Ahead of Friday's deadline for submissions to the East West Rail non-statutory consultation, Richard wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport. The letter can be read here.
Commenting, Richard Fuller MP said:
The Chancellor has been unequivocal that her fiscal rules will not be broken and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has stated that he will be "ruthless" in cracking down on wasteful spending.
The last published business case for the Bedford to Cambridge leg of EWR stated that it had a benefit cost ratio (BCR) of 0.3 which means that for every £1 spent on the project, the benefit will be 30 pence. Given that the last published costings for this leg were £3.135 billion, this indicates a return on the investment of just under £1 billion. Put another way, the project is expected to lose taxpayers almost £2.2 billion.
It's easy to throw around powerful statements about being ruthless on waste and having sacrosanct fiscal rules but another thing entirely to actually take the necessary steps to implement such an approach. A project that, by their own numbers, is guaranteed to lose over £2 billion cannot, in anyone's language, be seen as anything other than a colossal waste of money that should be consigned to the scrap heap immediately.
