Press Release: Stop HS2 response the Public Accounts Committee Report on HS2
Stop HS2 founder Joe Rukin responded to the report:
“Today the Public Accounts Committee have said that no-one knows what the final cost of HS2 will be, they don’t know what the benefits of building are, the bosses running HS2 are over-confident, and that HS2 is poor value for money and private investors won’t touch it with a bargepole. This isn’t news, this is exactly what the Public Accounts Committee and others have been saying for over ten years.”
“Every time there is any independent study into HS2, it says the same things, there have been dozens of these reports from serious parliamentary bodies and government watchdogs, and every time they look into HS2 they say the same, that’s it’s a mess, that the people running it don’t know what they are doing, that the costs are going to keep on going up and it won’t deliver on the promises being made. HS2 has been a national scandal from start to finish, it has only ever existed to line the pockets of the construction firms, and it is well past time that there is a full scale fraud inquiry into what continues to be the world’s greatest train robbery.”
Penny Gaines, chair of Stop HS2, added:
“With just a rump of the overblown HS2 vanity project left, it is no surprise that the remaining plan offers the taxpayer very poor value of money.”
“Rishi Sunak was right to cancel HS2 Phase 2 last year, even in the face of intense lobbying. But he should have stood up to those in the Department for Transport and the Tory party who wanted the construction industry to continue to devour billions of pounds of taxpayers money and cancelled Phase 1 too.”
“HS2 should be cancelled in its entirety as soon as possible.”