The Spectator

It’s not too late to scrap HS2

(Photo: Getty)

There are government projects gone haywire – and then there’s HS2. The High Speed rail project should never have been given the nod in the first place. Costs spiralled out of control from the very beginning: it was estimated to cost £32.7 billion in 2012, now this is set to surpass £100 billion. The technology will be out of date before it even comes online. The government is right to ditch plans for an easterly arm of HS2 from Leeds to Birmingham. In contrast to the London to Birmingham section, no buildings have yet been flattened, no earth has been moved. Now is the chance to abandon it, before any more money and effort is spent.

But even with billions funnelled into the first leg of the journey, there’s still a strong case for scrapping the rail project completely. It is a scandal that successive governments have pressed ahead with the project, and even more scandalous that every leader has bought into the ‘sunk cost fallacy’, allowing wasted taxpayer money to justify wasting billions more.

The economic case – which was always weak – was further undermined by rising costs and the revelation that it was based on an assumption that passengers cannot work on trains; that every minute spent travelling is a wasted minute. Yet rather than order HS2 Ltd, the company set up to deliver the project, to get a grip on costs, prime ministers have bitten their tongues and waved the extravagance through.

Better still, take devolution policy a step further and empower more regions to offer lower taxes and business rates

By dropping the eastern arm of HS2 the government is not abandoning the ‘Red Wall’ seats which Boris Johnson won in the 2019 general election. HS2 never was meant as a regeneration project. On the contrary, the rail project was designed to link only relatively well-off places: the centres of Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham.

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