Hunt doubles down on HS2 amid calls for line to be cancelled

Reports said ministers were considering terminating the budget-busting route at Old Oak Common in west London due to spiralling inflation and construction costs.

It was also suggested bosses were considering delaying the Euston terminus to 2038 – or scrapping it completely.

But Mr Hunt said he did not see "any conceivable circumstances" why it would "not end up at Euston".

HS2, which will carve through more than 45 miles of Staffordshire countryside, has come under close scrutiny in recent months after it emerged its cost could hit £155bn.

Lichfield MP Michael Fabricant, a long time critic of the project, said it was time to "call an end" to HS2.

He said if the line was going to terminate at Old Oak Common it would make "even more of a mockery of what high speed rail should be".

"The original plan would have linked Birmingham New Street to London, Paris and beyond," he added. "Now it may not even get to the centre of London.

"People will not use a high speed railway unless it goes from city centre to city centre. The whole project is botched and it is time to call and end to it."

Labour peer Lord Berkeley, who in 2019 was deputy chairman of a government-commissioned review into HS2, has also called for the entire project to be scrapped.

He said: "The alternative is using Old Oak Common as a terminal station, which would work for half the number of trains that they want with a bit of redesign, but it wouldn't do the lot.

"There's not enough space for it so they couldn't do it except maybe a shuttle service from Birmingham. What's the point of building HS2 just to get to Birmingham?

"I think the whole thing should be cancelled."

Paul Forrest, director of Midlands Economic Forum, said HS2 was a "solution looking for a problem" and called for funding to be directed towards local rail schemes.

He said: "Whatever the original rationale, there have been so many shifts in purpose it is now difficult to comprehend what it is actually for. Certainly speed no longer seems an objective.

"Terminating at Old Oak Common would add potentially 32 minutes to journey time (excluding boarding) to central London. This conceivably could make HS2 travel 12 minutes longer than currently – providing of course the West Coast mailing is operating smoothly.

"In contrast to the billions being poured into the Old Oak Common Interchange, the funds could be more wisely and effectively directed toward local commuting services.

"Electrification of the Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury was estimated pre-Pandemic at £72m, whilst re-establishing direct passenger services from Wolverhampton to Walsall and onto Sutton Coldfield could be achieved at a fraction of the cost."

HS2 was originally planned to connect London with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. The Leeds leg has since been scrapped, while Mr Hunt has insisted the Manchester leg will go ahead.

It was given a budget of £56bn in 2015, but the Department for Transport conceded in 2021 that it could hit almost £100bn.

Lord Berkeley says his latest cost estimate – using the All Construction Cost index published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – is £155.52billion.

Mr Hunt said: "We have not got a good record in this country of delivering complex, expensive infrastructure quickly, but I'm incredibly proud that, for the first time in this last decade, under a Conservative government, we have shovels in the ground building HS2 and we're going to make it happen."