Civil servants cannot be relied upon to make necessary spending cuts
SIR – I am sure that your headline “New spending regime ‘will prevent repeat of HS2’” (report, August 23) accurately reflects the good intentions of the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak.
However, Mr Sunak’s ambitions will not be realised – no matter how many experts, internal or otherwise, are called upon – so long as the Civil Service is left to select these experts.
Having spent six years in the Scientific Civil Service and many more consulting for the Overseas Development Administration, I gained a view of its modus operandi. This was to agree to whatever was asked of it, but then pursue its own (generally Left-wing) agenda unhindered.
If that agenda includes continuing with HS2 (or if that scheme can be traded for another), then suitable experts will be selected to make sure that this is what happens.
Bruce Denness
Niton, Isle of Wight
SIR – Dr RG Beddows (Letters, August 23) has put it in a nutshell. HS2 should be scrapped. Instead, the Government should support existing railways, particularly at a local level.
Anne Ballantine
Morecambe, Lancashire
SIR – The Chancellor is to refer poorly thought-out projects to the Infrastructure and Projects Authority in a bid to eliminate the waste of public money.
One of the first referrals to the IPA should be Kent County Council’s proposed Thanet Parkway Station, the cost of which was initially put at £21million. That sum now stands at around £34million.
Thanet has about 141,000 residents and already has seven stations spread around the area. The economic case for this new development has simply not been made. It is clearly intended to be a commuter station – and yet it is to be built on the very edge of Thanet. Getting to it by car during peak traffic times will be time-consuming, and it will make no difference to the average journey time to London. The destruction of trees and habitat during development will be considerable – and given that it is to be an unmanned station, with awkward access on its south side, insufficient consideration has been given to the needs of disabled passengers.
Andrew Smith
Thanet, Kent
SIR – If Mr Sunak is looking for cost savings, a good first step would be to renege on the funding offered to local authorities to close roads and build cycle lanes. We now know that many of these ill thought-out schemes are being reversed (report, August 23), in anticipation of road traffic levels returning to normal in the autumn.
Local authorities are ultimately accountable to the residents and businesses affected by these changes. Councillors should be asked to justify why these experiments have been prioritised over long-standing and better-defined local needs.
David Warden
Coleford, Gloucestershire