UK transport secretary calls HS2 an ‘appalling mess’ as she confirms delay – business live | Business

HS2 project delayed beyond 2033, as minister attacks ‘appalling mess’

Gwyn Topham

Here’s more detail from our transport correspondent Gwyn Topham:

The HS2 high-speed rail network cannot be delivered on its current schedule and budget and will be delayed beyond 2033, the government has admitted, blaming mismanagement by the previous government for schedule and cost overruns.

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs that there was “no reasonable way to deliver” the 2033 target for the first trains to run from London to Birmingham.

She did not immediately confirm a new price for the project, which some suggest will now top £100bn at current prices, having officially been in a range of up to £57b n at 2019 prices, nor yet how long the delay would be.

But Alexander said she was “drawing a line in the sand” as she unveiled what she called a “litany of failure” over the last 15 years. The government is publishing the findings of a review commissioned last autumn by Labour into the troubled transport scheme, and the first assessment in a “reset” of construction under new HS2 Ltd chief executive Mark Wild.

Alexander said Wild had been told to build the line as safely and cheaply as possible, even if took longer.

She said:

We won’t reinstate cancelled sections we can’t afford. But we will do the hard and necessary wok to regain public traust and build this line.

She told MPs that last government mismanaged HS2 in numerous ways, including signing contracts against advice and repeatedly changing plans for redesigning London Euston station – now at a total cost of £250m in rejected design plans alone, she said. Alexander told the Commons:

Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been wasted by constant scope changes, ineffective contracts and bad management. It’s an appalling mess. But it’s one we will sort out.

We need to set targets which we can confidently deliver, that the public can trust, and that will take time. But rest assured, where there are inefficiencies, we will root them out.