Several days ago someone in Downing Street leaked Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s news that the extension from Birmingham to Manchester of HS2, Britain’s massive high speed Rail project, was to be binned.

The news leak appeared in the media just days before the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, held between October 1 and 4, 2023.

The Guardian‘s live coverage from Wednesday, October 4, said (bold in the original):

Sunak confirms Manchester leg of HS2 being scrapped, with ‘every single penny’ from £36bn going on other transport projects

Sunak confirms he is scrapping the Manchester leg of HS2.

When the facts change, it is important to change policy.

He says this will free up £36bn – and every single penny will be spent on “hundreds of new transport projects in the north and the Midlands and across the country”.

The main reason is the outrageous cost overrun, but the Government has also claimed railway travel has changed since the pandemic.

Grant Shapps, the new Defence Secretary, said on Wednesday, October 4 that people were no longer taking the train that often because they were working from home.

However, statistics show that Britain’s rail travel is currently returning to pre-pandemic levels:

On Thursday, October 5, The Guardian reported that Labour would not be able to revive the project (purple emphases mine):

A future Labour government would not be able to easily reverse Rishi Sunak’s decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2 as he has “spitefully” authorised the sale of properties that were subject to compulsory purchase orders on part of the route.

Steve Rotheram, the mayor of the Liverpool city region, said the move killed HS2 “stone dead” and would “tie any future government’s hands and make the delivery of HS2 for the north all but impossible”.

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, on Thursday refused to commit to building HS2, telling ITV News Meridian: “What I can’t do is stand here now they have taken a wrecking ball to this project, and say that we will simply reverse it.

“What I will say is we will work with leaders across the country to make sure that we have the transport we need between our cities and within our cities and projects that can actually be delivered.”

Then there is the question of whether the line would begin at Euston Station in the centre of London rather than Old Oak Common on the outskirts of the capital:

The government failed to deny that HS2 would not be extended to Euston unless enough private investment was secured to pay for the new station.

“There is already support and interest from the private sector. Ministers have had discussions with key partners since the announcement,” a government spokesperson said.

Mark Harper, the transport secretary, also conceded on Thursday that paying off contracts previously awarded for the cancelled HS2 sections would cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

He told BBC Breakfast that the cost of pulling out of the agreements would “broadly balance out” with money recovered from selling land and property acquired for the high-speed railway.

The Government is planning to sell off the land that would have been part of the HS2 continuation:

National Labour proponents of HS2 were blindsided on Wednesday when the prime minister not only cancelled the Manchester leg but made it extremely difficult for the project to be restarted. “We expected him to kick it into the long grass,” said one party source. “We are now trying to understand where this leaves us. Selling off the land was unexpected.”

Gareth Dennis, a railway engineer and writer, said the decision to sell off the land was motivated by “spite” and was, in effect, “salting the earth” to make it extremely difficult for Labour to restart the project.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said that within “weeks” it would lift the so-called “safeguarding” order on phase 2a of the route, which would have run from Birmingham to Crewe in Cheshire. Safeguarding is the process HS2 Ltd and the government use to buy up land needed for the railway.

As of last week, HS2 Ltd had bought up 239 properties on phase 2a at a cost of £219.3m. “Any property that is no longer required for HS2 will be sold and a programme is being developed to do this,” said the DfT in its Network North prospectus, released on Wednesday.

“Phase 2a safeguarding will be formally lifted in weeks,” said the document.

However, the DfT confirmed on Thursday that safeguarding would remain for now on the Crewe to Manchester leg (phase 2b west) as well as the Birmingham to Leeds spur (phase 2b east), which was paused by the government in November 2021. “Phase 2b safeguarding will be amended by summer next year”, said the government, to retain any land needed for Northern Powerhouse Rail, a new east-west line across the Pennines.

Dennis said: … “What will happen now is essentially a fire sale. The land is not going to be returned to nature. It’s going to be developed on. That will make it much more expensive and much more complex should any future government want to build it.”

Rotheram said: “After weeks of uncertainty and confusion, Rishi Sunak’s lifting of the HS2 safeguarding order means that he has not only cancelled HS2 but he’s killed it stone dead. The consequences of this decision will tie any future government’s hands and make the delivery of HS2 for the north all but impossible.

