Publicly Funded Infrastructure Projects

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on obtaining this debate today. I am grateful for his forensic dissection of the problems of HS2.

How many of us, when we are having work done on our own property or making a major purchase, fail to take steps to ensure that we are getting value for money and that our money is being sensibly spent? If we are doing that with our own money, how much more important is it when we are spending someone else’s—in this case, taxpayers’ money, with all the present demands on it for important and deserving causes?

HS2 is a totally misconceived project. It was supposed to cost £50 billion but will probably cost in excess of £100 billion and maybe more. Just imagine what could be done with that money if sensibly spent. Recently the TaxPayers’ Alliance did a splendid operation, working out just what it could do with it. That amount of money would seriously transform the rest of our communications network.

When I first came to take an interest in HS2, I could not believe what I discovered. The biggest infrastructure project in Europe had been put together in a totally shambolic way that was guaranteed to produce chaos and failure at the cost of misery to thousands of families and businesses whose lives would be disrupted, and of billions of wasted taxpayers’ money. On 31 January 2017 I asked the House of Lords to put a stop to HS2. It could have done so but sadly I did not receive sufficient support. On my side were two former Permanent Secretaries to the Treasury, the noble Lords, Lord Burns and Lord Macpherson, who surely know the true position better than anyone else.

Today I want to highlight and question the unbelievable bunker mentality of those responsible for HS2, both Ministers—I absolve our present Minister, who is absolutely blameless—and civil servants, who display intransigence, blocked ears and total unwillingness to listen to reason and common sense. Ever since April 2015 experienced transport planners and engineers have been seeking meetings with Ministers to explain their grave reservations about HS2. Inexplicably, all such meetings have been rebuffed. On 14 April 2017 Mr Jonathan Tyler, principal of Passenger Transport Networks in York, wrote to Andrea Leadsom, then Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, setting out all the attempts that had been made to meet Ministers to discuss HS2. I do not have time to give all the details but they include letters to everyone from the Prime Minister downwards.

I quote from the letter:

“On 31 October 2016 a group of 54 people with extensive experience in transport planning, regional economics and railway management wrote to Mr Grayling requesting a meeting to express their concerns … On 2 December 2016 a civil servant in the High Speed Rail Group of the DfT replied saying, ‘I am sorry to have to tell you that the Secretary of State is not available to meet with you to discuss these issues’ … On 8 February 2017 the group wrote to the Cabinet Secretary, the Permanent Secretary of HM Treasury, the head of the Government Economic Service, the Comptroller of the NAO, the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons and the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, expressing our concern that the process of the Bill authorising the construction of HS2 had not allowed a number of significant issues that we and others had raised to be properly addressed. We summarised these issues, asked for them to be investigated and offered a meeting … In early February 2017 the diary manager of Andrew Jones, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the DfT, wrote to Jonathan Tyler saying that his letter to the Secretary of State had been passed to Mr Jones, who, because of the pressures on his time, would be unable to manage a meeting”.


This attitude is both rude and, more importantly, totally unbusinesslike. Not to avail yourself of second opinions from such eminently qualified people on such a massive project is unforgiveable. Meanwhile, HS2 heads for the buffers, with costs and building timescale totally out of control and the Department for Transport sending out what can only be called fairy-tale press releases and Answers to Written Questions.

The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Amid mounting demands from the Green Party, and the Brexit Party, to cancel HS2, at least one of the candidates for the Conservative Party leadership has promised a review, which will reveal the true position. Although some expenditure has already been incurred and preparatory work undertaken, a notice to proceed has not yet been signed, and will not be for some time. A timely and speedy review will result in a halt to the project, which will give time for the true position to be established; a thorough investigation to take place; sensible, non-governmental advice to be taken at long last; and, hopefully, lessons learnt about how to properly plan and cost major infrastructure projects.