HS2 blew billions – here’s how and why

It’s been a long-term national infrastructure project in a short-term and highly volatile political cycle, one where politicians needed it to deliver personally for them.

David Cameron adopted HS2 because it supported his idea of a Northern Powerhouse.

For Boris Johnson, HS2 was about delivering on his promise of levelling up Britain after Brexit.

After his 2019 election success, the high-speed line became part of that agenda.

Former journalist Andrew Gilligan was Boris Johnson’s transport advisor.

“He’d scored a huge victory, on the basis of an awful lot of people who’d never voted Tory before in the north,” he says.

“He was concerned that if we cancelled HS2, it would harm his chances of re-election.”

Eventually political support for the original vision of HS2 crumbled.

The music didn’t so much stop for the line as fade out: the leg to Leeds was winnowed away and lost finally in 2021.

In 2023 then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak cut the leg between Birmingham and Manchester. All that was left was the line between Birmingham and suburban west London – for now, trains would terminate at Old Oak Common and not Euston in the centre of the capital because of a lack of cash.

HS2’s problems are very close to home for Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The Euston site is in his constituency.

The government’s last estimate of the overall cost for the remaining Birmingham to London stretch is between £45 and £54 billion.

But independent rail expert Michael Byng says it could go high as £87.8 billion.

That would mean taxpayers forking out more than double the original budget for half of the line that was promised.

Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, says it’s crucial we learn the lessons.

He says even after all the money that’s been spent the north is still short of capacity and needs a new line.

“The handling of HS2 should be like a morality tale in Whitehall. This was the worst example of utter waste of public money.”

Last week Mr Burnham was one of those unveiling plans for a new rail line linking the West Midlands and Greater Manchester, one that its backers say can be delivered at a fraction of the cost of the scrapped northern leg of HS2.

Labour’s new transport secretary Louise Haigh told me: “…the serious financial challenges we have inherited on this project have become apparent, and it’s dire.”

Some say, irrespective of the cost, in the end the nation will be grateful for HS2.

The argument goes that infrastructure projects often overspend, the focus should be on long-term benefits.

But few projects overspend on such a massive scale and deliver so much less than was promised.

When it opens – in about 10 years – that much-needed rail capacity between the south and Birmingham will have increased significantly.

But a journey on HS2 from Birmingham to London’s western suburbs and then into the centre of the capital will take about the same time as a train between Euston and Birmingham does now.

For that stretch of railway, High Speed 2 might be better named High Capacity 2.

Had that been the main aim from the start, a lot of cost and grief might have been avoided.