The boss of a Midlands rail firm says the Government should press ahead with completing HS2 – because scrapping it or watering it down would be an even bigger waste of money.
Malcolm Prentice, managing director of rail MTMS, based in Moira, near Swadlincote, says the project will be only be worthwhile if it manages to create a direct link London Euston with Manchester.
This week the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, announced that the northern leg of HS2 linking Birmingham with Manchester could be scrapped after figures suggested the overall price of the project could pass £100bn if constructed in full.
The Birmingham to Manchester route is the second phase of the overall project, which has already previously been altered by deciding a spur route, originally planned to link Leeds with Birmingham, will now end in the East Midlands.
But Mr Sunak has also suggested further cutbacks could be made at the southern end of the HS2 line by stopping trains at the new Old Oak Common station, six miles north of Euston Station, instead of building a new terminus at Euston in order to create a genuine city-to-city link.
But Malcolm, who has 40 years’ experience in the rail industry and whose company is a specialist providers of depot maintenance and suppliers of chemicals, consumables, paints and coatings for the transport industry, believes the whole project is now too far down the line for any further cuts to make any sense, despite the mounting costs.
He says HS2 is necessary for the future of the UK’s rail industry because its use goes beyond simply shortening journey times for passengers between the north and the south of England.
Opening the route will also free up track capacity elsewhere for freight traffic, allowing the country to carry more goods by rail rather than via lorries on our roads.
He said: “In my opinion, there is no doubt that HS2 will be completed because we are so far down the line already, but if it doesn’t take people from Manchester and into Euston there is no point in it.
“This new outcry concerning the cost of HS2 is an example of a Government looking for votes. Pretty much everyone in the industry knew that it would go over budget because big Government projects like this always do, because the way the contracts operate enable companies to make vast projects.
“The Government should be looking to save money, not reduce the scope of the project. Curtailing it will create a white elephant which won’t help us to free up track elsewhere and grow the freight capacity on the rail network, which is one of the key benefits that HS2 in its current form has to offer.”
Malcolm added that reducing the scale of the project could also damage the long-term prosperity of the UK rail industry.
He said: “Travelling by train isn’t cheap anymore, rail has been a victim of under-investment and, apart from one notable example, we don’t manufacture trains in the UK anymore, while the majority of the infrastructure is foreign-made.
“As a result it relies heavily on overseas investment from companies who, if HS2 is curtailed, may very well conclude that the UK isn’t a good partner when it comes to long-term investment and who may instead seek projects to invest in overseas.”
MTMS serves such familiar names in mainline rail as First MTR South-Western Railway, Govia ThamesLink Railway, Arriva and Siemens and is also a patron of the Midlands Rail Forum, which is the biggest forum of its kind in the UK.
For more information on MTMS visit www.mtms.co.uk
