When was it obvious that HS2 was an economic turkey at risk of becoming “an appalling mess”, as the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, described today’s position?
A fair case can be made for 2013, a year of two neon-lit warnings of trouble ahead. One was a scathing report on HS2 from the National Audit Office (NAO), the first of many, when the project was still at the planning stage. The NAO concluded it was impossible to say whether the programme was likely to deliver value for money; the cost and benefit estimates were “uncertain”; there had been “past errors in the underlying model”; the Department for Transport had “poorly articulated” the strategic need for a transformation in rail capacity and how HS2 was supposed to rebalance economic growth. In short, there was “a weak foundation for securing and demonstrating success in the future”.
