{"id":193910,"date":"2025-06-18T08:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T08:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/193910\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T08:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T08:22:08","slug":"uk-an-international-laughing-stock-after-hs2-to-birmingham-to-be-delayed-again-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/193910\/","title":{"rendered":"UK an ‘international laughing stock’ after HS2 to Birmingham to be delayed again | UK | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK has been turned into an international \u201claughing stock\u201d over the failure to control the HS2<\/a> rail project, a minister acknowledged. Housing and planning minister Matthew Pennycook said there were \u201cserious problems\u201d with HS2 \u201cin terms of accountability, project overruns, costs\u201d.<\/p>\n

He told LBC the way HS2 and other infrastructure projects had been handled \u201creflect very poorly on us\u201d as a country. He said the Planning and Infrastructure Bill includes a number of changes that will \u201cspeed up the consenting process for nationally significant infrastructure\u201d and this week\u2019s infrastructure strategy \u201cseeks to reverse the frankly erratic decisions and underinvestment we\u2019ve seen over the past 14 years\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we do need to learn the lessons, take a different approach, ensure that we\u2019re getting infrastructure investment going in, certainty and stability about investment and getting to grip with project timelines and costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I think, frankly, when it comes to HS2, in some ways, we\u2019re a bit of a laughing stock around the world in terms of how we handle infrastructure. As a Government, we\u2019re absolutely determined to turn that around.\u201d<\/p>\n

This comes after the Government is reportedly poised to announce yet another delay to the beleaguered project, with the London to Birmingham line no longer to be ready for launch by 2033.<\/p>\n

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is set to tell the Commons today that she is drawing a \u201cline in the sand\u201d over the rail project.<\/p>\n

Lord Tony Berkeley branded the HS2 rail project \u201cchaos\u201d as he insisted it should be stopped. The Labour peer, who served as deputy chairman of a government review into HS2, told BBC<\/a> Radio 4\u2019s Today programme: \u201cIt\u2019s chaos, and we haven\u2019t been told anything about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cRishi Sunak<\/a>, after all, cancelled it 18 months ago. That was the previous government but everybody in HS2 seems to have ignored it and the Government\u2019s ignored it by continuing to pour money down it when they should have stopped 18 months ago and they should still stop today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve wasted billions already. I think that the first thing to do is to stop digging when you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re doing and where it\u2019s going to end up, and I would put HS2 into administration. Let the administrators sort it out and then take a clear, simple look at what they want to achieve and get it done in a much more cost effective way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK has been turned into an international \u201claughing stock\u201d over the failure to control the HS2 rail…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,29350,79113,807,79114,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-193910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-hs2","13":"tag-hs2-delays","14":"tag-keir-starmer","15":"tag-keir-starmer-latest","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114703403962936917","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}