MPs have duty to back HS2 despite cost – Yorkshire Post Letters

IT was of great concern to read (The Yorkshire Post, November 23) of warnings over the possible postponement or even cancellation of the HS2 link across South Yorkshire and into Leeds.

The need for an integrated rail system involving HS2 and the Northern Powerhouse Rail is essential in a forward moving economy to maintain, and increase, competitiveness in a post-Brexit national and international economy.

If the ICE trains in Germany between Cologne and Frankfurt, and the TGV between Paris and Lyon and beyond, can provide such a high-speed service why cannot the UK?

As a Yorkshire-based businessman who uses the rail network extensively, projects of such enormity must be looked on and assessed over a very long-term basis lasting many decades of years. They are not short-term.

The political consequences of a ‘non levelling up’ perception of such a delaying decision would be difficult for recently elected Conservative MPs to defend.

The message to them is to use your influence to ensure that the Chancellor Rishi Sunak does not, in time, use HS2 as a vehicle to reduce government infrastructure spending to the detriment of Yorkshire and the North.

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