I once joked that I had three children: a son, a daughter and HS2. The third of them was born when I was transport secretary in 2010, and contrary to much of the media coverage of its difficult childhood and adolescence, I am fairly sure it will grow to be a successful adult with all its limbs intact. Just more slowly than originally conceived.
Why? Because the HS2 high-speed line is currently being built between London and Birmingham, its first 100 miles linking Britain’s two biggest cities with a high-capacity train service which will take less than an hour. This first stage, with its 120 construction sites and more than 10,000 construction workers, is now irreversible.
Both major parties have committed that the HS2 line will definitely proceed thereafter to Manchester, Britain’s third largest city and the gateway to the north-west. Rishi Sunak has delayed the start of construction of this second phase, but the planning consents are being secured and once HS2 trains are flying between London and Birmingham it would be politically untenable—leaving aside all other considerations—for Manchester to be relegated to a rail service taking three times as long. I would be surprised if this second leg of HS2 isn’t complete within a decade of the first London to Birmingham leg opening in about 2030.
For the same reason, I am fairly sure that the eastern leg of HS2 from Birmingham to Sheffield and Leeds will ultimately be built. The Boris Johnson government cancelled the Yorkshire limb of HS2 for cost-cutting reasons, but Labour is committed to this integral part of my original scheme, and with Labour’s likely chancellor Rachel Reeves being a Leeds MP, I would expect it to be open within a few years of the line to Manchester.
So a project which should have taken 20 years to complete will probably take twice as long, and thereby cost maybe twice as much as it should have done. The reasons for this delay are a commentary on the problems of constructing major infrastructure in the UK. But the fact that it is proceeding at all, in the decade of Brexit with all its vicissitudes and changes of government since 2010, is a major miracle which also needs explaining. Let me take them in turn.
Since I launched HS2 13 years ago, there have been six prime ministers, seven chancellors and eight transport secretaries. Almost every one of these has caused some delay in HS2 by reviewing, amending or otherwise interfering with the scheme.
The Treasury, sceptical of all major infrastructure projects, has been the biggest source of delay. Although every chancellor since 2010 has supported HS2 in principle, each of them has sought to cut the cost of the scheme in some way, after exhaustive investigations by Treasury officials. The biggest change—the indefinite suspension of legislation for the eastern leg from Birmingham to Leeds—was imposed by the Treasury in 2020 at the price of agreeing the construction go-ahead for phase one from London to Birmingham.
That crucial green light for phase one was given by Johnson personally, and therein lies the source of the major miracle that HS2 proceeded at all. For one of the few things that Johnson really believes in is major transport infrastructure. Cavalier, destructive and amoral over Brexit and much else, he overruled Dominic Cummings and other Brexity/Maoist advisers who wanted to add HS2 to the bonfire of consensual policy inherited from Blair/Brown and Cameron.
There was also the miracle of timing. Johnson’s consent for the construction of phase one of HS2 in February 2020 was almost the last major decision he took before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis. Had the first Covid lockdown come even a month earlier than March 2020, the whole of HS2 would probably have been axed in any event.
Why did David Cameron and George Osborne not cancel HS2 as part of austerity a decade ago? Because Osborne—a fellow rail romantic—grasped its transformational potential for the north, not least as an MP for a constituency (Tatton) in the northwest, and he protected HS2 from his swinging cuts in capital spending after 2010. The major spending wasn’t coming in the early years of HS2 in any event, so it didn’t cost him much at the time to allow the passage of the HS2 legislation, giving planning consents for the route and associated preparatory work.
However, there were plenty of Treasury officials who wanted HS2 strangled at birth precisely because of its huge future spending liabilities, and it would not have survived as a baby without Osborne’s personal protection. I was also on continued political manoeuvres at the time, as founding chairman of the independent National Infrastructure Commission, appointed by Cameron and Osborne.
I like to think that the underlying reason for the remarkable progress of HS2 through the unparalleled political topsy-turvy of the last decade is that it was so compelling in its original design and purpose, based as it was on the success and popularity of high-speed rail across continental Europe and much of high-growth Asia and China. But Johnson didn’t put much store by intrinsically good policy, let alone international approbation, or Brexit and much else would never have happened in his three-year reign of terror (by British standards).
The piece of luck was that Johnson, in Roman emperor mode immediately after his 2019 election triumph, wanted some grands projets to celebrate his rule. HS2, like the Elizabeth line which he had earlier inherited and then enthusiastically adopted as mayor of London, came along at just the right time. Even the Treasury preferred it to his genuinely madcap idea of building a bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland to “cement the Union.”
The bridge was scuppered but HS2 went ahead. Phew! And again phew!