“The Liverpool city region was set to benefit from a £15bn economic boost from the delivery of HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail in full. Almost overnight, the prime minister has robbed us of that chance to grow and develop our economy. He has turned the northern powerhouse into the northern powerless with this latest act of a long line of pronouncements that are holding the north down, not levelling us up.”

On Friday, October 6, The Guardian interviewed a farmer from Staffordshire who had sold his land to HS2 just days before Sunak’s announcement at the Conservative Party conference:

You might expect the farmer whose farm was going to be split in two by the second leg of HS2 to be jumping with joy at the news of its cancellation.

But Edward Cavenagh-Mainwaring’s land was bought through compulsory purchase by HS2 Ltd five days before Rishi Sunak’s announcement to scrap phase 2 of the high-speed line. He has lost a quarter of his Staffordshire dairy farm and fears he will never be able to buy it back.

“Am I jumping up and down? No I’m not,” said Cavenagh-Mainwaring. “I’ve gone through bereavement. I worked the land for the last time the day before they took it. I shed tears for it.

“I’ve lived in the shadow of HS2 for nearly 10 years. My time and mental health has been squandered on this project. I feel sorry for all the people who have suffered – selling their houses, watching woods being felled.”

Resigned to the arrival of bulldozers, and unable to witness the land his family had farmed for food and wildlife for decades trashed, Cavenagh-Mainwaring had made plans to move away, selling his dairy herd and renting out the remainder of his divided farm.

When plans were first revealed for the second leg from the West Midlands to Crewe and on to Manchester, Cavenagh-Mainwaring said he found HS2 “constructive”. They listened to his concerns and adjusted the height of a farm access tunnel under the planned embankment so it would fit farm machinery, for instance. “In the last two years, they’ve been a different animal … [They say] ‘This is what we’re doing.’”

Cavenagh-Mainwaring described his heartbreak, one of many stories about HS2’s destruction of nature and history:

When protesters took up residence in a nearby wood – which was not actually in the line of HS2 – HS2 sent in security. “It wasn’t just 10 or 20, but 200 security who looked like paramilitaries. They fenced in the protesters, and ambulances and climbing crews and diggers sat there waiting outside for about 30 days.”

HS2 also put security with dogs in Whitmore Wood, an ancient woodland that he owns, “and completely failed to ask us if this was OK,” he said.

Although construction work had not begun on the 2a section from the West Midlands to Crewe, HS2 had been undertaking advanced environmental mitigation works.

According to Cavenagh-Mainwaring, they took one of his best wildflower meadows, told him it was of low environmental value and sprayed swaths of it with weedkiller so they could build two ponds for great-crested newts. The meadow was on sandstone, one of the drier areas of the farm, and they had to bring in articulated lorry-loads of water on to the site to fill the ponds.

“I could have showed them where to put newt ponds – where there is low-lying land with water – but they never asked,” he said. “I find it extraordinary that I don’t think I’ve ever been asked for advice by them when I’ve spent my life farming the land here.

“I can’t describe the amount of wasted money that locals have to watch,” he said …

Cavenagh-Mainwaring received the first tranche of payment from HS2 last Friday for 105 hectares (260 acres), which it bought for the line and construction works. He is fighting for more, arguing that HS2 has valued the land too low and he would not be able to buy comparable acres in the area with the money.

If HS2 decides to sell the land again, he will be given first option to buy it back but that will be a struggle because he has to pay capital gains tax on the money he has received.

Cavenagh-Mainwaring also fears he will never be given that opportunity. “If we have this conversation in 10 years’ time, I think they will still own the land. This is one government shelving it – another may decide to build it again. I will be amazed if we get offered our land back. My legacy was soil and wildlife. HS2 own it now.”

HS2 was an EU project begun when the UK was still part of it. The EU’s objective was to have all member nations linked up for high speed rail travel. It has also been said that the EU wanted these rail networks built for national security reasons, i.e. rapid transport in case of war.

Costs out of control years ago

On January 31, 2020, after Boris Johnson won the December 2019 general election, he was interviewed by a schoolboy who asked him about the railway, the costs of which were already out of control at that stage.

