General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Extract from today’s Sunday Times.

HS2: The secret files that expose a multibillion-pound cover-up
As the cost began to spiral, bosses allegedly shredded documents, sacked whistleblowers and used misleading projections to keep the scheme alive and the cash coming. The result was a ‘fraud against the British people’


ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES COWEN
Jonathan Calvert
,
George Arbuthnott
Saturday October 21 2023, 6.30pm, The Sunday Times
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The company in charge of constructing the HS2 railway has been accused of deliberately covering up its escalating costs to ensure politicians would keep spending billions of pounds of public money on the project.

Whistleblowers from HS2 Ltd have described how senior managers instructed staff to keep cost estimates artificially low. Each was sacked after trying to raise concerns.

They allege that for years parliament was not made aware of the true costs of the high-speed line when it voted on laws that approved the construction.

HS2’s internal fraud unit is now investigating allegations that the company deliberately covered up the cost overruns. The company denies wrongdoing.

The revelations have emerged in a three-month investigation by The Sunday Times, which has been given access to internal HS2 emails, files and cost calculations, as well as secret recordings of employees describing how cost figures were downplayed. HS2 insiders, former ministers and civil servants were interviewed as part of the investigation.

When an HS2 employee was spotted meeting a whistleblower for lunch, she was called in for two interrogations by the company’s internal investigators. Her phone was confiscated and she was pressed into handing over private messages from her personal social media account. A few months later she lost her job.

One of the whistleblowers, Stephen Cresswell, a former HS2 senior cost analyst, has made repeated attempts to alert the company’s fraud department, the National Audit Office and cabinet ministers. He alleges the company deployed a “classic playbook”, used on big publicly funded construction projects, of holding back real information on costs until after the Department for Transport (DfT) had given approval to start