Star comment: Caution needed on HS2 plans

With such an enormous amount of detail to consider, with a £42.6 billion price tag and with so many opponents from all over the country, it is something that cannot be rushed into.

Yet it is being suggested today that the minister in charge of transport, former Cannock Chase councillor and miner Patrick McLoughlin, wants work to get underway in the spring.

Contracts worth up to £60 million can be handed out to businesses, even though there are still legal hurdles to clear.

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The hybrid Bill is to all intents and purposes the planning application for HS2.

It gives the Government the powers to construct and operate the railway.

But opponents and supporters are still meant to have have the opportunity to put their case to Parliament.

It is difficult to see this as anything more than going through the motions, turning Parliament into little more than an extremely costly talking shop, when the decisions have effectively been made.

"We can't let the opponents who have learned nothing from the past strangle our future growth," Mr McLoughlin says. "I will not let the naysayers drag this country down."

The Tory minister is a straight-talking working class politician who clearly has the courage to stand by his convictions.

But he needs to consider the implications of what he is saying at such an important phase of this project.

Comments such as this merely serve to worry those who still have legitimate concerns.

A homeowner is not a 'nimby' (crying 'not in my back yard') because they want to know they will receive adequate compensation if the line makes their property unsellable.

A businessman is not a naysayer if he warns that a line intended to create jobs and prosperity will destroy the company he has worked hard to turn into a success, or who fears that it will not spread the benefits to the wider West Midlands, to areas like Staffordshire, when stations are only being built in cities like Birmingham.

HS2 is meant to be to the benefit of the entire country.

It cannot just be railroaded through.