HS2 Reset

Nigel Farage Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander]

I can assure my hon. Friend that we are determined to see the main works civil engineering contracts completed as soon as possible. That is the element of construction that generally creates most disturbance for local communities, and we are pretty much at peak construction now. I thank her constituents for their patience while we continue to deliver this vital new piece of rail infrastructure.

[Nigel Farage (Clacton) (Reform)]

I have campaigned against this HS2 project ever since 2010, up and down the line. I never believed the original £35 billion price tag. Furthermore, it would have benefited only rich businessmen and driven businesses from the north of England to London—it would have had the opposite of the intended effect. Rather than having another reset, has the moment not come to recognise that this is a failure? Let us scrap HS2, use the tens of billions of pounds that we can save in the next decade to upgrade railway lines across the entirety of the United Kingdom to the benefit of many millions, and spend the rest on other national priorities in these financially straitened times. Surely the time has come to scrap the entirety of the project and to recognise that we have got it wrong.