Guido Fawkes has the story and the video (red emphases his):

The journalist who has managed to squeeze the biggest clue towards uncovering the Government’s HS2 decision is ten years-old Braydon Brent. In a sit down interview with the schoolboy, Boris said “in a hole the size of HS2, the only thing to do is keep digging.” Which isn’t quite the phrase…

The boy asked Boris to explain what HS2 is. Boris answered:

It’s a colossal railway line. Now the truth is, the people who did it spent far too much money, they were profligate with the way they did it. Do you know what I mean by profligate? They just wasted money. And the whole way it was managed was hopeless. So we’re in a hole. We’re in a mess. But we’ve got to get out of it and we need a way forward, so we’re thinking about how to sort it out now.

The boy asked whether it was a deep hole or a small one. Boris said:

It’s a … in a hole the size of HS2, the only thing to do is keep digging.

That’s what you’ve got to do. It’s a big hole.

Days later, on February 5, Guido reported on the Taxpayers’ Alliance list of 50 transport projects, most of which involved rail, that would be more useful and more cost-effective. Guido’s post listed half of them:

Many of the entries required only relatively small sums of money to achieve vast benefits for local communities with the potential for dramatically transforming the transport infrastructure nationally, not only in the Midlands.

On February 11, Boris confirmed that HS2 would go ahead. Guido posted the video and remarked:

In the House of Commons, Boris has formally what was revealed last night: HS2 has been given the go-ahead by Cabinet, despite the explosion in costs.

Protests and campaigns against wanton destruction

Nearly one year later, on January 27, 2021, the Mail reported that eco-protesters were at London’s Euston station. One of them was Swampy, a veteran tree preservation activist from the 1990s. I remember him well:

Bailiffs today began evicting anti-HS2 protesters who secretly dug a 100ft tunnel network under a makeshift camp near London’s Euston Station with the help of veteran activist Swampy.

The HS2 Rebellion activists scaled cranes and clambered onto wooden platforms in the trees in Euston Square Gardens early this morning as enforcement officers moved in to remove the eco-warriors from the Tree Protection Camp, which was set up in September in protest against the £100billion project.

But as the operation to remove the activists stalled on Wednesday evening, a handful of activists were preparing to spend the night in the tunnels, saying they are prepared to stay underground indefinitely.

Protesters including Swampy, real name Daniel Hooper, have barricaded themselves in two tunnels codenamed ‘Kelvin’ and Kristal’ as they brace for a ‘length siege’ for potentially weeks as police arrested six people – including three for breaches of Covid regulations. 

One HS2 activist sang as he was brought down from a tree by National Eviction Team bailiffs using aerial platforms, while another protester could be heard shouting as he was dragged from the camp by enforcement agents. 

The group, which is protesting HS2 plans to destroy the gardens by building a temporary taxi rank for Euston Station, claims an ‘illegal eviction’ began shortly before 5am today when enforcement officers ‘entered the camp under cover of darkness’. 

They accused HS2 of ‘breaking the law by attempting an eviction without a court order and during the national coronavirus lockdown’. An HS2 spokeswoman blasted the ‘illegal’ occupation and said it presented a ‘danger’ to HS2 staff and High Court enforcement officers.  

Later that year, Swampy and his pals walked free from court for their Euston occupation. On October 7, the Mail reported:

A group of HS2 protesters who cost developers millions after they dug a series of tunnels close to London‘s Euston Station have walked free from court.

A judge yesterday threw out charges against the group, including the veteran eco-activist Swampy, over the month-long underground protest.

The demonstrators, part of a group called HS2 Rebellion, were arrested in February after using the 100-foot tunnel system and several treehouses to play a cat-and-mouse game with authorities over the rail link.

The protest is reported to have cost developers £3.5million – with £2.8million spent on enforcement officers to remove the activists from the site.

The trial against Daniel Hooper, 48 – known as ‘Swampy’ – Dr Larch Maxey, 49, Isla Sandford, 18, Lachlan Sandford, 20, Juliett Stevenson-Clarke, 22 and Scott Breen, 47, started on Tuesday at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court.

