TRANSPORT Secretary Mark Harper has denied that dropping the second phase of HS2 is an attempt to “buy cheap popularity” ahead of the general election.
He told GB News: “There are people that won’t agree with the project. Look, if all we wanted to do was buy cheap popularity – we just said we were going to do all the other things and carry on with HS2, but because we are serious about winning the election and delivering on those promises, we had to make a choice.
“We had to say that if you’re going to do these other things that are important for the country, you’ve actually got to make a decision to not do something else and not everyone will like that.
“So we had to make a decision and a choice. That’s what politics is about. It’s about leadership and that’s what the Prime Minister showed this week, facts changed. He made a different choice, a long-term choice that’s in the interest of the country.”
In a discussion during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, he continued: “He’ll run on that record and that approach to politics at the general election, which I think is a big contrast with what we’ll face from the Labour Party who don’t make decisions about things and don’t know how to deliver them.
“When the public look at that choice, they’ll give us the opportunity to serve again, and the Prime Minister can then continue delivering for the country and taking those long-term decisions.”
Asked about Just Stop Oil’s protest at a theatre in London last night, he said: “They don’t reflect where this government’s actually leading on climate change and going and wrecking the leisure activities of ordinary people stopping them getting to their hospital appointments and schools and blocking roads and doing all of that is destructive behaviour, and I don’t think it has the support of the public.”
