The UK has been turned into an international “laughing stock” over the failure to control the HS2 rail project, a minister acknowledged. Housing and planning minister Matthew Pennycook said there were “serious problems” with HS2 “in terms of accountability, project overruns, costs”.
He told LBC the way HS2 and other infrastructure projects had been handled “reflect very poorly on us” as a country. He said the Planning and Infrastructure Bill includes a number of changes that will “speed up the consenting process for nationally significant infrastructure” and this week’s infrastructure strategy “seeks to reverse the frankly erratic decisions and underinvestment we’ve seen over the past 14 years”.
“So we do need to learn the lessons, take a different approach, ensure that we’re getting infrastructure investment going in, certainty and stability about investment and getting to grip with project timelines and costs.
“Because I think, frankly, when it comes to HS2, in some ways, we’re a bit of a laughing stock around the world in terms of how we handle infrastructure. As a Government, we’re absolutely determined to turn that around.”
This comes after the Government is reportedly poised to announce yet another delay to the beleaguered project, with the London to Birmingham line no longer to be ready for launch by 2033.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is set to tell the Commons today that she is drawing a “line in the sand” over the rail project.
Lord Tony Berkeley branded the HS2 rail project “chaos” as he insisted it should be stopped. The Labour peer, who served as deputy chairman of a government review into HS2, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s chaos, and we haven’t been told anything about it.
“Rishi Sunak, after all, cancelled it 18 months ago. That was the previous government but everybody in HS2 seems to have ignored it and the Government’s ignored it by continuing to pour money down it when they should have stopped 18 months ago and they should still stop today.
“They’ve wasted billions already. I think that the first thing to do is to stop digging when you don’t know what you’re doing and where it’s going to end up, and I would put HS2 into administration. Let the administrators sort it out and then take a clear, simple look at what they want to achieve and get it done in a much more cost effective way.”