But district judge Susan Williams yesterday dismissed the charges of aggravated trespass, saying that at the time of the protest HS2 was not engaged in construction work on the site. A separate charge against Dr Maxey of damage to a mobile phone was also dismissed.

After leaving court, Swampy told The Guardian: ‘We shouldn’t have been in court in the first place because HS2 shouldn’t have been happening. 

‘Our plan is to stop HS2. Aggravated trespass charges were completely the wrong ones to level against us.’ 

On October 29 that year, The Independent reported on claims that HS2 were bulldozing over archaeological sites along the route:

HS2 bosses have revealed the discovery of “astonishing” Roman statues dug up along the route – to the anger of environmentalists who claim that historic sites are being destroyed.

Archaeologists dug up two complete figures of what appear to be a man and a woman, along with the head of a child, at an abandoned medieval church in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire.

The find, described as a “once in a lifetime” discovery, also includes a hexagonal glass Roman jug, large pieces of which were still intact despite its having been in the ground for what is thought to be more than 1,000 years.

But opponents of the £106bn high-speed railway, which when completed will run from London to Crewe and Manchester, have accused the company of public-relations spin, or “greywashing”, in announcing the discoveries as other finds are “bulldozed over”.

They pointed out that a 2013 HS2 environmental survey had identified 969 archaeological sites on the route of phase one alone – the London to Birmingham leg – but that the company had decided to investigate only 60 of them …

Joe Rukin, of the Stop HS2 campaign group, told The Independent: “It was inevitable there would be archaeological finds, but the crime is the number of sites known to exist that are not being properly investigated and are being bulldozed over without proper investigations, even in areas where it’s known there are lost villages or Roman settlements.

“Due to the sheer scale of HS2 there simply aren’t enough archaeologists in the country to properly investigate every site of interest.”

The article included Joe Rukin’s tweet:

Property owners’ heartbreak

On January 29, 2023, The Sunday Times had an in-depth report on the costs thus far for the rail project, ‘How did HS2 become a £100 billion money pit?’

I will return to this article below with regard to cost, but this is a summary of the heartbreak that property owners experienced in selling to HS2, beginning in 2012 when David Cameron was Prime Minister:

The line has been extensively chopped and changed since the route was first agreed. The “eastern leg” of the original Y-shaped route was expected to link Birmingham with Leeds. Thousands of homes were compulsorily purchased along the route — including the Shimmer estate, a modern housing estate in Mexborough, near Doncaster, where building began in 2012.

In July 2016, residents received handwritten letters informing them that the government would need to acquire “some or all” of their land. With their properties effectively valued at nothing on the open market, most residents sold up to HS2.

In November 2021, however, it was announced that HS2 would not reach South Yorkshire after all, stopping 50 miles south of the Shimmer estate. In total, some £146 million has been spent by HS2 on properties along the now-abandoned route.

Further west is the Golborne Link, a short 13-mile section of track that would have let HS2 trains speed on to Scotland. This was scrapped in April 2022, probably knocking about £2 billion off the eventual cost — but at least £52 million had already been spent on development.

While I can somewhat accept that these properties were worth ‘nothing’ on the open market, I do wonder if that is true in most cases. It would be interesting to know what happened to those families and where they are living now.

Spiralling costs

Independent reports allege that the Government knew HS2 costs were spiralling out of control years ago, yet did not admit to it.

On August 26, 2021, the left-leaning The Canary posted the follwing (bold in the original):

The latest in the #FollowTheMoney series has found that the Cabinet Office ignored a request by a member of the House of Lords to investigate a minister, a civil servant, and the chair of HS2 LTD over allegations they misled parliament and broke codes of civil service.

The Cabinet Office has told The Canary it isn’t investigating allegations that ministers broke the ministerial code through misleading parliament over the budget of HS2, which could cost as much a £142.02bn …

Documents seen by The Canary state that Nusrat Ghani, a junior minister employed by Department for Transport (DfT) ‘misled’ parliament on five occasions:

Ms Ghani has broken the Ministerial Code regarding openness, honesty & leadership.

