Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin has defended the high salaries of HS2 executives, stating he is “pleased” engineers rather than bankers are seen to be getting "big financial rewards".
Chairman David Higgins is being paid an annual salary of £591,000, while construction chief executive Simon Kirby will earn £750,000 a year.
Speaking on the BBC’s Daily Politics show, McLoughlin said HS2 is a “very big project” and so it needs to hire the “best engineers in the world”.
The major project, which has come under fire from both political sides, would link London to Birmingham by 2026, with tracks to cities including Leeds and Manchester built in a second phase, to be completed by 2032-33.
Last week the government said it would “press ahead” with the high-speed rail link after the Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge from campaigners against the project.
“It is a large salary, there is no question about it, but I am rather pleased that engineers rather than bankers can be seen to get a big reward for delivering what will be important pieces of national infrastructure,” said McLoughlin.
“These are very big projects and we need to attract the best people we possibly can, so we are going for the best engineers in the world to engineer this project,” the transport secretary added.
Blank cheque
Also speaking on the show was Labour shadow chancellor Ed Balls who reiterated his doubts about the controversial project. He said supporters of HS2 have not won the argument over whether the current scheme is “the best way to spend the money”.
Last year Balls said he would not give HS2 a “blank cheque” and he reiterated this again. “We need more capacity but there’s no blank cheque, the costs have spiralled out of control and we need to know this is the best way to spend a huge amount of public money,” he said.
“We supported HS2 but we need to make sure that the costs are down and this is in the end the best way to spend the money and I don’t think that’s an argument which has yet been won by the supporters."