Recommendation 13

We asked the Department if Ministers had looked at the impact on businesses when they made the decision to pause construction. The Department told us that the decisions Ministers were trying to make were about trying to protect the supply chain as far as they could and that this was an important part of the advice that was being given to Ministers as they considered options.30 HS2 Ltd told us that it had been working with the Department to develop various funding scenarios and best options for the HS2 programme since November last year but, with the decisions now made, it needs to determine the full extent of the impact of the pause on the contractors and subcontractors working at the Euston site.31 It intends to work with its existing suppliers to redeploy as many resources as it can to other parts of the HS2 programme but it was unable to confirm what proportion of the supply chain that would cover.32