Mr Paul Kohler

I thank the Secretary of State for her statement and for advance sight of it. What we have heard today is clearly a damning indictment of Conservative mismanagement. Connecting our largest cities with high-speed rail was meant to help boost economic growth and spread opportunity. The original idea—a high-speed rail network connecting London to Manchester and Leeds—was clearly the right one, but what we have ended up with is years of delay and billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being poured down the drain, with no end in sight. The litany of errors that the Secretary of State has outlined is truly shocking and shows that the Conservatives were comatose at the wheel. A lack of oversight, trust and planning has left us with a high-speed railway drastically reduced in scale and inflated in price. The shocking allegations of fraud by a subcontractor are emblematic of the Tories’ lack of oversight and interest in properly safeguarding the public interest and public money, as we saw with the scandal of personal protective equipment procurement during covid. We must now make sure that any money lost to fraud is clawed back as soon as possible. May I ask the Secretary of State three things? First, can she guarantee that, if any fraud has taken place, any money lost will be returned to the Government and her Department as soon as possible, and that the police will be provided with the necessary resources to investigate the matter fully? Secondly, the Secretary of State has said that the ministerial taskforce set up to provide oversight on HS2 had inconsistent attendance from the then Transport Secretary and Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Does the Secretary of State agree that those right hon. Members should apologise for those particularly damning lapses? Thirdly, we share the Secretary of State’s confidence in Mark Wild and Mike Brown, but can she say when she expects to be able to give the House an accurate assessment of the scheme’s full costs and of when HS2 will finally be up and running?