THE Shadow Transport Secretary has said he thinks the cost of HS2 will rise to over £100 billion due to “over-engineering” of the project.

Speaking on GB News, Richard Holden said: “[HS2] is an enormous project, and I think the truth is it’s been over engineered. When we’re still looking at what to do with the Euston end of it, because the government just hasn’t decided exactly how it’s going to get it sorted out, it’s not a great situation for anybody to be in.

“I think it just goes to show, when you’re looking at some of these projects, you need to actually look at what we need as a country, rather than go for something which is so far beyond what we really needed in the first place.

“We needed the extra capacity, that was always the issue here. And I think we allowed the over engineering to take us into the wrong place.

“I think it’s going to be £100 billion plus by the end of this project.

“We could build these at the same speed as the bullet trains and they wouldn’t cost anywhere near as much. In fact, what we did is we engineered it to a situation where it was going to be the fastest in the world, which is not necessarily on an island the size of ours.

“If we look back now, a high-speed line, does it need to be as fast as this? If it was 20 miles an hour quicker or slower, we could have saved billions and billions of pounds. If it had been on a different route? There are all sorts of different questions which can be asked about it.

“The majority of people outside of London, particularly, almost all transport happens on our road network, and that’s where a lot of the investment should be taking place.

“And even in London, it’s the road network which carries the majority of passengers via both car and bus as well.”

Commenting on the tube strikes, Holden said: “One of the things [The Conservatives] certainly wouldn’t be doing is what the government are literally putting forward in the next few days, which is to abolish those minimum strike thresholds, which are going to make strikes easier.

“We’ve already seen a tripling of strikes under Sadiq Khan and now we’re looking like we’re going to be seeing three times as many as we were before. This is going to make it even easier for people to go on strike.

“Tube drivers are already earning over £70,000 pounds a year basic pay for a 35-hour week. And get this, what the strikes are about is to try and move to a 32-hour week.

“It’s just unbelievable that they’re expecting full time pay for part time work, when that full time pay is already over double the national average salary for a full-time worker.”