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The high-speed rail network HS2 cannot be delivered on its current schedule and budget and will be delayed beyond 2033, the government has admitted, blaming mismanagement by the previous Conservative administration for schedule and cost overruns.
The transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, told MPs there was “no reasonable way to deliver” on the 2033 target for the first trains to run between London and Birmingham.
She did not immediately confirm an updated cost for the project, which some suggest will now top £100bn at current prices, having officially been put in a range of up to £57bn at 2019 prices, nor yet how long the delay would be.
But Alexander said she was “drawing a line in the sand”, detailing what she called a “litany of failure” over the past 15 years. The Labour government is publishing the findings of a review that the party commissioned last autumn into the troubled transport scheme, and the first assessment in a “reset” of construction under the new HS2 Ltd chief executive, Mark Wild.
Wild has told Alexander that the current schedule, scope and budget cannot be met, but is understood not to have finalised a new timeline or ascertained total costs.
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 trust and build this line.”
She told MPs that the 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.
“Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been wasted by constant scope changes, ineffective contracts and bad management,” Alexander told the Commons “It’s an appalling mess. But it’s one we will sort out.”
The review by James Stewart has examined what went wrong and what it can teach ministers about how to run future infrastructure projects, while Wild continues to examine how and when to construct the rest of the phase-one line from London to Birmingham.
Alexander told MPs that among the mistakes made by the previous government was the decision to sign a series of construction contracts despite having been advised by a review in 2020 not to do so until the scope of the project had been fully decided.
She said there had not been sufficient ministerial oversight, adding: “There have been too many dark corners for failure to hide in.”
She revealed that the cost of commissioning two sets of designs for a new station at Euston, both rejected, had now totalled more than £250m.
The problems identified in the reports go beyond the escalating costs of tunnelling and environmental mitigations such as the £100m bat tunnel, which has been singled out for criticism by Keir Starmer.
Phase one of the HS2 scheme was projected in 2012 to cost £20bn, but more recent estimates now put that figure at as much as £57bn. Wild’s review, according to sources quoted by the rail expert Christian Wolmar, could lead to the full budget being restated at current prices at more than £100bn.
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Soon after the northern arm was axed, Rishi Sunak, the then prime minister, announced a Euston ministerial taskforce to oversee improvements to the station. That committee was due to include ministers from the Treasury, and the transport and levelling up departments. Alexander said: “Unbelievably, that taskforce never met.”
She said there would be a “new era of leadership” to get the project back on track, including the appointment of Mike Brown, a former commissioner of Transport for London, as the new chair of HS2 Ltd.
Alexander worked with Brown and Wild when she was deputy mayor of London. Wild carried out a similar role to his current one when he worked with TfL on the Elizabeth line, eventually delivering it successfully within a revised timescale and budget.
Alexander told MPs: “Mark and Mike were part of a team with me that turned Crossrail into the Elizabeth line. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again.”
However, it is likely to mean HS2’s full opening, even on the reduced scale, is pushed back for two years or more.
Responding to questions, Alexander told MPs: “It will be a number of months before I am in a position to confirm with any certainty the schedule and estimated final costs.”
