It should be borne in mind that this Bill has not even become legitimate 'LAW' as yet; the House of Lords has not yet approved it; the Queen has not yet granted it the "Royal Assent"; and, the 'second reading' in the House of Commons was voted on under the unlawful influence of the political party WHIPS; which has no true legality at all. So where does the government get the true legality for spending and wasting all this money?
Especially when considering that, the Dept of Health organisation, 'NICE' the "National Institute for Health and Care Excellence" spends virtually every hour of each day determining 'who shall live' and 'who must die' ? Entirely due to lack of NHS funding. Read this report by, ANDREW GILLIGAN, most carefully; and, your 'blood' should boil,
£2bn
spent and not an inch of HS2 track
AndrewGilligan
The high-speed railway known as
HS2 has cost more than £2bn of public money even before the legislation to
build it has been passed by parliament.
New figures obtained by The
Sunday Times show that spending on the troubled project is approaching the cost
of building the M25 — without an inch of track being laid.
The London orbital motorway,
which opened in 1986, cost £1bn to build, equivalent to £2.7bn at 2016 prices.
Opponents of HS2 said the project
— which lost its chief executive, Simon Kirby, last week — was “out of control”
and accused the government of “deliberately wasting money” to make it harder to
cancel.
“The view seems to be that the more they
spend now, the more difficult it is to stop,” said Hilary Wharf, director of
the HS2 Action Alliance.
HS2 is spending as much as £35m a
month on buying properties, many of them in Yorkshire and the East Midlands,
where the line is not due to open for at least 17 years. Many homes, some worth
up to £3m, have been left empty and boarded up, with no effort made to let
them, and thousands of pounds more have been spent on security.
The company is also conducting
“ridiculous” numbers of ecology and wildlife surveys, according to landowners
and residents along the proposed route.
The view seems to be that the more that HS2 spends now, the
more difficult it is to stop
One farmer, Robert Brown, of
Hunts Green Farm, near Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, said he had had 46
visits from HS2 since January to survey bats, owls, reptiles and trees. For
each visit, the company pays a “facility fee” of between £200 and £300, shared
by him, his landlords and his agents, he said.
“Before, they were just coming
now and again, but this year it’s got ridiculous. I just can’t believe they
come back week after week doing the same things,” Brown said. “The bat survey
people, there’s eight of them sit in a circle round the farm buildings like
little gnomes, and two more sitting in a car. They come between 8pm and 10pm,
then they come back at 3am and sit around until 5.30 . . . And I’m just one
farm — God knows how many others they’re paying.”
The view seems to be that the
more that HS2 speends now, the more difficult it is to stop Brown and other
landowners are also paid for allowing ground surveys on their land. Offered
£1,000 for allowing one survey, one farmer near Wendover asked HS2 to “add a
nought” and was given it, Wharf said.
Even householders with little or
no land have had up to 17 visits at up to £1,000 a time, she said. Payments are
sometimes made even when land is not used. Twenty householders in the villages
of Upper and Lower Boddington were paid by HS2 to place listening devices on
their land, but only four devices were placed.
HS2 Ltd, the holding company for
the project, had spent a total of £1.4bn by the end of March 2016, according to
its most recent annual report. However, a further £442m was spent “off the
books” on property, which was paid for by the Department for Transport.
This spending has accelerated
since March, with property purchases of almost £18m in April alone, according
to freedom of information requests.
The most expensive property purchased was the former
National
Temperance Hospital, near Euston,
north London, bought for £28.5m. The most expensive residential property was
Springfield Farm, near Great Missenden, which cost taxpayers £5.5m.
HS2 also faces a huge bill for buying
property at Granby Terrace, also near Euston. The company ignored an offer from
the owners to sell them the site before it was developed. A new block of flats
and offices has now been built there. Buying it, demolishing it and evicting
the tenants is expected to cost £4.4m more than if it had been bought as a
vacant lot.
Since March, HS2 has also spent
millions of pounds on moving its headquarters from London to showpiece offices
in Birmingham, at a rent of at least £2.8m a year. Between 200 and 300 staff
will qualify for relocation allowances of up to £12,000 each. Many who move
house will also have their stamp duty, conveyancing charges and estate agents’
fees paid.
Including spending since March,
and the costs of HS2-related work by other public bodies, such as councils, the
total amount spent on HS2 is conservatively estimated at £2.1bn.
HS2 says the total project, from London to Birmingham,
Manchester and Leeds, will cost
£55.7bn; that makes it about nine times per mile more expensive than the French
TGV network.
MPs on the public accounts
committee warned last week that urgent clarity was needed on the budget and
timetable. They said the timetable for opening phase one, to Birmingham, by
2026 was overambitious and cost estimates for phase two, to Manchester and
Leeds, exceeded available funding by £7bn.
A spokesman for HS2 said:
“Parliament recognises the value of advance planning for the long-term success
of major infrastructure projects, which is why it voted to allow HS2 to begin
detailed planning and industry engagement prior to royal assent.
“We take our responsibility to
the taxpayer extremely seriously and ensure value for money as we prepare to
deliver Britain’s new high-speed rail network.”
