HS2 spiralling costs

But all these folks went to the same schools, they all know each other, they marry each other, and go to the same clubs…It’s obvious what goes on to get public money to the “right sort” of chaps and chapesses

In other words, the establishment. Funny though that when someone comes along to challenge that and open it up to democratic accountability people decide they'd rather the establishment stayed in charge. 🤷‍♂️

This could be the issue that finishes him off. He probably thinks he’s making a ‘tough decision’ when everyone will be thinking he’s about to waste 30bn on a railway line that no one will want to use. If labour had any backbone they’d announce now that they will reverse Sunak’s decision and see it through. They won’t though because they’re in complete thrall to the ‘we don’t have any money’ myth.

Thing is, the project got properly going in the last years of the previous Labour administration. It's now been ploughed through the Tory heartland Home Counties (where they didn't want it) and is being stopped before it gets to the Red Wall northern counties (which mostly do want it and do desperately need it because its the hook on which every other bit of investment has been predicated for the last 12 years).

A few years ago there was a much-heralded (and very very delayed) Integrated Rail Plan. The North was repeatedly told "you can't have xxxx investment until the IRP is released" and "we can't do yyyy railway improvement until the IRP is published" and "the IRP will be setting the blueprint for all your investment and rail upgrades for the next 30 years".

The IRP was (eventually) published very late and it was met with total dismay by Northern leaders (I was in those meetings) because it wasn't really integrated at all, it was a series of piecemeal investments, no real commitment to Northern Powerhouse Rail and the abolition of the eastern leg (to Leeds) of HS2.

And now the last little bits of IRP that were actually valuable are lying in tatters at the feet of Rishi Sunak who doesn't care the slightest about rail cos he has a helicopter.

In other words, the establishment.

Sure, it's another euphemism used to describe the world that @tjagain is describing. This forum was all over Michelle Mone's dodgy PPE companies, but when it comes to engineering, it's all whiter than white? Seems plausible 🙄

The PPE stuff bypassed "the establishment"... using the excuse of timeliness... that's how they funnelled money to companies with no track record owned by donors. HS2 contracts bear no resemblance to that process in any way.

and is being stopped before it gets to the Red Wall northern counties (which mostly do want it and do desperately need it because its the hook on which every other bit of investment has been predicated for the last 12 years).

Thats the craziest thing about the whole thing. All these places have made long term investment decisions on HS2 and have already sunk millions into it. Rishi is so bloody stupid that he thinks 'yeah, sorry about that. We've changed our minds' is acceptable.

As Michael Heseltine said the other day, if you do that then nobody will believe a word you say ever again, and certainly won't invest any money on the back of your declarations, because they think that you're too flaky to be relied on. North West news were highlighting how somewhere like Crewe Council had sunk vast amounts of money into HS2 already, all of which would be wasted if it now doesn't get to Crewe

I thought HS2 was a bonkers idea, but once you've started it then you absolutely have to do the lot, otherwise its just utterly pointless

Sunak has been doing a round robin on Northern radio stations this morning which has gone about as badly as expected although it wasn't quite the Liz Truss car crash.

Radio Manchester tried to get a commitment from him about HS2 and he replied that the vast majority of people travel by car.

Now Rishi, why do you think that might be...?

Absolute cretin.

Yeah... "look at the pot holes"... is going to be part of the distraction plan.

This forum was all over Michelle Mone’s dodgy PPE companies, but when it comes to engineering

You think getting your hands on millions of masks and gowns in an emergency is the same as building a high speed rail line over a period of 25 years?

Thats the craziest thing about the whole thing. All these places have made long term investment decisions on HS2 and have already sunk millions into it. Rishi is so bloody stupid that he thinks ‘yeah, sorry about that. We’ve changed our minds’ is acceptable.

The thing I find most odd is that there is a valid debate about whether HS2 is a good idea or not (I was also on the anti side, as were many very experienced civil engineers I know), but this decision just ensures that it will be an enormous white elephant. If the tories want a £40bn monument to their craven incompetence then it looks like they're going to get exactly that.

Especially if 'theres no money to finish it' comes off the back of the 8 billion quid bung to the 4% who might pay inheritance tax, which looks highly likely

You think getting your hands on millions of masks and gowns in an emergency is the same as building a high speed rail line over a period of 25 years?

