HIGH SPEED TRAIN "HS2" BILL...

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.”