Time to get HS2 done

West Midlands mayor, Andy Street, is more confident than ever that Boris Johnson will give High Speed 2 the green-light despite recent leaks over soaring costs and squabbling among Tory MPs over the project.

A long-term supporter of HS2, Street said he expects the government to “hold its nose, be bold and show leadership” and ignore the naysayers who criticise the mega-project on costs and efficiency. In an interview with Reaction, he added: “I am sure the Prime Minister will make the right decision.”

“It’s time politicians acted more like the Victorians did, and built with vision for the future. We are expecting the total cost to be around £85bn – and not the £106bn from the leaked Oakervee Review.”

Street was referring to the recent spat prompted by comments from Lord Berkeley, former deputy chair of the Oakervee Review commissioned by Johnson before the election, that the HS2 costs were spiralling upwards of £106bn and that directors had ‘fiddled the books’ to hide the true costs from the government.

But Street, who sits on the review, urged the government to dismiss Berkeley’s claim, arguing that the nine other panel members were behind the scheme. He continues to defend the scheme. Indeed, he still believes costs can be contained to £85bn with careful monitoring and savings.

“When you spread the costs out over 20 years for infrastructure that will last 100 years, then it is not so expensive for what the link will achieve in bringing prosperity to the region.”

At the recent launch of Connecting Britain, a coalition of business groups and local councils, Street explained why building the project is so important: “HS2 is the twin of regional transport investment. You build HS2 and then you build your regional connectivity off that.”

“Today, we are running commuter services into Birmingham on the same lines as fast trains from the south west to Scotland. So it is no wonder that when one small thing goes wrong everybody catches a cold. It doesn’t happen in China; it doesn’t happen in Japan; and it doesn’t happen in France. They separate it out and that is what we need to do.”

What’s more, Street argues the line, which will eventually link Manchester and Leeds to London via Birmingham, is critical for the West Midlands. More pertinently, it is also necessary to fulfil Johnson’s promise to ‘Red Wall’ voters of ‘levelling-up’ across the North of the country.

“This is not being sold on the basis of taking 15 minutes off the journey time from London to Birmingham – or to bring more people from the West Midlands to London. There is a capacity problem on the lines to the north out of London which cannot be solved without new lines, and then connecting with HS3 and other links.”

In what may prove to be a significant intervention in the controversy over whether Johnson will give the thumbs-up comes news of an important Network Rail document leaked to the Daily Mail today. The report, which was sent by Network Rail to the Department of Transport earlier this month, warns that passengers will face up to three decades of chaos on the railways if HS2 is scrapped because abandoning the project would force rail chiefs to start upgrading other lines to cope with overcrowding.

But according to Network Rail, these new upgrades would add a minimum of two-thirds of HS2’s extra seating and it could take up to 29 years to complete on the worst-affected route, the one from London to Edinburgh.

The report to the DofT also warns that plans to upgrade the North’s rail network – one of Johnson’s most vital election promises – would be £15 bn more expensive without HS2. It also claims that only HS2 could deliver the much needed extra capacity as the West Coast Main Line, the East Coast Main Line and the Midlands Main Line are already bursting.

This is the most official backing yet for HS2 which has divided Cabinet ministers as well as Tory MPs, many of whom have constituencies in areas which will be affected by the new line.

Johnson is due to meet the Chancellor, Sajid Javid, and Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, this week to come to a conclusion on going ahead or not. Ministers are aware that if were to scrap the project, they will come under fire for letting down businesses and communities in the North which already invested in the area on the basis of HS2 going ahead.

As Street points out, the West Midlands authority has been betting on HS2 going ahead for nearly six years, and was one of the premises on which big businesses have decided to locate to Birmingham and the region. “It’s not an either or project. If we build HS2, then we must do HS3 as well. They go hand in glove. It’s part of a total package which would see other local connectivity, new training and skills for the local population and a boost to colleges and universities. If we don’t do this, the region would be broken.”

“At least 9,000 jobs have been created in the region on the basis of HS2. We have HSBC, Jaguar Land Rover, Deutsche Bank and many others which have moved into the area on the promise.”

The promise of HS2 has also been a boost to local prosperity: the West Midlands is showing strong economic growth, up 4.7% in 2018, and that it would be madness to stop growth in its tracks by scrapping HS2 and all its potential.

Since becoming mayor in 2017, the former John Lewis chief has worked tirelessly with councils to open up local railway stations closed by the Beeching cuts, launched radical schemes to bring life back to town centres, overseen the first direct train link from Walsall to London and a relocation of some 19,000 people back to the Black Country.

No wonder the local air turned blue at the last election. No fewer than six former Labour seats went to the Conservatives in one of the most extraordinary election results for decades: Birmingham Northfield fell to the Conservatives, as did West Bromwich East and West Bromwich West, held until this election by Tom Watson, Labour’s former Deputy Leader, the first time a Tory MP has represented the constituency since 1935.

In the Black Country, the Tories took Wolverhampton North East, Wolverhampton South West and won Dudley North. So it’s no surprise that Street, who grew up in Birmingham, is now the most powerful Tory politician outside of the Westminster bubble, and one of the few who has delivered on his electoral promises.

Street comes up for re- election in May this year, having beaten his Labour opponent by the slimmest of margins last time. While the view on the ground is that he is streets ahead of any other candidate, the mayor will be praying Johnson remembers what he said about borrowing votes from the public when the HS2 decision is finally taken. If Johnson wants to run that red wall blue, he knows what to do.