Minister to Criticise Tory Waste Over HS2

The Conservatives wasted billions of pounds on HS2 through poor management, badly negotiated contracts and constant design changes, the transport secretary will say today.

- Kiran Stacey Gwyn Topham

Heidi Alexander will tell MPs that the last government overspent on the high-speed rail line in multiple ways, including signing contracts even when advised not to and drawing up expensive plans for redesigning Euston station before scrapping them.

She will announce the findings of two reviews into the troubled project, even as ministers brace to swallow another increase in the projected price tag to a reported £100bn.

"Billions of pounds of taxpayers' money has been wasted by constant scope changes, ineffective contracts and bad management," Alexander will tell the House of Commons. "It's an appalling mess. But it's one we will sort out."

Plans to scrap the 2031 census in England and Wales are expected to be overturned after a backlash from senior statisticians over proposals to replace it with a patchwork of other data sources.

The UK government said in 2014 that its "ambition" was to abolish the mandatory national survey after 2021 and rely instead on piecing together "administrative data" collected by other bodies and surveys. Apart from a wartime gap in 1941, a census has been conducted every 10 years in Britain since 1801.