BREAKING: Parts of HS2 line to be delayed for two years

Well, there is already anger from some senior local government leaders that it's a betrayal of cities like Birmingham and Manchester and calls into question the government's whole levelling up agenda. Now what has happened is that Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, has at the very end of Commons business on Thursday, and the House is not sitting tomorrow. He has produced a written statement, a written statement, hasn't turned up in the House of Commons to deliver an oral statement and face questions from MPs. He has delivered a written statement, including this news about HS2. There has in the last couple of minutes between been an angry protest from a Labour MP, Sarah Owen, complaining about how Mr Harper did not see fit to come to the House. She said this is an outrageous attempt to avoid scrutiny, and Nigel Evans, the Deputy Speaker, has more or less agreed with her and said that the House is not sitting tomorrow, and he said there has to be an expectation that MPs will have the opportunity to question ministers on the statement. In other words, Mr Speaker, Lindsay Hall is going to allow an urgent question on Monday.

Let me just take you through the key bits of Mr Harper's written statement. Now it begins, critics would say, laughably with the words HS2 is making good progress. It talks about how much money has been spent, 20 billion on phase one, London and the West Midlands and so on, number of jobs and so on. The government is prioritising, Mr Harper says, HS2's initial services between Old Oak Common in London, that's to the west of London, and Birmingham Curson Street to provide delivery of passenger benefits as soon as possible. Now, on Euston Station, he says this, we remain committed to delivering HS2 services to Euston and will address affordability pressures to ensure the overall spending profile is manageable. We will therefore take the time to ensure we have an affordable and deliverable station design delivering Euston along high speed infrastructure to Manchester. And then the key bit about Birmingham and crew, the government says it is committed to delivering HS2 between Birmingham and crew.

We have seen significant inflationary pressure and increased project costs and so we will re-phase construction by two years, re-phase, in other words delay, with an aim to deliver high speed services to crew in the north west as soon as possible after accounting for the delay in construction. This is just days before the budget, this is the Chancellor imposing a massive squeeze on capital spending across Whitehall and clearly the Treasury wanted this out in the open before budget day, so there was the massive row about HS2 on budget day. Well, there is going to be a big row because opponents are furious. Some Tory MPs who are opposed to it will say, why not scrap the whole thing, but the government has insisted it is going ahead. It is just slowing it down, putting the brakes on it and major parts of it are now in some doubt including the redevelopment of Euston Station.

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