Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he has taken to recover the £1.7million of unauthorised redundancy payments made by HS2; and if he will make a statement.
We have made clear to HS2 Ltd that we expect them to always meet their obligations and responsibilities to the taxpayer. The progress of HS2 should not come at the expense of proper control over public money and HS2 Ltd fully accepts and understands this.
However, HS2 Ltd have a legal obligation to honour the redundancy payments made to individuals who were employed and so will not be seeking their recovery. HS2 Ltd will manage these payments within their existing budgets and as such the Department for Transport will not be providing any additional funds to cover these costs.
HS2 Ltd are putting in place controls to ensure that this does not happen again.