A Labour front bencher has said the party can’t commit to plans to building HS2 amid speculation that the high-speed rail project could be trimmed over spiralling costs.
It comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak defended the government’s decision to reconsider the biggest infrastructure project in the UK, rejecting claims that it made the country a “laughing stock.”
HS2, which was designed to connect London, the Midlands, and the north of England and bridge the economic divide between the North and the South of England, was proposed by the Labour government in 2009 and backed by successive Conservative governments since 2010. The constriction formally began in 2020.
In 2013, the three-phase project was estimated to cost £37.5 billion in 2009 prices but the sums have continued to spiral.
The prime minister on Sunday declined to say whether HS2 will ever reach Manchester.
During a visit to the Burnley Boys and Girls Club, Mr. Sunak told broadcasters: “We’ve got spades in the ground on HS2 and we’re cracking on with delivering it.”
He highlighted a levelling up fund for 55 towns, saying: “It’s not just about our big cities, more people live in towns than big cities and we want to back them with long-term funding which we’re going to put the local people in control of.”
Asked if his failure to announce a decision on the future of HS2 is making the UK a “laughing stock” as , the prime minister told the BBC’s “Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg” programme, “I’d completely reject that.”
Mr. Sunak said he speaks to business leaders around the world all the time and “they’re excited about the opportunity that investing in Britain offers.”
Labour, which endeavours to oust the Tories in the next general election, wants to build HS2 but can’t commit to the plan either, according to shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray.
“It’s quite clear we want the HS2 line delivered, it doesn’t go into London at the moment and it doesn’t go into the North,” he told Sky News’s “Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips” programme.
“If the government blows a hole in the HS2 programme, we’re going to have to assess what it’s like at the next election, that’s a perfectly sensible thing to do, we want it to happen, we want the line to be completed, that’s the right thing to do for the North of England,” he said.
“But in actual fact, we can’t really commit given that the government won’t tell us the numbers, they won’t give us a commitment to whether or not they will deliver it, and at this moment in time, we wouldn’t know at the next election what that hole in that HS2 project would look like.
“We can’t tell you because the government can’t tell us,” he said.
Speaking at a Conservative conference fringe event hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies, Levelling up Secretary Michael Gove said Mr. Sunak will provide an update on HS2 “in due course.”
“Everyone will try and tease out of us more than that,” he said. “But in this conference, we will be clear that every transport project has to be scrutinised for value for money.
“If you are thinking about transport overall, yes North-South things are important. But so also are East-West,” he said, adding that transport within city regions is also important.
The estimated total cost, not including the eastern leg of phrase 2b, was between £55 billion and £74 billion in 2019 prices.