No, not really. But the processes within Whitehall and Westminster that enable it most certainly are. Like I said, like yours; the company I worked for would've been rightly horrified by accusations of corruption and would've pointed to strong anti-bribery policies and so on, and honestly at our level it's totally legitimate, but you only need glance at the links to be persuaded that there's a network behind the scenes, and TBH if we insist that somehow PPE mis-procurement and  the mis-management of large infrasture planning must be looked at separately, then as you say

people decide they’d rather the establishment stayed in charge. 🤷‍♂️

Only today the head of JCB is being investigated for tax evasion. The Tories largest donor...Dare we call it corruption?

The headline in the Guardian after Sunaks interviews this morning

Sunak suggests fixing potholes a transport priority as he refuses to tell Manchester if it will get HS2

Heres the exchange with Radio Manchester

Jameson: Sorry, I feel we’re going off topic here and I just want to keep it focused on HS2. We’re straight-talking people in the north. It’s a yes or a no. Are you scrapping the HS2 line between Birmingham and Manchester?

Sunak: But, Anna, my point to you is the vast majority of the journeys that people make are in their cars. Making sure that we make sure our roads are well maintained is very important.

I don't know about you, but that sounds like the death of the HS2 link from Manchester to Birmingham to me

Yes, clearly.

From Birmingham to [hand-wavy] near-ish to London for 4 times the original cost. Well done everybody

He no longer gives a shit (if he ever did in the first place).
He's out of here at the next general election, off to some cushy number in finance or with Big Oil and he's just made sure that everyone remains wedded to their cars (and therefore to Big Oil) for as long as possible to ensure the profits keep coming in as the planet burns.

Notice how he doesn't seem to have reviewed the sky high costs of the road building programme...?

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like the death of the HS2 link from Manchester to Birmingham to me

It was a week ago.

He is out to bribe voters at the election, and he hears the vocal car lobby and sees that there are votes there...

Any attempted comparison of HS2 procurement and contract awards with PPE is laughable.
HS2 is a long term delivery supported by many years of planning with checks, balances and both internal & external controls; it also has heavy oversight by the Treasury and the NAO.
Not in any way comparable with PPE - the acquisition of which was knee jerk, unplanned, uncoordinated and had panic written all over it.

tj - you are now changing your tune; first it was all about bribery and corruption but you could not provide examples with evidence - now you're referring to 'influence and nudge'.
To be accurate, you should be referring to 'attempts to influence and nudge'.
You have chosen to ignore posts from people with direct experience of public sector procurement and tendering; nor have you given any weight to dovbiker's experience in a gov department.
What you have done is indulge in tinfoil hattery and focus on posts which are not rooted in practical, relevant experience of large scale, high value projects.

Let's ignore all the pre qual stuff and just look at the end to end tender process for large scale public sector procurement in simple terms - tenderers have been assessed as technically qualified and financially sound, compliance checks completed, tender assessment criteria have been developed and shared with all tenderers as a legal requirement, tender developed and issued - probably multi stage, tender panel established with procurement/technical/legal representation, tenders assessed against published criteria, tenderers invited to make formal presentations, required technical and financial clarifications received, further rounds of review and assessment, possible external review of assessments, evaluation report produced with recommendation on contract award supported by rationale, recommendation reviewed and approved by decision maker(s), standstill period allows for challenge from unsuccessful tenderer(s), contract finalised and awarded.

HS2 because of it's size, profile, impacts, complexity will have been - and still is - subject to onerous oversight by the Treasury and the NAO will have been all over it

In my experience, it is normal for decision maker(s) to robustly challenge contract award recommendations but I have never been involved in a process where the recommendation was rejected which suggests - to me, at least - that the process is as fair, unbiased and honest as is practically possible.

For the record I have led procurement programmes and tenders with values upto £270 million so have, I think, some understanding.

molgrips - some of this ^^^ may help you understand how the process works (in outline) and you can then take a view on if/how 'influence and nudge' could come into play.

Only today the head of JCB is being investigated for tax evasion.

We're fast approaching the point where, if you want to be British, you pay tax like the Americans do on anything earned throughout the world.

Don't tell me you're a patriot if you funnel income through Switzerland or any other tax haven.

