated the complexity” of the project, a damning official report says today.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said the Government did not “adequately manage risks to taxpayers’ money” and failed to “take into account” the sheer scale of the railway.

HS2, originally priced at £36billion, is now forecast to cost £106billion – but the NAO warned that it is impossible to “estimate with certainty what the final cost could be”.

The report comes amid mounting pressure on Boris Johnson to scrap the project, which has considerable opposition within his own party.

Last night 13 Tory MPS – including several who helped break down Labour’s “red wall” by winning seats in the North and the Midlands – appeared in a video posted on Youtube imploring the Prime Minister to rethink HS2 and spend money on improving local railway lines, roads and rural bus services nationwide.

They included Dehenna Davison, the first ever Tory MP for Bishop Auckland, who said “we don’t really need HS2 but we’ll all be paying for it”, and Mark Fletcher, who deposed Dennis Skinner in Bolsover, Derbyshire, who said HS2 would have “a devastating impact on my constituency”.

Tory MP Victoria Prentis, who chairs the HS2 Review Group of MPS, said the NAO report was “incredibly damning” and hoped that it would make Mr Johnson think twice on whether to press ahead with the project.

She said: “I do hope this puts more pressure on the Government to act. We can’t go on throwing money and resources at this project.”

Yesterday, in a debate on HS2 in the House of Lords, the Conservative former Cabinet minister Lord Forsyth called for a major rethink of the scheme to ensure it did not “entrench the uneven economic divide between north and south that already exists”.

The NAO suggested the first phase of HS2 – between London and Birmingham – will be delayed beyond the current opening date of 2033 unless work begins by March.

It said the government-owned HS2

Ltd made assumptions about unpredictable elements such as ground conditions without undertaking detailed surveys.

HS2 Ltd and the Department for Transport set targets based on other infrastructure projects and found the project to be “more challenging” than anticipated because “the UK’S high population density means a large number of roads, utility pipes and cables must be moved”, the report says.

Mr Johnson is expected to make a final decision next month on whether to go ahead with the 335-mile network – either wholly or in part – and faces a back-bench rebellion on the issue, with one MP suggesting “well over half ” of his party want it axed.

Mrs Prentis and 14 fellow objectors will meet with Mr Johnson in the coming days to discuss the project, and she said she would urge him not “to let the mess of HS2 be your legacy”.

The audit office report urged the Government and HS2 Ltd to be “transparent

and provide realistic assessments” in relation to the high-speed railway, which was proposed by Gordon Brown’s Labour government in 2009 and given the green light under David Cameron.

Senior Whitehall sources yesterday reiterated that the Prime Minister is “pro-infrastructure and pro the North”.

However, long-standing HS2 critic Dame Cheryl Gillan said the NAO report was a terrible indictment of the project.

“The risks are really high and I don’t think it is in the people’s priorities to let this go ahead,” she said.

The MP for Chesham and Amersham pointed to the huge costs involved, and said the amount could buy well over 200 new hospitals. She said the “real price” of HS2 was now more than £160million for each constituency.

Dame Cheryl added that Mr Johnson should try to find a more “meaningful and rapid” way to pay back Conservative voters in the North.