Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of conclusion one of the Public Account Committee's report entitled HS2: Update following the Northern leg cancellation, HC 357, published 28 February 2025 on the governance of HS2.

In light of the Public Account Committee’s recent report on High Speed Two (HS2), this government’s priority is to deliver HS2 Phase 1 safely and to the lowest reasonable cost. We have set out urgent measures to get the programme back on track and have tasked Mark Wild, the new CEO of HS2 Ltd, with conducting a reset of the HS2 programme to provide a realistic budget and schedule and to deliver the remaining works.

As part of this reset, the government reinstated ministerial oversight of the project to ensure greater accountability and commissioned an independent review of the oversight of major transport infrastructure projects, which is investigating the effectiveness of forecasting and reporting of cost, schedule and benefits, as well as actions to deliver cost efficiencies.

The Department will update Parliament on the programme reset as it progresses.