HS2 boss defends spending £100m on ‘bat shed’ that Starmer described as ‘absurd’
At the committee hearing (see 12.15pm) Mark Wild, the HS2 chief executive, also defended the decision spend £100m on what has been described as a “bat shed” to protect the animals from the trains. Keir Starmer recently said this investment was “absurd”, and an example of why planning laws needed radical reform.
Asked about the cost, Wild said:
I understand why that would raise public concern; it seems an extraordinary amount of money.
But I would say this: I have actually visited this structure myself in my first weeks to see it, it is of great concern to me to understand.
This is a considerable engineering structure. It is on a railway that will travel at over 200 miles an hour, so the engineering of this whole structure is quite considerable.
At the end of the day, HS2 Ltd must obviously comply with the law, and the law says that we must mitigate damage, harm, to protected species.
Asked whether he had any regrets about decision to build this, Wild replied:
I can’t apologise for complying with the law. This structure is the most appropriate. It is an extraordinary amount of money but it is in the context of a scheme that is costing tens of billions and it’s built for 120 years.
Dame Bernadette Kelly, permanent secretary at the Department for Transport, told the committee that the DfT and the Treasury had “challenged” the building of the bat tunnel, but found it was “the most efficient remedy” for protecting the species.
Key events
The latest edition of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast is out. Here it is, with John Harris, Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey discussing the politics of 2024.
Starmer faces grilling by liaison committee on economy, public services and foreign policy
Keir Starmer will be up at the liaison committee at 2.30pm. He does not know the questions he will be getting, but he does know who will be asking questions on what topics, because the committee has revealed this.
The hearing will cover three themes.
Growth and economy questions will come from Liam Byrne (Lab, business committee chair), Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dem, environment committee chair), Caroline Dinenage (Con, culture committee chair), Florence Eshalomi (Lab, housing committee chair) and Toby Perkins (Lab, environmental audit committee chair.
Public services and Plan for Change questions will come from Debbie Abrahams (Lab, work and pensions committee chair), Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Con, public accounts committee chair) and Helen Hayes (Lab, education committee chair).
And global affairs and security questions will come from Karen Bradley (Con, home affairs committee chair), Tan Dhesi (Lab, defence committee chair) and Emily Thornberry (Lab, foreign affairs committee chair).
The health miniser, Karin Smyth, refused to say whether the extra money for hospices announced this morning in the Commons would fully compensate them for the impact of the national insurance increase. (See 11.01am.) At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson also declined to answer this question. Asked if hospices would have all their losses covered, he said he would not “draw a kind of parallel”.
Back to HS2, and at the public accounts committee hearing this morning civil servants and executives from the firm declined to put a clear estimate on when high-speed trains would be running between Euston and Birmingham.
The HS2 chief executive Mark Wild said:
You would hope that in the 2030s you would have a functioning railway, but the truth is I do need to do the work.
As PA Media reports, trains are expected to run between Old Oak Common in west London and Birmingham at some point between 2029 and 2032. Dame Bernadette Kelly, permanent secretary at the Department for Transport, said the final leg, between Old Oak Common and Euston in central London, was due to finish by 2036 at the latest. “Our initial work, or current work, on Euston suggests we are still within that parameter,” she said.
Summing up what they had learned during the hearing, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Conservative chair of the committee, said:
We don’t know when the reset is going to take place, we don’t know what the cost is going to be, and we don’t know when it is likely to come into operation.
A Spanish state-owned shipbuilder will buy Belfast-based Harland & Wolff in a rescue deal that will secure all four of its shipyards and save about 1,000 jobs, Julia Kollewe and Lisa O’Carroll report. Navantia is to acquire H&W’s Belfast shipyard where the Titanic was built, as well as the Arnish and Methil yards in Scotland, and the Appledore site in Devon, ending months of uncertainty for its employees.
Talks between Navantia and the UK government had been taking place since H&W went into administration in September after ministers refused to provide taxpayer-funded support to keep it going.
