Here’s more detail from our transport correspondent Gwyn Topham:
The HS2 high-speed rail network cannot be delivered on its current schedule and budget and will be delayed beyond 2033, the government has admitted, blaming mismanagement by the previous government for schedule and cost overruns.
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs that there was “no reasonable way to deliver” the 2033 target for the first trains to run from London to Birmingham.
She did not immediately confirm a new price for the project, which some suggest will now top £100bn at current prices, having officially been in a range of up to £57b n at 2019 prices, nor yet how long the delay would be.
But Alexander said she was “drawing a line in the sand” as she unveiled what she called a “litany of failure” over the last 15 years. The government is publishing the findings of a review commissioned last autumn by Labour into the troubled transport scheme, and the first assessment in a “reset” of construction under new HS2 Ltd chief executive Mark Wild.
Alexander said Wild had been told to build the line as safely and cheaply as possible, even if took longer.
She said:
We won’t reinstate cancelled sections we can’t afford. But we will do the hard and necessary wok to regain public traust and build this line.
She told MPs that last government mismanaged HS2 in numerous ways, including signing contracts against advice and repeatedly changing plans for redesigning London Euston station – now at a total cost of £250m in rejected design plans alone, she said. Alexander told the Commons:
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been wasted by constant scope changes, ineffective contracts and bad management. It’s an appalling mess. But it’s one we will sort out.
We need to set targets which we can confidently deliver, that the public can trust, and that will take time. But rest assured, where there are inefficiencies, we will root them out.
Here’s our full take on the delay to the HS2 rail project:
Shares in the UK’s two biggest pharmaceutical companies, AstraZeneca and GSK, are down by 1.1% and 1.4% respectively, after Donald Trump suggested the US could soon impose tariffs on the sector.
He told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday that pharma tariffs are “coming very soon,” Reuters reported. The US president made the remarks as he returned from the G7 meeting in Canada.
Trump said:
We’re going to be doing pharmaceuticals very soon. That’s going to bring all the companies back into America. It’s going to bring most of them back into, at least partially back in.
The threat of pharma tariffs has been there for some time.
The project has suffered repeated delays and soaring costs despite being scaled back.
HS2 Ltd, the company building the high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham, is investigating claims that one of its labour suppliers on the project charged overinflated rates for staff.
Former prime minister Rishi Sunak announced the axing of HS2’s northern leg in 2023.
The government-commissioned review of HS2 by James Stewart has examined what went wrong and what it can teach ministers about how to run future infrastructure projects, while the new HS2 Ltd chief executive Mark Wild continues to examine how and when to construct the rest of the phase-one line from London to Birmingham.
The problems identified in the reports go beyond the escalating costs of tunnelling and environmental mitigations such as the £100m bat tunnel, which has been singled out for criticism by Keir Starmer.
Phase one of the HS2 scheme was projected in 2012 to cost £20bn, but more recent estimates now put that figure at as much as £57bn. Wild’s review, according to sources quoted by the rail expert Christian Wolmar could lead to the full budget being restated at current prices at more than £100bn.
Here’s more detail from our transport correspondent Gwyn Topham:
The HS2 high-speed rail network cannot be delivered on its current schedule and budget and will be delayed beyond 2033, the government has admitted, blaming mismanagement by the previous government for schedule and cost overruns.
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs that there was “no reasonable way to deliver” the 2033 target for the first trains to run from London to Birmingham.
She did not immediately confirm a new price for the project, which some suggest will now top £100bn at current prices, having officially been in a range of up to £57b n at 2019 prices, nor yet how long the delay would be.
But Alexander said she was “drawing a line in the sand” as she unveiled what she called a “litany of failure” over the last 15 years. The government is publishing the findings of a review commissioned last autumn by Labour into the troubled transport scheme, and the first assessment in a “reset” of construction under new HS2 Ltd chief executive Mark Wild.
Alexander said Wild had been told to build the line as safely and cheaply as possible, even if took longer.
She said:
We won’t reinstate cancelled sections we can’t afford. But we will do the hard and necessary wok to regain public traust and build this line.
She told MPs that last government mismanaged HS2 in numerous ways, including signing contracts against advice and repeatedly changing plans for redesigning London Euston station – now at a total cost of £250m in rejected design plans alone, she said. Alexander told the Commons:
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been wasted by constant scope changes, ineffective contracts and bad management. It’s an appalling mess. But it’s one we will sort out.
We need to set targets which we can confidently deliver, that the public can trust, and that will take time. But rest assured, where there are inefficiencies, we will root them out.
Heidi Alexander has confirmed a further delay to the HS2 project, calling it an “appalling mess” but vowed to “sort it out”.
Speaking in the House of Commons, the UK transport secretary said:
We will learn the lessons of the past 15 years, and restore our reputation of delivering world-class infrastructure projects.
