Britain's next high speed railway High Speed 2 (HS2) bill has been raised up to £102bn and the trains will not run until 2039; 13 years after it was due to be completed.
The revised numbers were announced by the transportation secretary in the commons on Tuesday blaming the tories for the new numbers.
Transportation Secretary Heidi Alexander blamed all of HS2's problems on the previously ruling conservative party.
'I can confirm that the previous government spent most of HS2's budget without laying a single mile of track. That is the shocking legacy ... If it seems like an obscene increase in times and costs, that is because it is. And if it seems like I'm angry, I am,' she said.
In June 2025, Alexander said that following 'a litany of failure' she was 'drawing a line in the sand' and the government would get HS2 finished.
Mark Wild, chief executive of the project's delivery company HS2 Ltd, was tasked with carrying out a comprehensive 'reset,'according to the BBC.
The chair of the Transport Committee, Ruth Cadbury, said the problem with HS2 was 'not just the speed, but also that spades were in the ground before the project had been fully designed, permits granted and so on.'
'It broke the mantra of major projects, which is plan slow and build fast,' she said on BBC's Today programme.
Shadow transport secretary Richard Holden responded to Alexander's claims: 'Whilst Labour talk about cost, you won't hear them admit they handed their union paymasters a 15% pay rise, costing the taxpayer £135m in the first year alone, or the fact that industry leaders are warning that their nationalisation plans will drive up costs by £10bn.'
'The railway links our two biggest economic centres, connects people with jobs and is attracting major investment before services begin. It then extends north of Birmingham to Handsacre in Staffordshire. Here, HS2 trains will connect to the West Coast Main Line for the North West and Scotland,'according to HS2's website.
Source: International Business Times UK