In a statement in the Commons about the deal, Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, said:
The former government’s inability to make a decision left the yards and the workforce in limbo and that is why I made clear in my first weeks in this job that no taxpayer guarantee or loan would be provided.
And I was dismayed that when I did so, the Conservative party opposed that, knowing as they did that with a guarantee or loan, they stood at significant risk losing an eyewatering amount of taxpayers’ money. That was deeply irresponsible.
No 10 defends Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq and says she denies involvement in alleged corruption in Bangladesh
Downing Street has said Keir Starmer has confidence in Tulip Siddiq, a Treasury minister, even though she has been named in a Bangladeshi anti-corruption probe, PA Media reports. PA says:
Siddiq has “denied any involvement in the claims” accusing her of involvement in embezzlement, according to the prime minister’s spokesman, and continues to maintain her responsibility as a minister overseeing UK anti-corruption efforts.
Pressed about whether there was any conflict of interest in Siddiq’s involvement in a 2013 Bangladeshi deal with Russia over a nuclear power plant and her ministerial role, the spokesman said: “I can’t speak to events that happened prior to a minister’s time in government.”
He added there was a “very clear declaration process” for ministers, which had been followed.
Siddiq has not been formally contacted by relevant Bangladeshi authorities, it is understood.
The minister is alleged to have been involved in brokering a 2013 deal with Russia for a nuclear power plant in Bangladesh in which large sums of cash were embezzled. Her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, was until recently prime minister of Bangladesh for more than 20 years, and is facing a wider investigation by an anti-corruption commission in the south Asian country.
Siddiq has been approached for comment, and the Labour party has declined to comment.
But sources close to the minister have described the allegations as “spurious”.
HS2 boss defends spending £100m on ‘bat shed’ that Starmer described as ‘absurd’
At the committee hearing (see 12.15pm) Mark Wild, the HS2 chief executive, also defended the decision spend £100m on what has been described as a “bat shed” to protect the animals from the trains. Keir Starmer recently said this investment was “absurd”, and an example of why planning laws needed radical reform.
Asked about the cost, Wild said:
I understand why that would raise public concern; it seems an extraordinary amount of money.
But I would say this: I have actually visited this structure myself in my first weeks to see it, it is of great concern to me to understand.
This is a considerable engineering structure. It is on a railway that will travel at over 200 miles an hour, so the engineering of this whole structure is quite considerable.
At the end of the day, HS2 Ltd must obviously comply with the law, and the law says that we must mitigate damage, harm, to protected species.
Asked whether he had any regrets about decision to build this, Wild replied:
I can’t apologise for complying with the law. This structure is the most appropriate. It is an extraordinary amount of money but it is in the context of a scheme that is costing tens of billions and it’s built for 120 years.
Dame Bernadette Kelly, permanent secretary at the Department for Transport, told the committee that the DfT and the Treasury had “challenged” the building of the bat tunnel, but found it was “the most efficient remedy” for protecting the species.
Government does not know how much HS2 will cost, MPs told
The Department for Transport does not know how much HS2 will cost, MPs were told today.
Dame Berndadette Kelly, permanent secretary at the DfT, made the admission at a public accounts committee hearing this morning. She said:
We do not currently have an agreed cost estimate now for phase one.
HS2 Ltd has provided a cost estimate of £54-66bn, in 2019 prices, but Kelly said the DfT did not “regard it as a reliable and agreed cost estimate”. She added:
I say with great regret, sitting before the committee, that is the situation.
She said that coming up with an agreed cost estimate would be “extremely complex” and would not be done until “well into 2025”.
Explaining what had gone wrong, Mark Wild, the HS2 chief executive said there were three “systemic” and “enduring” problems.
Construction started way too early. The rush to start before mature design consents was really, in retrospect, a mistake.
He also said that HS2 had “not managed the risk profile in an optimal way” and that “productivity assumptions at the beginning have not come to pass”.
