Recommendation 30

The Department has said that the decision not to proceed with HS2 phases 2a, 2b and East will unlock £36 billion (2023 prices) and that “every penny of the £19.8 billion committed to the Northern leg of HS2 will be reinvested in the North; every penny of the £9.6 billion committed to the Midlands leg will be reinvested in the Midlands; and the full £6.5 billion saved through our new arrangements for Euston will be spread across every other region in the country. This will be money additional to the local transport, road and rail budgets allocated at the last Spending Review and additional to what those organisations were expecting for the next decade.”60 The Department told us these figures were assumed savings from not continuing with the HS2 phases, with the 2019 prices previously used inflated to 2023 prices.61