Secretary of State for Transport and Lord Deighton questioned on HS2

• Parliament TV: The Economic Case for HS2
• Inquiry: The Economic Case for HS2
• Select Committee for Economic Affairs

Witnesses

On Tuesday 9 December 2014 at 3.35pm in Committee Room 1 of the Palace of Westminster:

• Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin MP, Secretary of State for Transport
• Lord Deighton, former Chairman, HS2 Growth Task Force

Areas of questioning

• How the Government will stop overruns on the £50 billion cost of building HS2
• Whether the evidence base for the values of travel time savings used in the Government’s business case for HS2 are robust enough to justify a £50 billion spend
• Whether the Government’s calculations of the benefits of HS2 take adequate account of the ability to do productive work on a train journey
• Whether a different ticket pricing policy could encourage passengers to travel when trains are less full and solve the problems of rail capacity that HS2 hopes to address
• The impact that increasing demand for flexible working arrangements will have on the demand for commuter services
• Whether any towns and cities will receive a reduction in their existing rail services as a result of HS2
• The reason as to why is HS2 seen as the only solution to the capacity problem
• Whether London will benefit more from HS2 than the Midlands and the North, as evidence from France has shown Paris benefitted most from high speed rail
• The level of subsidy the taxpayer will have to pay for HS2 and the UK rail network once HS2 is operational

Further information

• About Parliament: Select Committees
• Visiting Parliament: Watch Committees