Here is the text of Sarah’s letter to the Financial Times…..

The failure of HS2 is the project that should make our entire Government reach for the Kleenex

HS2 was due to open next year, having cost £37.5 billion. The fact that not a centimetre of track has yet been laid and that the budget and construction dates are currently incalculable comes as no surprise to a jaded and sceptical electorate.  

Mark Wild, HS2 Ltd CEO, reckons that the bottom line is that £26bn is already spent “and we’re just over halfway done … Between 50% and 100% is the likely overspend.”

Back in October 2023, when Rishi Sunak announced the cancellation of HS2, it seemed as though the flawed project had finally been cauterised. But HS2 was always covered with Teflon and because it was only partially cancelled, Phase 1 – the bit between Wormwood Scrubs and Birmingham – is still siphoning taxpayers’ money while its construction limps along. Now, however, the sunk cost is hidden between the government’s careful presentation of largesse to defence, the NHS and public investment. In the spending review, HS2 merited a notional reference about an allocation of £25.3bn ‘to address longstanding delivery challenges’ for HS2. Do let that sink in: almost a quarter of the government’s ENTIRE investment budget of £113bn barely warrants a mention. HS2 is so tainted that Chancellor Rachel Reeves could neither brag about nor justify this gargantuan waste of public money.

If Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, really believes that it is only going to be a matter of months before she can confirm an updated schedule for completion or even costs for the project, she is as deluded as every other transport secretary who has taken on the poisoned chalice of this project. Philip Hammond, Justine Greening, Patrick McLoughlin, Chris Grayling, Grant Shapps, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Mark Harper and Louise Haigh join Ms Alexander in the roll call of Transport Secretaries who have been responsible for HS2 since its launch. If we are looking to appoint blame, let’s start with them. Feel free to add the various HS2 executives who have been amongst the highest paid public servants in UK.

Mercifully we are now long past the hubris and hype of boasting about  ‘Europe’s biggest rail project’. Instead, we are trying to bury this dysfunctional national embarrassment. It is the perfect metaphor for all that is wrong with UK PLC: farcical plans, scattergun objectives, open chequebooks, revolving doors, incompetence, inept management. tainted partnerships and, probably, outright fraud.

Spare voters the usual rhetoric about ‘getting a grip’ and ‘learning lessons’ because, frankly, it falls on hollow ears. And don’t try to pin this shambles onto protesters and NIMBYs. The blame for this catastrophe certainly doesn’t lie with those who campaigned against the project. Groups such as ours (Mid Cheshire against HS2) worked tirelessly – and unpaid – to inform policy maker muppets of the folly of trying to build an ultra-high speed railway on this a small island with challenging geology, with faster and more frequent trains than anywhere else in the world. Anything is possible, but only if money is no object. And that’s never the case, even though HS2 comes close.

HS2 is an indictment of the country’s current approach to major infrastructure projects. It represents a monumental failure to articulate a problem (capacity, local infrastructure and better Northern connectivity) and conflate it with speed, vanity, and London-centric links.

Reeves and Starmer bottled it. They could have scrapped the entire thing and switched focus to repurposing the enabling works done thus far in favour of recouping costs for the taxpayer. Now is the time to sell HS2 land. Sell or make available the 27% of the HS2 property portfolio that lies empty. Drop the safeguarding. Come clean about the true costs, accept that billions have been blown and concentrate on not blowing a penny more by putting the money to better use on other, viable infrastructure. Overhaul the relationship between the Department for Transport, HS2 Ltd, procurement systems and contractor relationships. For good measure, spare us any iteration along the lines of HS2 Lite or NPR by any means.

All we want is to be shown that ‘lessons have been learned’. Draw a line in the sand and cancel HS2 completely right now. Don’t say we didn’t tell you it would all work out like this.  – call it schadenfreude.

Yours,

Sarah Flannery

Mid Cheshire Against HS2