Claims from whistleblowers that HS2 Ltd is hiding the true cost of the project from the Department for Transport (DfT) have been rejected by the project's civils delivery director for Phase One Mike Lyons.
Independent consultant Michael Byng told an All-Party Parliamentary Rail Group (APPRG) meeting yesterday that whistleblowers have said that there are “two sets” of High Speed 2 (HS2) accounts – one "internal" and one that is shared with the DfT.
Byng claims that important cost trends are being withheld in the accounts shared with the DfT.
However Lyons refuted these claims in the APPRG meeting.
“I don’t recognise that statement,” he said. “I absolutely don’t recognise it. There’s one set of accounts and we’re working very hard to spend public money in the way we should do in terms of reducing that actual cost and we are within our funding envelope on Phase One.”
Official costs for completion of HS2 Phase One and 2a, set out in the Integrated Rail Plan, currently sit at 42.5bn. But according to the Byng's whistleblowers, the Anticipated Final Cost (AFC) is actually much higher: 92.02bn. This allegedly breaks down into 78.05bn for Phase One and 13.97bn for Phase 2a.
According to the whistleblowers' alleged figures, the 92.02bn figure includes the results of detailed pricing and shows the pricing trends, but it is the 42.5bn figure that is used for advising DfT and Treasury of the AFC of the project.
As such, Byng believes that the cost trends are being withheld from the...
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