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The Cross Question panel debate the delay on HS2 and consider why the project has been such a 'failure'. This conversation comes as the Transport Secretary says HS2 could cost more than £100 billion and may not open until 2039. Heidi Alexander told the Commons she was “angry” about the “obscene increase in time and costs”, which she blamed on “the failures of successive Conservative governments”. Ms Alexander said the expected cost of completing the high-speed railway was between £87.7 billion and £102.7 billion (in 2025 prices). Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #iaindale #crossquestion #debate #hs2 #transport #railway #trains #lbc LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
Scott in West Hampstead. Britain was once the envy of the world for its pioneering railway and
0:05
civil engineering projects. What lessons therefore need to be learned from the failings behind the
0:10
HS2 project which was planned over 15 years ago but which won't, according to the Transport
0:15
Secretary today, see trains running for at least another 10 years and possibly 13. Rebecca let's
0:22
start with you, you're on the Transport Select Committee. I'm sure this is something that you've spent quite a lot of time deliberating over. What's gone wrong
0:29
So actually, yeah, the select committee's got a hearing on it tomorrow. In fact, I mean, I think one of the challenges we've got is what's going to happen going forward, because one of the things that we did when we were in government was remove the political control
0:42
we introduced the expert that is now going to be leading the work that's going forward
0:49
And what we feel is that it's actually going backwards by making it political again, that
0:53
actually the best way to take this forward is to take politics out of it so that we can
0:57
actually deliver this as an infrastructure project for the whole country. So no democratic accountability
1:02
No, I'm not saying no accountability. What I mean is having people who are not politicians controlling the kind of programme in terms
1:09
of the delivery aspects of it, but of course still coming back to the select committee. I mean, this is costing billions of pounds
1:18
And I mean, you might as well say, OK, well, let's not have any political input into the health service. That costs 200 billion pounds. Let's put an expert in control
1:25
I mean, Italy's done that as a sort of technocratic government. We're a democracy, for goodness sake
1:29
I completely agree with you. Of course, you have to have politicians at the top. I mean, this is one of the challenges we've got with the new railway bill coming through
1:36
is that they want to take that into the regions rather than having a kind of political leadership on it
1:41
I mean, I think the big challenge with a lot of this is actually just the questions around how much has been delivered
1:47
I mean, a friend before I came on has sent me two photographs of what was promised and what's been delivered
1:51
And the overarching bit that is likely to be delivered is the bit, Old Oak Common, that has the biggest impact on the southwest rather than an impact improving the railway for the north, which seems particularly ironic
2:02
So there's clearly some big questions to go and look at it. And no doubt that is what the Select Committee will be looking at tomorrow and coming forward with recommendations on what that should look like. Christina
2:12
Well, it just looks like breathtaking incompetence. The billions it has gobbled in the process of subsidising £300,000 per bat
2:22
which might or might not fly through this tunnel or that tunnel
2:26
And then you hear about the salaries that have been paid to the people looking after it
2:31
and their incompetence and the people who were forced out of their homes
2:34
and the whole areas are still undeveloped and not turned into anything approximating a transport system
2:40
I have no idea of the minutiae of what went wrong But exactly when you mention the infrastructure of the past or the railways of the Victorian era and you look at this and actually I go to Italy a lot public transport there is fantastic The trains are really really good It just embarrassing It embarrassing and wasteful and baffling that this whole project
3:04
should be such a mess and still seems to be nowhere near completion. I just don't understand it
3:09
But when I read about the salaries involved, it makes me really angry. It's like when you hear
3:13
and you know, I understand Andy Burnham's desire to nationalise everything in sight
3:18
because it's like the water system. When you hear about the salaries of the chief execs of the water companies
3:22
and then see the mass leakages of sewage or whatever, you think, most people earn a normal salary and they do their actual job
3:31
So I don't get it. But I mean, this is in effect a nationalised thing
3:35
I know it's HST limited, but it is the government overseeing it
3:39
It doesn't actually give you much confidence, does it? No, I know. Well, successive government, I mean, obviously it wasn't started by the current government
3:44
Successive governments appear to have made a total mess of it. And I don't understand why they've made such a mess of it
3:49
But in terms of delivering national anything, it doesn't inspire confidence. Luke Charters
3:54
Well, I think the biggest error was we should have started building HS2 up north and worked our way southbound
3:59
But what's absolutely baffling is the creation, of course, of the batshed tunnel
4:04
That's just this visual metaphor of over-indexisation, over-specification. It might not even save their flipping bats
4:13
They might not even fly through it. Well, exactly. And I think Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, to be fair, was faced with a choice
4:21
Do you back the current scheme or do you bin it? And looking into this, she actually found that it was similar cost
4:27
So do you put all of that in the back and get nada, zilch, nothing as Farage wanted to do
4:32
No one's going to say just bin all of that. Let's make the best of a bad situation
4:36
We can deliver it actually with still a high speed network as fast as a Japanese bullet train
4:41
But get on with it and start delivering Northern Powerhouse Rail connected to Transpain 9 Route Upgrade
4:47
We've left this mess. We've actually had to be the ones that save it. Marina
4:53
Yes, I mean, it seems to be agreement that it was a good idea and long, long overdue
4:58
But the execution of it was, I agree with Christina, just appalling and embarrassment
5:03
I don't know the minutiae either but it sounds as if the Department of Transport has quite a lot to answer for
5:11
in that it didn't manage the project I mean I know it's a private or a sort of corporate entity that's running it
5:19
but it sounds like they don't in the civil service they have it might be a symptom of not having the right skills
5:25
you know serious commercial project management skills I mean I would just say before one gets incredibly depressed about you know Britain not being able to build anything
