How funding for UK's largest transport project has gone completely off the rails

NOTHING symbolises the incompetence of the British state, the failings of our Civil Service and the complacency of politicians better than the disaster that is HS2.

- JONATHAN WALKER d. he Whitehall Editor

An exchange in a House of Commons committee room last December provided a vivid illustration.

Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown wanted to know how much the High Speed 2 rail line between London and Birmingham was going to cost.

There had been talk of £45billion, or maybe £57billion, or perhaps even £66billion. So what was the figure? It seemed a reasonable question. After all, construction began in 2019.

But Dame Bernadette Kelly, the most senior civil servant in the Department for Transport, made a startling admission.

She could not confirm a number - because nobody actually knew what the total sum would be.

In what passes for a grovelling apology from a Whitehall mandarin, she told the MP: "I am afraid that I have to report that we do not have such an estimate." Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has since confirmed that we will not know "how much HS2 will cost or when it will be delivered" until some time in 2026.

But the great tragedy of HS2 is that its most fervent critics are wrong.

They have called it a white elephant or a vanity project, but it is neither of those things. A major new rail line is urgently needed, including both "phase one" of HS2, linking Birmingham to London, and the doomed "phase two", connecting Birmingham with Manchester and Leeds, which was cancelled in 2023.

Governments and think tanks have published numerous reports explaining why, but the explanation is simple. Existing rail lines, and the West Coast Main Line in particular, are full and cannot accommodate the number of train services the nation needs.

The West Coast Main Line runs between London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow. If you have heard of it, there is a good chance you associate it with long distance services between big cities, currently provided by train operator Avanti West Coast.