HS2 because of it’s size, profile, impacts, complexity will have been – and still is – subject to onerous oversight by the Treasury and the NAO will have been all over it

Ha, ha, ha. Described in the Guardian yesterday as the management were kids with the golden credit card. Numerous managers on £150k and senior managers on 250k plus, these are de facto public sector employees.

Don't pee on my leg and say it's raining. It's a symptom of who of my friends benefits if we build this, NOT what is good for the country? The latter is rigourous public spending the former is barely concealed corruption.

For the record I have led procurement programmes and tenders with values upto £270 million so have, I think, some understanding.

Have you ever lost a bid in a way you consider to be unfair and suspected outside influence?

With regarding 'stacking' of requirements or RFPs to influence the bid process, I think I have seen this at work. The customer has seen a product and thinks 'oh that looks good, it does X, Y and Z that the other products don't do' but they still need to go through their process, so they put out an RFP saying 'the product needs to do X, Y and Z'. Then we say 'no' so we don't win the bid. A lot of RFPs clearly have lists of product features lifted from marketing material rather than actual project requirements. So it can be manipulated of course, as has been said. The real question is wether or not you really need X, Y and Z or if they just fancy the idea based on sentiment, or marketing, or some prior experience, or if you want to give business to the company that sells product that does X,Y and Z. And there could be many reasons for it. We've also won business for the some of the same reasons.

Clearly this stuff is far simpler than HS2 though, but of course there's far less oversight.

sandwich - what is your point?
HS2 exec team are well paid; what's the problem?

molgrips - I've been on both client and contractor sides.
As contractor, I've been on the losing side and, on occasion, there have been mutterings but they have been nothing other than noises from sore losers.
The usual reasons for losing are commercial (price/risk/margin), less than optimal technical proposal or programme (unacceptably long or unfeasibly short).
Unfair decisions can happen and unfair influence can be present but these are much more likely to occur in the private sector.
Large scale, high value public sector projects have multiple layers of controls which - IMO - work well.

In an attempt to stop any further attempted - and spurious - comparisons with PPE it's essential to understand that covid related PPE procurement was undertaken using an emergency provision in the OJEU regs.

Numerous managers on £150k and senior managers on 250k plus, these are de facto public sector employees.

How does that compare with other high end jobs?

Only today the head of JCB is being investigated for tax evasion. The Tories largest donor…Dare we call it corruption?

Surely it would be much more corrupt if he wasn't being investigated?

Every time a project like HS2 becomes a costly fiasco, we wonder why. So let me tell you: it’s clientelism from George Monbiot in the Guardian

Only today the head of JCB is being investigated for tax evasion. The Tories largest donor…Dare we call it corruption?

Well apparently being the Tories' largest donor doesn't get you out of HMRC investigations, so no...

Honestly, Monbiot can get in the sea at this point. On the one hand he bangs on about the environment, how we should be more environmentally conscious with our choices which includes travelling by train; but on the other hand he doesn't want us to get trains that are fit for doing what he wants us to do.

That article is polemic, it's of no actual use at all in terms of deepening understanding of anything. It's no better than TJs arguments.

Most of the time I agree with Monbiot. My views on HS2 back when it announced were similar to those in the original article, and yes we suffer from a culture of clientelism in the UK. But short of having a revolution that's how the whole system works. Even under Corbyn/McDonnell it wouldn't have been any different. The reality is that govt decides what to do based on what experts tell them, and few of those experts are truly independent. When asking if we should build a high speed rail line, the govt will go and seek advice from industry leaders and civil engineers. Those people will them tell them to build it because funnily enough they're engineers and strangely supportive of building large infrastructure projects. I really don't see what's weird or corrupt about that. It's a bit like asking doctors if we should build more hospitals. 🤷‍♂️

It always amazes me that anyone takes Monbiot seriously.

I put him in the same category as Hugh Fearnly-****install and various other upper middle class idiots who loftily lecture everybody from their ivory towers about how to live their lives, while being utterly clueless about what life is like for most people or how the real world actually functions

Best to just ignore them

yes we suffer from a culture of clientelism in the UK

I think we are a lot less clientelistic than most countries. It's really difficult to eliminate any kind of personal relationship from business dealings. The public school old boy network is an issue, but that's ****ing Tories for you.

few of those experts are truly independent

Exactly - everyone has preferences. You may like a company's product, so you work with them, then you build a working relationship with them and you become professional friends with the people there you work with, and suddenly you're favouring your mates. Same way that people always recommend the bike they have.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66998692

I did like this from Monbiot though -

The case for HS2 always was a baggage train of bullshit.