Ms Ghani mislead select committees & parliament 5 times for the sole reason that MPs would not become aware of the £20bn cost increase & the 5 year delay before & during the HS2 phase 2a debate …

Included in documents sent to the Cabinet Office is a detailed timeline indicating that ministers and civil servants actively misled parliament about the cost of HS2.

Oct 2018 – The National Audit Office (NAO) published the HS2 progress report. It found that HS2 contractors estimated that the main construction costs were 83% above the budgeted price. HS2 Ltd formally notified the DfT that there were “significant challenges to the affordability of the programme”.

Jun 2019 – The now former chair of HS2, Allan Cook informed the DfT there was ‘no prospect’ of HS2 Ltd delivering phase 1 in budget.

Jun 2019 – The Infrastructure and Projects Authority undertakes a review and concludes that successful delivery is unachievable.

July 2019 – In early July, officials provide the accounting officer and HS2 Ltd chief executive with updated advice, which concludes that Phase One is unaffordable.

15 July 2019 – At a debate in the House of Commons, Nusrat Ghani, a junior minister employed by DfT ‘misled’ parliament. When asked about the HS2 budget, she failed to inform ministers of a £20bn increase in cost. A cost increase that the DfT knew about.

The NAO HS2 report shows that by the time of the debate (15 July 2019) the DfT knew that HS2 could not be completed within its budget …

Now it’s thought that the true cost could be up to £142.02bn.

One of the biggest issues with the DfT’s response is that even if you take the two highest figures the numbers don’t add up. According to its own justification, the total cost would have reached £52bn …

Three months later, on November 18, 2021, the BBC reported that the HS2 leg to Leeds would be scrapped in favour of local transport improvements:

Local service upgrades, bringing faster journeys, will happen up to 10 years earlier than planned, ministers say.

The plan will cost £96bn, but only half of that is thought to be new money.

It comes as businesses reacted angrily to reports the East Midlands-Leeds HS2 high-speed line would not be built.

However, campaigners against the HS2 have said they are “elated” by the reports …

There has been outcry from some politicians and businesses in the north of England at reports that there will not be an entire new fast line between Leeds and Manchester, via Bradford. The improvements to the NPR east-west connections are likely to involve upgrades to existing infrastructure …

However, earlier this week, Sandra Haith, from an anti-HS2 campaign group in Bramley, Rotherham, said she was “absolutely elated”, saying the proposed route would have brought “untold devastation” and “heartbreak” to communities along the line.

The following day, Guido pointed out that Labour’s outrage at the cancelling of the leg to Leeds was somewhat false. Guido pointed out that Sir Keir Starmer was against HS2 from the beginning. So were other Labour MPs. Something to remember as Labour’s party conference begins on Sunday, October 8, 2023:

Now the HS2 rail extension to Leeds has been scrapped, Labour’s immediately called the announcement “a great train robbery” and insisted the north is being “sold out“. Sir Keir even claimed “the north of England has been betrayed“. The only problem is Starmer himself openly opposed HS2 for years, both as a candidate and later as an MP …

Guido’s post has a full report on Starmer’s opposition to the project.

In December 2022, Guido posted a list of topics about which Parliament appeared to be less than honest. One of them involved the cost of HS2:

Michael Byng, a quantity surveyor, believes the true cost of HS2 should be £158 billion not £102 billion and that the true costs are being withheld from parliament for fear of cancellation of the project. Tony Gueterbock (Lord Berkeley)

2023’s burning question: where is the London start point?

This year, another burning HS2 question was where the line should begin in London. Is it Old Oak Common in Ealing (west London) or is it the proper place, Euston?

The answers vary.

As an example, on March 26, Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove cast doubt on Euston.

On March 28, Rishi confirmed it would be Euston.

It still is not clear.

Why European high speed rail costs less

Returning to the aforementioned Sunday Times article from January 2023, it explains why EU rail projects cost less.

Few will be surprised to know that British costs, unlike those of our Continental cousins, are based on the worst-case scenario:

A crucial reason why HS2’s costs grew so dramatically is down to how its contracts were awarded. In February 2020, a government-commissioned independent review suggested that “considerable over-specification and ‘gold-plating’” of HS2 contracts — with many designed around a “worst-case, risk-averse scenario,” was a key driver behind the inflated prices.