Steve Reed accuses Tories of weaponising personal tragedy as part of their campaign against farm tax
Steve Reed, the environment secretary, has accused the Conservative of weaponising a personal tragedy as part of their campaign against what they call the family farm tax.
He made the comment during environment questions in the Commons in response to a question from his Tory shadow, Victoria Atkins, about the budget plan to extend inheritance tax so that it covers some farms.
Atkins said:
In recent weeks, a farmer took himself off to a remote part of his farm and killed himself. The message he left his family, who wish to remain anonymous, is that he did this because he feared becoming a financial burden to his family because of changes to inheritance tax. This is the human cost of the figures that the secretary of state provides so casually. What does the secretary of state say to that grieving family?
Atkins also asked for suicide figures for farmers and landowners to be published on a monthly basis “so that we – the house – and the outside community can understand the human costs”.
In response, Reed said:
I send my heartfelt sympathies to that family but I think it is irresponsible in the extreme to seek to weaponise a personal tragedy of that kind in this way. Where there is mental ill health then there needs to be support for that, and this government is investing in it.
She knows from the last year for which data is available that the vast majority of claimants will pay absolutely nothing following the changes to APR [agricultural property relief – the inheritance tax exemption].
On suicide figures, Reed said that mental health was a matter for the NHS, and that Atkins “broke the NHS” when she was health secretary.
In response to another question during the session, Reed said that Labour recognised that farmers are out to make a profit, and he claimed the Conservatives did not. He said:
The shadow secretary of state, as well as the former prime minister, keep telling farmers they’re not in it for the money. We know that they are.
They’re businesses that need to make a profit, and our new deal for farmers, including increasing supply chain fairness is intended to make farms profitable and successful for the future, in a way that they were not under the previous government.
Conservatives argue that, for many farmers, wanting to be able to pass the farm on to the next generation is a key motive for what they do, which is why they view the inheritance tax as pernicious.
Lisa O’Carroll
Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly has waded into the Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) row saying the women had been treated “appallingly”.
“My mother is a Waspi woman and she and many women were treated appallingly and shabbily and deserve that to be recognised,” said the DUP minister, as Labour divisions over the decision not to pay compensation to the Waspi pensioners deepened.
Yesterday Scotland first minister John Swinney said the decision was a “serious embarassment” for Labour.
Commenting on the announcement, Helen Morgan, the Lib Dem health spokesperson, said:
This extra funding will be welcome for hospices, patients who need end-of-life care, and their loved ones, and it must be followed by a real focus on improving end-of-life care in the new 10-year NHS plan.
However, it is deeply disappointing that ministers are still not protecting hospices and other crucial health and care providers – including GPs, dentists, pharmacists and care homes – from their national insurance hike.
Hospice UK, which represents the hospice sector, has welcomed the government’s announcement. Its CEO, Toby Porter, said:
Today’s announcement will be hugely welcomed by hospices, and those who rely on their services. Hospices not only provide vital care for patients and families, but also relieve pressure on the NHS.
This funding will allow hospices to continue to reach hundreds of thousands of people every year with high-quality, compassionate care.
Martin Vickers (Con) accused the government of “giving with one hand and taking with another”. He asked when individual hospices would find out how much extra they would receive.
Smyth said those allocations would be made in the new year, after consultations with the sector.
Paul Holmes (Con) said it beggared belief that Smyth expected MPs to be grateful to the government for giving money to hospices that it had taken away in the first place. He said a hospice in his constuency would need an extra £1m to cover the cost of the national insurance increase. He asked the minister if she could assure him that the extra funding announced today would cover that.
Smyth said what beggared belief was that Tory MPs were defending the record of the last government on hospice funding. She did not address the specific question about the hospice in Holmes’ Hamble Valley constituency.
Minister refuses to confirm extra hospice funding will fully compensate sector for national insurance increase
Bob Blackman (Con) told Karin Smyth she still had not said whether or not this extra money would fully compensate hospices for the national insurance rise. He asked her again to answer.
Smyth sidestepped the question, saying the Conservatives had 14 years to sort out hospice funding.
