Member

But after a decade and a half of Tory timelines planned then delayed, routes drawn up then cancelled, budgets calculated then blown and promises made then broken, we inherited a project that had lost the trust of the public, that created an image of a Britain woefully unable to deliver big infrastructure projects and that had been axed from swathes of the country it was originally meant to serve. Phase 1 could end up becoming one of the most expensive railway lines in the world, with projected costs soaring by £37 billion under previous Conservative Governments, and £2 billion of taxpayers’ money was sunk into phase 2 work before it was cancelled by the previous Government.