REGARDING HS2. Not surprisingly, the Treasury Select Committee’s chairman Andrew Tyrie MP has written to Chris Grayling MP, the Transport Secretary, saying that he needs to explain why the latest projection for the growth in demand will be any more reliable than its predecessor.

Over the past seven years there have been six of these projections, each different.

The Treasury Select Committee’s stance is not surprising, highlighting as it does the dubious nature of the forecasts used to justify the case for HS2.

Forecasts are based upon growth predictions or, as some would say, guesswork. Let’s look at the predicted passenger numbers utilised by HS2 Ltd.

Prediction - 300,000 per day of which 138,000 or 46 per cent will be tourists. This represents a daily increase of 275,000 over current usage. Let’s annualise these figures.

Prediction - 109,500,000 of which 50,370,000 will be tourists!

The real question is where will these new passengers come from?

Figments of the imagination come to mind.

I fail to see how any reasonable person could justify the projected spend of £55 billion on a project based on such nebulous figures.

The business case for HS1 predicted 30,000,000 passengers per annum at this stage after development. However it is only running at 10,000,000 each year.

Does that give you confidence that the Department for Transport are on the right track with their predictions for HS2?

Ewen Simpson Whatcroft