Last week’s poll: revisiting HS2

Our new prime minister might be pre-occupied with Brexit but he’s also got a circa £56bn infrastructure project to deal with that has been controversial since its inception.

First proposed by Lord Adonis during the last Labour administration and brought into being by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2010, HS2 has been mired by questions around cost, routes and whether £56bn (or £100bn, depending on who you’re listening to) could be better spent improving the existing rail network.

Of the 1,437 respondents to last week’s poll, 38 per cent take the view that existing lines should be upgraded, followed by just over a quarter (26 per cent) who think HS3 is the better option, which would provide high-speed connections in the north.

Just over a fifth (21 per cent) agree with the ‘business as usual’ scenario of going ahead with original plans, and eight per cent think new technologies could circumvent the need for HS2. The remaining seven per cent opted for ‘none of the above’.