Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many British workers were engaged on the manufacture of the tunnelling machines for HS2.

HS2 Ltd did not procure the tunnelling boring machines as responsibility for this is passed to the Main Works Civil Contractors. That’s because each TBM has to be designed to cope with ‘worst case’ ground conditions in a particular location and these can vary significantly from site to site. However, the TBMs will be operated in the UK by a combination of UK and European specialist operatives. Government has set HS2 Ltd a target for procuring 95% of works from UK based companies. More than 2000 UK businesses have already secured work on the programme.