HS2 £6bn over budget with work only 60% finished, MPs are told

HS2 construction contracts priced at £19.5bn have already cost £26bn despite being "just over halfway done", the boss of the high-speed rail project told MPs yesterday.

- Gwyn Topham Transport correspondent

Civil engineering to build tunnels and cuttings for the 100-mile line should have been almost finished but was closer to 60% complete, while only a third of the wider project - including laying track and wiring signals - was done, the transport select committee heard.

Mark Wild, the chief executive of HS2 Ltd, said that while budget estimates had suffered from "optimism bias", HS2 had "lost control of the programme". He told the committee the rush to start work in 2020 without balancing the risks in the contracts was the major reason for costs spiralling upwards.

Contracts were signed off in April 2020 and construction formally began five months later, before designs were finalised and local planning consents were in place, he said.