HS2 Reset

Lisa Smart Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander]

As I said in my statement, the Prime Minister has asked the Cabinet Secretary to investigate whether the James Stewart report raises any questions for the civil service or the wider public sector. My hon. Friend is completely right to highlight the point about contracts being signed with construction companies even before the scope of the works had been agreed. It is little wonder that the country has ended up paying more. We signed a contract with a company to deliver works, yet there was no clarity whatever about what work the Government wanted them to do. This is a dreadful and woeful failure of oversight by previous Government Ministers, and I will not allow that to happen on my watch.

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

Before I was elected to this place, I was a member of HS2’s independent panel for the community and environment fund and business and local economy fund. The Secretary of State’s statement makes for pretty shocking reading. There is talk of fraud and shambolic mismanagement—things that should bring shame on everybody involved.

One of the problems with HS2 was always the name, which put the focus on speed, rather than capacity. My Hazel Grove constituents use the west coast main line, and they talk to me about the capacity problems that remain. Indeed, I see them every week when I come up and down to work. The Secretary of State says that she is not reinstating the line north of Birmingham. She also says that trans-Pennine work is under way. What specific work is being undertaken by her Department on capacity on the west coast main line north of Birmingham?

[Heidi Alexander]

I am aware that the Mayor of the West Midlands and the Mayor of Greater Manchester have put proposals to the Government on this issue. In the mid-2030s, we are likely to see severe capacity constraints between Birmingham and Manchester. We are reviewing those proposals, and I hope to be able to say more on them in the months ahead.