Had the government accepted more risk on things like the slopes of embankments and railway foundations, where “those who are able to manage risk should carry risk”, the project could have been delivered more cheaply.

The article has a chart showing how much cheaper high speed railway links cost in EU countries. The contrast is astounding.

We discover why. This part also has more about Euston and Old Oak Common:

France, Germany and Spain were able to build high-speed rail networks at a cost of tens of millions per mile. But even if HS2’s 140-mile phase one link is completed within budget, it will cost about £300 million per mile. Why?

One factor is the extensive tunnelling. Britain does not have a monopoly on Nimbyism, as France and Italy are well aware: the €25 billion (£22 billion) Turin-Lyon high-speed rail link beneath the Alps has attracted angry protests for decades. But HS2 has been the subject of substantial petitioning by MPs and residents about the plans for the Chilterns.

A six-mile tunnel was initially mooted for the area, but after petitioning in the early 2010s, a far longer ten-mile option has been chosen, to protect the countryside …

The most expensive parts of the whole scheme have been the stations. And here, the endless chopping and changing may have cost the government heavily.

Euston station — the proposed start of the line — involves heavy construction work in one of the most expensive cities in the world. It would help to get it right the first time.

On Friday, The Sun reported that the entire extension to Euston could be scrapped, with trains stopping at Old Oak Common in Ealing. Doing so could have saved £4 billion, but would have required completely redesigning the west London station, on which construction is well under way, to allow trains to stop there.

For the government, though, Old Oak Common was one chop and change too far. Mere hours later, Jeremy Hunt confirmed that the line would indeed carry passengers to Euston.

The original plan for Euston was for an 11-platform station that would open when phase one finished — but in 2021 HS2 said it would scale the project back to ten platforms. Last October, though, it admitted that “significant elements” of the £100 million designs “can no longer be used”.

Some believe the true figure is even higher. “It can take up to five years to redesign a station,” says Gareth Dennis, a rail engineer and chairman of the North Eastern Railway Engineers’ Forum. “That £100 million figure is probably an underestimate. You’d expect design to be around 20 per cent of the total spend — so for a multibillion-pound station like Euston that could be hundreds of millions.”

While the original plans allowed for Euston to be finished in two stages — one for the initial leg of HS2, and another when the later legs were added — the new plans envisage the station being constructed all in one go.

There is a problem, says William Barter, a railway consultant: “With uncertainty over the rest of the line, we don’t actually know what kind of railway we’re building a terminus for.”

A ten-platform option at Euston could end up unfit for purpose by the time it opens because it assumes the eastern leg will never be built. “It made the classic British mistake of assuming that on paper, this minimum viable product will deliver — and with no extra capacity baked into the system,” Dennis says. “Having more capacity than you need is a good thing, but we’re basically allergic to it.” Drivers will recall a similar problem when the M25 motorway opened in 1986: the route was already below capacity from the start.

The Labour peer Lord Berkeley was a dissenting voice on the review panel which persuaded Boris Johnson to press ahead with HS2 in February 2020. He concedes that changing the route and design of HS2 after work had begun inevitably piled up extra costs, but said that thanks to poor forward planning, there was no alternative.

“You should have a workable design with a reasonable cost estimate and not too much contingency before you go ahead, and they didn’t do that,” he said. “So it’s not particularly surprising when people come along with changes after construction has started — and they will come along with others. For example, people are thinking about how to connect it to HS1 [the high-speed line from London to the Channel Tunnel].”

Each chop and change requires consultants and engineers to be moved around the country. This “stop start” approach is pushing up the cost of our railways …

The rail minister, Huw Merriman MP, said:

… you can learn lessons from previous projects and get the price of delivery right down. We need to get to a system like they have in Germany.

However, the article goes on to state that European countries normally have the expensive parts in place already:

… the reason high-speed rail is so cheap now in European countries is because they’ve already built the difficult bits — the stations in dense cities and expensive tunnels.

The HS2 controversy rolls on, so to speak.

Where it begins and ends, we’re still not quite sure — 11 years on.