Business leaders call for HS2 scrapping
Twenty-one business leaders have written an open letter to the Daily Telegraph slamming the HS2 high-speed rail project as "a white elephant". Signatories, including Next chief executive Lord Wolfson, described the multibillion-pound scheme from London to Birmingham as "a vanity project".
In the letter, which appeared in the newspaper this morning, the group said it would be wrong to spend more than £30bn on a "train set that only a minority of fortunate passengers will use".
The scheme, which will involve a 200mph train line from London to Birmingham, and eventually to the North of the country, has already received mass opposition from communities and councils in Warwickshire.
Today’s letter read: "An extremely expensive white elephant isn't what the economy needs.
"If the government want to encourage growth, there are better ways to get Britain growing and make us more competitive than getting each family to pay over £1,000 for a vanity project that we cannot afford."
Members of the Coventry-based British Chambers of Commerce signed the letter, as did Chris Kelly, the head of West Bromwich-based logistics company Keltruck. Former chancellor Nigel Lawson; Mark Littlewood, the director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs and Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, were also among the signatories.
