Open letter to Chancellor Philip Hammond, 9th February 2017

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Dear Mr Hammond

High Speed Rail, HS2

When Secretary of State for Transport you supported HS2. However, there are strong grounds for saying that the analyses supporting the scheme are fraudulent. For example, the theory underlying the economic analysis could be used to support every loss making business in the land, there has been a shameless ramping-up of the percentage on business, and now it turns out that time on a train is used as effectively as is time in an office. There are many other points illustrating the weakness and deceptions embedded within the scheme’s analyses.

In the words, of Stewart Joy, one-time Chief Economist to British Railways, in his book, The Train that Ran Away, ‘………there were those in the British Transport Commission and the railways who were prepared to, cynically, accept the rewards of high office in return for the unpalatable task of tricking the Government on a mammoth scale. Those men’, Joy wrote, ‘were either fools or knaves’.

My view is that until consultants and public officials who mislead government are at real risk of prosecution, scandals, such as presented by Joy, and now by HS2, well continue. As Chancellor, perhaps you are the only person who can possibly stop this particular nonsense. Will you try?

After all there is a deficit and frightful national debt. HS2 can only add to that.