Billions of pounds of taxpayer’s money has been wasted by constant scope changes, ineffective contracts and bad management.
It is an appalling mess, but it is one we will sort out.
She added that there are also allegations of fraud.
Alexander said the government accepted all the recommendations of the HS2 review, which was commissioned last October, adding that ministers are already delivering on them, in five key areas:
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A lack of oversight and scrutiny
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Spiralling costs
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A deficit in capability and skills
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Addressing plans for Euston station in London
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Transforming infrastructure delivery across government
Eurozone inflation in May fell below the European Central Bank’s 2% target for the first time in seven months.
Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, confirmed today that the annual change in the consumer prices index slowed to 1.9% in May, from 2.2% in April, in line with its earlier estimate. A year earlier, the rate stood at 2.6%.
Annual inflation in the European Union came in at 2.2% in May, down from 2.4% in April and 2.7% a year earlier.
The lowest annual rates were registered in Cyprus (0.4%), France (0.6%) and Ireland (1.4%). The highest rates were recorded in Romania (5.4%), Estonia (4.6%) and Hungary (4.5%). Compared with April, annual inflation fell in 14 member states, remained stable in one and rose in 12.
The highest contributions – pushing inflation in the eurozone up in May – came from services; food, alcohol and tobacco and non-energy industrial goods, while energy costs dragged inflation lower.
As next summer’s World Cup approaches, excitement is building for the biggest global soccer tournament ever held, but so too are concerns over the viability and environmental sustainability of the vastly expanded competition.
Held across 16 cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico, the 2026 World Cup will see the tournament expand from 32 nations to 48 competing for soccer’s most coveted prize. It will be a tournament of unprecedented scale both in terms of the number of teams, and the vast geographical expanse it will cover.
Both of these factors bring significant environmental concerns, however – particularly regarding the tournament’s carbon footprint and the effectiveness of Fifa’s proposed mitigation strategies.
Fifa first introduced its Climate Strategy report back in 2021 in response to growing environmental concerns, launching its initiative at the UN Climate Change Conference (Cop26) that year. In the plan, Fifa pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by 2040.
The strategy included measures such as promoting sustainable infrastructure, enhancing energy efficiency and encouraging the use of renewable energy. It also included a fair amount of carbon offsetting – a process by which entities buy “credits” that go toward environmental protection, to theoretically make up for emissions produced.
Overseas-trained dentists are working in McDonald’s and other takeaways in the UK even though millions of patients are finding it impossible to get NHS dental care – with “dental deserts” emerging – areas without access to NHS dentists.
The disclosure comes in a new report being sent to MPs on Wednesday, which urges ministers to slash bureaucracy stopping dentists from abroad plugging the huge gaps in NHS dental care.
The main obstacle they face is securing a place to take the exams needed to work in the UK, a process so difficult some liken it to obtaining a ticket to see Taylor Swift.
As a result fully qualified dentists from countries such as India, Egypt and Albania are spending months or even years at a time working in fast food cafes, according to the Association of Dental Groups (ADG).
The ADG, which represents major dental providers, demanded an urgent overhaul of the two-part overseas registration examination (ORE) to avoid “an unacceptable waste” of foreign dentists’ skills. Dentists who qualified overseas need to pass both parts of the ORE in order to gain entry to the General Dental Council’s register, which then allows them to work in the UK.
Airbus said it aims to pay out more in dividends, and confirmed guidance for 2025, ahead of a business update.
The European aviation company, which makes single-aisle jets for passenger airlines, has raised the upper end of its dividend payout target to 50%, from 30% to 40% previously.
The world’s biggest planemaker reiterated its commitment to profitable growth and reaffirmed its production targets. Airbus shares are trading 2.6% higher, after jumping nearly 4% earlier.
The Airbus chief executive, Guillaume Faury, and its chief financial officer, Thomas Toepfer, are giving a business update today – you can watch here.
It comes as the global aerospace industry gathers at the Paris airshow, where manufacturers are showing off their latest offerings, amid escalating fighting in the Middle East, sweeping US trade tariffs and supply chain strains.
The company faces supply chain problems that have left almost 40 aircraft stranded without engines at its factories, as shortages of cabin equipment and at power plants disrupt deliveries.
However, since early 2025, Airbus has experienced 40% less disruptions by delayed components at its production facilities, the group’s head of operations for the commercial aircraft business, Florent Massou, said during the business update, Reuters reported.
The boss of Amazon has told white collar staff at the e-commerce company their jobs could be taken by artificial intelligence in the next few years.
Andrew Jassy told employees that AI agents – tools that carry out tasks autonomously – and generative AI systems such as chatbots would require fewer employees in certain areas. He said in a memo to staff:
As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.
It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce.
