Theresa May joins Johnson and Cameron in warning against HS2 cuts

 

Theresa May joins Johnson and Cameron in warning against HS2 cuts

 

Tory former leader criticises Rishi Sunak’s potential plans to scrap Manchester leg and change London terminus

 

Aubrey Allegretti Senior political correspondent

@breeallegretti

Sat 30 Sep 2023 13.28 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/30/transport-secretary-mark-harper-hs2-birmingham-manchester-leg

 

Theresa May has become the third Conservative former prime minister to criticise Rishi Sunak’s potential plans to scale back HS2.

 

As Tory MPs head to Manchester for their annual conference with the fate of the northern leg of the high-speed rail line hanging in the balance, May said it was vital to boost capacity on the west coast mainline.

 

She also hit out at plans for HS2 to stop at Old Oak Common in London, a station in construction several miles west of the originally planned central terminus of Euston.

 

Mark Harper, the transport secretary, refused to comment on Saturday on speculation about the future of the planned second phase of HS2 – connecting Birmingham to Manchester, via Crewe.

 

May joined Boris Johnson and David Cameron in warning against moves to pare back the project.

 

Asked on Saturday if HS2 should be scrapped, May said: “The answer is no.

 

“I will give you two comments on HS2. First of all, we have to think about why HS2 was designed in the first place.

 

“It was because there was a lack of capacity on the west coast mainline. So if there is a lack of capacity on the west coast mainline, we need more railway capacity to serve the north-west.

 

May, who is the MP for Maidenhead in Berkshire, told attendees at the Henley literary festival she had another issue with the mooted plans.

 

“If HS2 stops at Old Oak Common, it is going to make our railway journeys into London longer and disrupted potentially over the period that Old Oak Common’s building is being done to enable it to take that end point.

 

“So I am arguing with government: ‘Don’t stop at Old Oak Common. You need to take it into Euston because my constituents will be disadvantaged if you don’t.”

 

Johnson said in his Daily Mail column on Saturday that making further cuts to HS2 over cost concerns would be “desperate” and “Treasury-driven nonsense”, and that delaying or cutting phase two would be “betraying the north of the country”.

 

He added that ending the route at Old Oak Common would leave HS2 as a “white elephant” and “the vanity project to end all vanity projects”.

 

Cameron has reportedly raised concerns in private, with the Times quoting an ally who said the former prime minister believed it was “central to levelling up”.

 

Other senior Tories, including numerous former chancellors, have urged Sunak not to junk the Birmingham to Manchester leg of HS2. Jeremy Wright, the former attorney general, became the latest Conservative MP to join the fray on Saturday.

 

He said parliament would never have approved HS2 if the project had only been intended for 225mph (360km/h) trains to travel between the capital and Birmingham, saying the “strategic benefits just aren’t there” and that the “price of it would simply be too high”.

 

Wright’s Kenilworth and Southam constituency in Warwickshire has been affected by phase-one works to install the track for the route.

 

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that, with housing having been demolished and ancient forests ripped up to make way for HS2, his constituents wanted the benefits they were initially promised. “I want the government to finish the job,” he said.

 

A budget of £55.7bn was allocated in 2015 for the entire HS2 project, including the London to Birmingham route and branches from Birmingham to Manchester and to Leeds.

 

Sunak is said to have become alarmed by spiralling costs, with fears the budget could exceed £100bn – even with the Leeds element having been scrapped in 2021.

 

Harper refused to be drawn on “speculation in the media” about the line potentially stopping in the Midlands, during a round of broadcast interviews on Saturday.

 

“If the government has anything to say, we’ll say that in the usual way, in due course,” he said.

 

The prime minister dodged dozens of questions on the future of the second phase of HS2 during interviews this week, choosing instead to focus on his administration’s investment in road and bus travel.