High Speed Rail - 'How Much'?' asks MP Dan

The Member of Parliament for North Warwickshire has added his voice to those who are questioning the affordability of plans to construct a High Speed Rail network linking London to Birmingham and beyond. The route as it currently stands would cause significant blight to the villages of Gilson, Water Orton, Coleshill and Middleton.

Dan Byles MP has written to Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who is responsible for seeking savings in Government expenditure as a result of the record budget deficit. He has recommended that the HS2 project be cancelled in order to save money.

In his letter to the Treasury, dated 14 September, Dan Byles says:

“I am writing to you in the context of the ongoing review of Government spending commitments, as a result of the record peacetime deficit inherited from the previous Government.

“I recognise that reducing the deficit is the most urgent issue facing the UK today. I accept that the longer we delay in tackling the deficit, the greater the risk of a loss of market confidence leading higher interests rates, which would stifle the recovery and make the challenges ahead even harder.

“I therefore urge the Treasury to consider whether the nation can truly afford the financial commitment required to construct a new High Speed Rail Line from London to Birmingham and beyond. The cost of this has been estimated in the tens of billions. Given the past record of large scale Government construction projects, I would suggest that this may be an underestimate.

“The proposed route for HS2 takes it through a number of villages in my constituency such as Gilson and Water Orton, and very close to Coleshill and Middleton. Local people in this area are already weary with bearing more than their fair share of the burden of past national transport infrastructure projects such as the M42 and the M6 toll road. The environmental damage to the area if the HS2 scheme goes ahead, and the years of blight that will be suffered by local people, will be considerable.

“The current HS2 scheme as it is proposed will not link central Birmingham directly with central London. With the expected improvements to the speed of the existing Virgin Pendolino service, it is likely that to travel from city centre to city centre will actually be faster using the existing system than using the HS2 service.

“As a Government we are committed to making tough decisions in the face of the economic crisis we inherited. I therefore hope that you will give serious consideration to at least a significant rethink of the HS2 project, or potentially to cancelling it altogether. At a stroke this would save tens of billions of pounds of future Government spending.”

Speaking afterwards, Dan said:

“The Treasury is looking for significant savings as a result of the economic mess we inherited from the previous Government. It seems to me logical for a very expensive construction project such as this to be looked at closely, to see whether scrapping it might save several tens of billions of pounds that we simply can’t afford.”