Parliamentary Search

Written question asked by Jerome Mayhew (Conservative) on Thursday, 13 March 2025, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 17 March 2025. It was answered by Simon Lightwood (Labour) on Friday, 21 March 2025 on behalf of the Department for Transport.

High Speed Two

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of conclusion one of the Public Account Committee's report entitled HS2: Update following the Northern leg cancellation, HC 357, published 28 February 2025 on the governance of HS2.

Answer

In light of the Public Account Committee’s recent report on High Speed Two (HS2), this government’s priority is to deliver HS2 Phase 1 safely and to the lowest reasonable cost. We have set out urgent measures to get the programme back on track and have tasked Mark Wild, the new CEO of HS2 Ltd, with conducting a reset of the HS2 programme to provide a realistic budget and schedule and to deliver the remaining works.

As part of this reset, the government reinstated ministerial oversight of the project to ensure greater accountability and commissioned an independent review of the oversight of major transport infrastructure projects, which is investigating the effectiveness of forecasting and reporting of cost, schedule and benefits, as well as actions to deliver cost efficiencies.

The Department will update Parliament on the programme reset as it progresses.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
38121
Session
2024-26
Related items
Subjects
High Speed Two
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk