Patrick McLoughlin defends High Speed Rail 2 as 'right for Britain'

The National Audit Office yesterday raised doubts over the viability of the scheme to run 225 mph trains on a 351-mile route from London to Leeds and Manchester via Birmingham.

However, Patrick McLoughlin, who is overseeing the £33 billion project, said people should consider how the railway will help make Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham more prosperous, rather than looking at narrow cost estimates.

He also said train overcrowing will be eased by the new trains, which will cut through vast swaths of the English countryside.

Speaking to BBC Radio Four's Today Programme, he said data used by the NAO was out of date and did not give a true picture of the benefits HS2 could bring.

"This is wider than just a benefit-cost ratio argument," he said. "If you go and talk to cities in Leeds, in Manchester, in Birmingham, they will say how very important they think this is.

"One of the things I've got to do as transport secretary is see how we can benefit other regions in and around those particular areas so they all get a benefit from this. We've got 65 miles of high speed line in this country. When that was built there was huge controversy around it. It wasn't something that people said 'oh, HS1 is a great idea'. But 10 million people used that line last year."

Simon Burns, another transport minister, also leapt to the defence of the project.

Speaking on ITV's Daybreak, he said the Government does not "recognise" the figures produced by the NAO.

"This has been properly costed, it has been constantly reviewed on cost grounds to make sure we don't have a black hole.," he said.

"I believe that what they have done is they have produced a report on outdated information that is no longer relevant and we're constantly updating, and we will be publishing later this year. They wouldn't have been able to produce the reports 18 months ago on that data because that data didn't exist."

Criticism by the NAO is the latest blow to be suffered by the Government over the project and comes within months of the High Court ordering the Department for Transport to re-run its consultation over its compensation arrangements for up to 300,000 households which have been blighted by the plans.

Despite being backed by all three parties the project, which will see trains hurtling through the countryside, including the Chilterns, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, has faced fierce opposition from environmentalists and many Tory MPs whose constituency lie on the route.

Margaret Hodge MP, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee which will consider the report, was withering in her reaction. She said: "The Department has produced a business case that is clearly not up to scratch. Some of their assumptions are just ludicrous.”

Successive Transport Secretaries have argued that the line will not only generate jobs but also “rebalance” the economy between north and south.

These assertions were dismissed by the NAO. “The analysis does not estimate how many of these jobs are additional and how many would have been created without investment in a high-speed line.

“The business case provides little supporting evidence to prove that a high-speed line will help to rebalance the economy by supporting regional growth.”

Another key plank in the case for HS2 - the business benefit of faster journeys - was also ridiculed by the NAO.

It said: “The Department’s methodology uses a simplifying assumption that time spent travelling is unproductive and business travellers will use all the time saved from faster journeys to work.

“Research commissioned by the department suggests that business travellers do work on trains for at least part of their journeys, and a proportion of the time saved from faster journeys may be used for leisure purposes.”

The DfT was also criticised for basing its arguments on data which was more than a decade old.

In its report the NAO also questioned whether the DfT, which was involved in a number of other major projects at a time when it had undergone “considerable organisational change” could even meet the timetable it had set itself.

Under the Government’s plans, the first trains, running from London to Birmingham, should enter service in 2032.

Not only was the timetable tight, but the report also questioned whether it was affordable with the huge financial commitment to HS2 in danger of restricting the Government’s ability to pay for other major capital projects.

The NAO report also questioned the “limited evidence” of demand for general growth in rail travel, which underlies the business case for the high speed rail link.

The timetable for planning phase one of the project - from London to Birmingham with work due to start in 2016/17 - was “challenging”, the NAO said.

This challenging timetable “makes delivering this work difficult and increases the risk that the programme will have a weak foundation for securing and demonstrating success in the future”, the report said.

Expressing “reservations” about the business case for HS2, the NAO said the Department for Transport’s methodology for appraising the project put a high emphasis on journey-time savings, from faster and more reliable journeys.

Amyas Morse, the head of the NAO, said: “It’s too early in the HS2 programme to conclude on the likelihood of its achieving value for money. Our concern at this point is the lack of clarity around the department’s objectives.”

Government sources said that NAO’s report was out of date and had failed to take into account a court room battle in January.

Alison Munro, HS2’s chief executive, added: “Birmingham's position at the heart of Britain's new high speed rail network was set out in January with the publication of the preferred route for phase two.

“Along with significantly reduced journey times to Leeds, London, Manchester, Sheffield and the East Midlands, HS2 will free up much-needed capacity on existing lines.

“The region will also benefit from an expected 8,000 jobs created through the regeneration and development of the HS2 interchange at Birmingham Airport and Curzon Street stations, as well as opportunities from the 9,000 construction jobs on phase one.”