00:00So a project that will have gone on for 20 odd years, you know, pyramids were probably built quicker than that, although I'm sure that people will say no, that's not true.
00:11It's a tremendous project, and the big issue is time, and of course time is important, as we sort of know, because originally this thing was sold on the basis that was going to get us between London and Birmingham and Manchester up to Scotland in sort of record time.
00:28The reality of high-speed rail is it's extremely expensive, but of course when it was mooted and there was going to be something like 330 odd miles of line, not all of it's sort of full HS2, or high-speed rather, but nonetheless it was going to sort of vastly improve the rail network in this country.
00:47Now we're down to just over 100 odd miles between sort of somewhere in London and Birmingham in Curzon Street.
00:53Time and cost have become the defining issues. What began as a nationwide high-speed network has been reduced to a much shorter stretch of track, while the overall bill continues to climb.
01:05Construction is well underway, but the benefits for passengers remain years off, leaving many wondering whether the balance between ambition and affordability and delivery has been lost.
01:14The difficulty of sort of cancelling so later on, remember, was sort of another, what, three years down the line, if I keep using that particular pun.
01:22What you'd have is a lot of the infrastructure in, obviously still a lot of work to be done.
01:27What do you do with it? I mean, it would just become sort of an eyesore, and indeed, by that time, so much money would have been sort of put into it.
01:36A lot of the contracts have been sort of already sort of agreed, and of course, it's going to cost you more to get out of those contracts than just to sort of carry on.
01:45I suspect we're in sort of the worst possible world. If there was going to be any time to cancel this, it was probably about five or six years ago.
01:51And indeed, it should have been sort of, you know, a wonderful sort of testament to sort of the future prospects of this country.
01:58But like a lot of things, big infrastructure projects, they cost a lot of money, bring a lot of heartache, and nobody seems to be happy.
02:06That debate now sits alongside the government's response to mounting criticism.
02:11Ministers say they have accepted that earlier plans were unrealistic, and insist tighter cost controls and new leadership are now in place to stabilise the project.
02:20They argue that pressing ahead is the least costly option, and that completing the line will still deliver long-term benefits for the rail network, despite the delays.
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