The transport secretary is considering extending the HS2 line to Euston, her cabinet colleague Lisa Nandy has indicated, after Louise Haigh claimed it would make “absolutely no sense” to have the high-speed route terminate outside central London.
Haigh had also hinted at a cut-price “HS2-lite”, which would involve constructing a new section between Birmingham and Crewe that allows trains to travel faster than on the west coast mainline but slower than HS2.
Rishi Sunak last year ruled out extending the HS2 line to central London unless enough private investment was secured for the project, hoping to save £6.5bn of taxpayers’ money. It would instead go to Old Oak Common in west London.
However the Commons public accounts committee in February said it was “highly sceptical” the transport department would be able to attract enough private investment on “the scale and speed required” to make extending HS2 to Euston a success.
Haigh, speaking to the Guardian in Dover, said: “The work that Andy Burnham and Richard Parker have been doing is obviously really important, and we know that that capacity on the West coast mainline is going to have to be addressed eventually. We’re looking at the options that Andy and Richard have established, but we’ve got no imminent plans, and we’re certainly not reviving HS2.
“Even under the previous government’s plans, Euston was always going to be part of the picture. So we’ll make it. We’ll make an announcement on that soon, but HS2 limited will not be given any further work north of Birmingham, and I’ll be making some further announcements on how we’re going to be getting on top of their cost control, because they have, they have, seriously let the taxpayer down.
“We’re looking at all options, and [the mayors are] putting forward a number of private financing options, which we’ll consider.”
On Tuesday, when asked if it was affordable for HS2 to reach Euston, she said: “We will be making an announcement on that soon. But it certainly would never have made sense to leave it between Old Oak Common and Birmingham.”
If HS2 terminated at Old Oak Common, passengers who want to travel to central London would need to change trains.
The project is expected to be funded by changes that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will announce in her budget on 30 October.
Nandy, the culture secretary, when asked if the line would go ahead, told Times Radio: “I think the difficulty that the transport secretary and the chancellor have is that the last government seriously overcommitted to projects that they had no idea how they were going to fund from the public finances, and so it’s meant some very tough decisions.
“I can’t obviously pre-empt what’s going to be in the spending review, which the chancellor will announce in a matter of weeks. But I know it’s something that the transport secretary is looking at very seriously.”
The prime minister’s spokesperson said: “We’re committed to getting the HS2 programme back under control, as the transport secretary said, the plan was always for the HS2 to continue to Euston, the question of how, not if. But we are reviewing the position we have inherited on HS2, and we will set out further decisions and plans on that in due course.”
Nandy also suggested east-west connectivity may be a higher priority, in light of plans for a new high-speed rail line linking Birmingham and Manchester.
The mayors of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands have unveiled a 50-mile track to run from where the HS2 line is due to end in Staffordshire so it can join a planned “northern powerhouse” rail line west of Manchester airport.
Nandy said: “I would say that the biggest, pressing, priority in the north of England is to improve east-west connectivity. One of the reasons that people suffer absolute misery on the railways in the north is because everything gets snarled up around Manchester because the stations are very old, the platforms aren’t long enough, we simply don’t have the capacity and it causes absolute chaos from east to west.”
The prime minister’s spokesperson said: “We’re obviously committed to improving that connectivity. It’s crucial to supporting growth and the productivity our country needs. And we’ll work with local leaders on that.”
An infrastructure review by the former Siemens UK boss Jürgen Maier for Labour last month said the cancellation of the HS2 northern leg would “leave the west coast mainline, and in tandem the M6 [motorway], to collapse”.
It comes after a transport watchdog said passengers using Euston station were being put in danger by high levels of overcrowding.