Its true, the moment they cancelled the link from HS1 to HS2 it became a white elephant. An infrastructure project that would only go ahead because the politicians had tried so hard to convince us it was needed they couldn't row back on it. Lets not forget who was the chancellor when the real costs started rolling in.

Obviously once Brexit happened then the HS1>HS2 link was never going to be resurrected so then would have been the time to redraw the UK's transport map.

When asking if we should build a high speed rail line, the govt will go and seek advice from industry leaders and civil engineers. Those people will them tell them to build it because funnily enough they’re engineers and strangely supportive of building large infrastructure projects.

That's true to a degree, but there are always opponents and people "selling" competing solutions - more roads, more airport expansion, or doing nothing and spending the money on other stuff entirely - and there is economic analysis, so it's not like there is an unopposed lobby.

This on top of cancelling loads of other things, like new power stations, electrification of other rail lines (yep - hope you didn't buy £100m of electric trains on the promise of electrification that subsequently got cancelled) etc.

How to make Britain look even more clueless, short-termist and untrustable to every other country and potential investor in the world. Marvellous.

Edit - wrong Rishi thread

and suddenly you’re favouring your mates. 

🤦

HS2 procurement is some of the most rigorous and transparent this country has ever seen. It takes literal years to develop bids for the larger packages. I'm not saying it's necessarily been great value as a result of the strategy and risk assignment. I'm also not saying that HS2 is cheap.

But anyone suggesting that major HS2 contracts were handed out on the basis of political donations or because Jenny at HS2 likes Nathan at Balfour Beatty just doesn't know what they're talking about.

But anyone suggesting that major HS2 contracts were handed out on the basis of political donations or because Jenny at HS2 likes Nathan at Balfour Beatty just doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Unless you could read the writing on the wall a decade ago and realise that there’s a brilliant option for development on 300 miles of compulsory-purchased land which is shortly going to fall back onto the market.

just to salt the earth.....

https://twitter.com/diamondgeezer/status/1709563902520869343?t=jAWJDIeetev2fVJJBs07vA&s=19

This guy will literally do anything to try and be popular.

Pathetic.

Money will be put to good use rather than HS2.

Starmer can now be the champion of HS2 ... LOL!

But anyone suggesting that major HS2 contracts were handed out on the basis of political donations or because Jenny at HS2 likes Nathan at Balfour Beatty just doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

That wasn't what I was talking about.

I really feel for the poor sods who've given up their homes just to see the land back on the open market. Christ, there must be so much anger and hurt.

Unless you could read the writing on the wall a decade ago and realise that there’s a brilliant option for development on 300 miles of compulsory-purchased land which is shortly going to fall back onto the market.

To be honest mate if there were property developers who could accurately predict the behaviour of this shambolic shower of ****s ten years in the future so that they foresaw the outcome today - they deserve the money.

I really feel for the poor sods who’ve given up their homes just to see the land back on the open market. Christ, there must be so much anger and hurt.

They won't be able to buy back at the same price they were compensated for anymore. Developers will move in instead.

Yup. Should be an automatic "right of return" from compulsory purchase but there's not.

Quick reminder that £2bn has already been spent on Euston, and that this is literally the 3rd redesign. It cost £200m just to put the project on pause- literally to stop doing anything. So the reduced plan is still going to cost more than the original budget, while delivering less, against a cut-down plan that no longer makes any sense. Hurrah.

Now if I read things correctly the suggestion is that the Manchester link cost is around £36 billion (that's the amount Rishi says will be saved by cancelling it). The government's own report said HS2 would be worth £24 billion a year to the economies of the North. So it pays for itself in 18 months.

On Saturday I used South Korea's high speed line (KTX) to get from Busan in the South to Seoul in the North, 400km so a touch more than the distance from London to Manchester.

It cost about £20Bn or so, about a decade ago.

It took us about three hours and cost about £30 each. Fastest journey time is 2h20.

Trains were leaving every thirty minutes, although it is a good idea to pre-book (you can't just walk on).

There were about 6 stops. The train was full but not crowded. It arrived a few minutes late.

It was a pretty nice experience. If I had to make one criticism, you can't buy tickets from the ticket machines with a non-Korean credit card.