Grant Shapps says it would be ‘irresponsible’ for HS2 work to continue after costs spiral | UK News

Former travel minister Grant Shapps has said the inflation caused by Covid and the war in Ukraine is the reason for HS2 failures.

It comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seems poised to axe the northern arm of the high-speed rail line from Birmingham to Manchester.

Mr Shapps, the defence secretary, was pressed on this today by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire.

He said: ‘On Hs2, we do have to respond to the budgets – we’ve been hit by not just coronavirus but also by the war in Ukraine and I think any responsible government looks at that and says “does this still stack up?”.’

Ms Derbyshire responded with ‘It doesn’t sound good then.’

When asked whether the Government accepts any responsibility for the delays to the project, Mr Shapps spoke about the country’s financial difficulties again.

After being pressed to answer directly, Mr Shapps eventually said: ‘Governments take responsibility for everything that they do’ but went on to refer back to ‘things like an unexpected shock in inflation’.

‘It is not responsible to just say “well this money has been spent so we just need to keep spending”.

‘It’s easy for those who don’t have to make the balance between health, education, defence expenditure and everything else to just say “well just carry on spending” as if there’s no tomorrow. We have to be more responsible.’

‘We’ve seen very, very high global inflation that no government could have predicted.’

It comes after Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the potential cost of HS2 is ‘out of control’ – it has increased by £8 billion, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

The Observer suggested the decision to kill off the Manchester leg of the scheme could come before the Tories host their conference in the city on October 1.

Although Mr Shapps reminded the public that no official announcement about Hs2 has been made, he said Mr Sunak was prepared to make ‘difficult long-term decisions’ earlier today on Sky News’s Sunday Morning.

He went on: ‘It is the case that all of these big decisions where budgets are – in particular in the case of HS2 – inexorably going higher and higher and higher… It’s absolutely right that the Government looks at it and says: “Hold on a minute, is this just an open-ended cheque or are we going to make sure that this project gets delivered to a pace and a timetable that actually works for the taxpayer?”.’

The Prime Minister and Chancellor are reported to be meeting to discuss the situation in the coming days.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.