Amersham and Chesham MP calls for National Audit Office to rescind HS2 'notice to proceed'

Dame Cheryl said: “In the executive summary, the Government acknowledges that no work has been carried out to update the HS2 business case since the outbreak of Covid-19.

At a time when hardly a business in the country is unaffected, this is complacent at best but could carry much more serious consequences.”

The MP adds that the “go” for the project assumes that Parliamentary proceedings will include Phase 2, but there is no timetable for this.

Dame Cheryl is concerned about the need for scrutiny: “As far as I am aware, no detailed changes to the Governance procedures, that were promised, have been published, scrutinised or verified. Moreover, the exact powers of the newly announced Minister for HS2 have not been clarified.”

Coronavirus could bring about a major change to the way in which we all work, yet there has been no re-evaluation of the future demand for passenger capacity on our railways at a time when demand has already fallen notwithstanding the current crisis, says Dame Cheryl.

“Nor has the downturn in the UK economy arising from the pandemic been factored into the HS2 project,” she told Gareth Davies, the head of the National Audit Office, in a letter this week. Issues like the contingency arrangements do not take into account the need for revised working arrangements such as social distancing on construction projects.

“At the very least, with the new 2033 deadline, a calculation should have been made on the expected cost increases,” says Dame Cheryl. “Even before Covid-19, demand was falling. We need to know whether this project is value for money for hard-pressed taxpayers and we need to know it urgently.”