5:36
we have built some pretty good things recently I mean Crossrail worked well Silver Line Tunnel near where I live and then there that massive great sewer in London that seemed to Sewers never get the publicity they deserve No but it was a brilliant project
5:53
Do you think, though, that it's kind of our system of government that hasn't helped here
5:59
I think there have been 18 different transport secretaries since Andrew Adonis first announced this in 2009
6:07
And so you have a situation where just when somebody gets their feet under the table
6:11
they've sort of learnt all about it and then they get shuffled off somewhere else
6:14
and a new one comes in. That can't help, can it? No, completely agree
6:19
And I think we see that right across different parts of government. I mean, why we've also been talking about
6:24
needing to build houses for decades, haven't we? And that the planning system is sort of clunking wrong
6:31
And yet, you know, we still seem to be in the same place. And I think it's probably, as you say
6:35
partly to do with just, you know, the turnover of housing secretaries
6:40
Can I come in on something? I actually don't agree that HS2 should have been built as a Southwesterner who can already get to Birmingham and the north via the South West and is not going to do the dog leg into London to get that high speed
6:55
For me, right from the beginning, I thought it was an outrageous amount of money to shave literally a few minutes off the journey times that are already quicker than the journey times that I experience going back into the West Country
7:08
and now Old Oak Common which is this interchange station with HS2 to allow it to go up to Birmingham
7:15
all the railway lines from the southwest are going to be moved into new platforms
7:19
which means they will either have to slow down or stop at that station on its way to Paddington
7:25
and do you want to know what they told me when I went to visit but it's fine because you can get on
7:28
the Elizabeth line and I said well I can get on the Elizabeth line at Paddington and just stay on
7:32
the same train where all the the shops are the tube and everything and so for me as a as a kind
7:38
of southerner or southwesterner I think it's the biggest waste of money ever and um I think actually
7:44
the fact that it's now gone back to the department to deal with and the same people that were working
7:48
on it before doing it doesn't leave me with any confidence that we're going to get value for money
7:52
that will make a difference to the lives of my constituents back in Devon. Well I went from
7:57
Cardiff to Parr and Cornwall recently it took five and a half hours with I think two changes
8:02
And we've also... It's things like that and what you just said, Luke
8:06
about sort of improving lines in the north. If that money, the £100 billion
8:11
had been spent on those kind of connections, people would actually see the improvements, wouldn't they
8:16
Whereas most people won't experience this. Well, there's a bit of whataboutery, isn't there
8:20
And I think one of the first days I became an MP, I'll tell you this story, I said, what are all those bills in the corner of the library
8:27
And they were the hybrid bills. And they would literally, I mean, stack probably as high as your studio here in terms of the complexity of it
8:34
This is the problem we face. We got to machete through all of that bureaucracy to get anything built And when I interviewed the chief exec of HS2 when he came to Public Accounts Committee we were uncovering not just the batshed issue
8:47
but something called newt marinas. They were over-specifying to save our great-crested friends
8:54
And do you know what? Can I just say this? I want to be really honest. I'd rather more money goes to local hospices
8:59
in Rebecca or I's constituencies than it does bats or newts. And that's the country that we've become
9:04
and we've got to move away from that. I'm glad you clarified you said batshed because I thought you said something similar
9:11
Just to round this off, do you all think there should be a public inquiry into how this has gone so catastrophically wrong
9:17
We just have public inquiries for everything nowadays. If we don't have them, we can't learn from them
9:22
But we never do learn from them, do we? They're enormously, I don't know how often we do, they're enormously expensive for the taxpayer
9:28
And usually, usually the conclusions are pretty predictable. You know, should have done better, should have talked to each other, should have, you know, got on with it
9:34
I mean, I think we could probably, you know, sit us around for a couple of days with, you know, press cuttings
9:39
We could probably produce something as good as that. Rebecca? I mean, it sounds to me like if we had one now, we'd also potentially be having one at the end as well
9:48
They cost a lot of money. I'm not suggesting it should be necessarily now, but at some point. Let's see how it finishes
9:53
I mean, sometimes over going through the past. I think we know what the problems are already because it's been investigated so many times along the way
10:00
But if the general consensus is we need to, but I don't think the public stay switched on to public inquiries
10:06
And we talk a lot about them in Westminster, but actually nothing will change unless we fundamentally change
10:10
I'll probably be dead by the time this goes anywhere. I mean, you'll be lucky if you never catch a train
10:14
Marina? Well, I hope you're not. But no, I mean, I know I should say as a lawyer, since all my colleagues will benefit enormously from a public inquiry
10:23
But no, I don't think it's a good idea. I think it's just it's too expensive
10:28
I think some kind of a look at what went wrong, some kind of an investigation, but not a sort of full-blown expensive price
10:36
Well, it's 3-0 so far, Luke. I'm not convinced either. I think we had a proper plan for rail in this country, not just the next 10, 20 years, but going farther than that
10:44
So, like, we could have Manchester Piccadilly as King's Cross for the north
10:48
We could have International Rail Service, ready for this, from the north of England to maybe take out some of those short haul flights
10:54
And we've seen, I think, Eurostar have just signed off on some London to Switzerland journeys
10:59
So why don't we have that broader view going 20, 30 years out so we're not just in this retrospective all the time
11:06
I mean, I actually think, just want to fly the flag for a moment for journalism because we work so much quicker, more quickly
11:12
And I think if you've got a Sunday Times Insight investigation or some equivalent
11:16
I bet you they could get to the nub of the issues in a few weeks with some intensive work
11:23
working to the kind of deadlines that journalists are used to. These inquiries just take forever
11:27
You don't need judges being paid. They've got a new head of the Insight team now, Gabriel Pogren
11:32
So if you're watching, listening, Gabriel, go for it
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