HS2: Transport secretary confirms two-year delay after ‘shambolic mess’

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander has confirmed that HS2 will be delayed by at least two years, slamming previous handling of the project as an “appalling” and “shambolic mess”. 

The embattled high-speed rail link will be pushed back beyond 2033 following a “litany of failures” outlined in two reports by HS2 boss Mark Wild and KPMG’s former infrastructure chair, James Stewart.

In a statement to parliament on Wednesday, Alexander said there was “no reasonable way to deliver” on the 2033 target for the first trains to run between London and Birmingham.

She added that claims taxpayers had been defrauded by members of the supply chain needed “to be investigated rapidly and vigorously” and that consequences would be “felt by all involved.”

The cost of building HS2 has risen by more than £37bn since 2012, with some estimates now placing the total higher than £100bn.

MPs on the Public Accounts Committee concluded earlier this year it was a “casebook example of how not to run a project” and a risk to the UK’s reputation.

Alexander said Wild’s report “lays bare the shocking mismanagement of the project under previous governments.” It found initial cost and schedule estimates were too “optimistic,” while construction commenced too soon.

Responding to the latest revelations, opposition parties launched withering broadsides against years of Conservative mismanagement.

Shadow transport secretary Gareth Bacon conceded that “mistakes were made,” adding: “It has long been apparent that HS2 was not going to plan”. 

He said he would not pretend that the Network North plan – a sweeping regional transport scheme introduced by former PM Rishi Sunak after the cancellation of the northern leg – was anything other than “a product of mistakes we made in the handling of HS2.”

Lib Dem transport spokesperson Paul Kohler accused previous Tory ministers of being “comatose at the wheel.”

“Connecting our largest cities with high speed rail was meant to help boost economic growth and spread opportunity.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called for the project to be cancelled altogether, insisting: “Surely the time has come to scrap the entirety of the project and recognise we’ve got it wrong.” 

Alexander doubles down on Euston 

In her speech on Wednesday, the transport secretary also took aim at the previous government’s approach to the Euston section of the rail link.

Work on HS2’s central London terminus was put on hold in March 2023 and it is in a race to secure private investment.

“The previous government commissioned a Euston ministerial taskforce. Unbelievably, the taskforce never met,” Alexander told the Commons.

While she reinforced the government’s commitment to Euston, Stewart’s review on Wednesday cautioned that a final plan had yet to materialise.