'Profoundly embarrassing!' HS2 sparks fresh outrage as Labour announce further delay to rail project: 'How is it possible?'

On Wednesday, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander called the £37billion project an "appalling mess", announcing it will not be completed as planned by 2033.

Amid calls by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to "scrap HS2", Alexander admitted it would be a "waste" of the £30billion already spent on the railway.

Discussing the delay on GB News, Lis told the GB News panel: "We've come so far, I think it would be even more of a national embarrassment and humiliation to pull the plug on it now.

"I think the one thing we can all agree on is that it's profoundly embarrassing that one of the richest countries in the world cannot build a basic railway between its two biggest cities."

Comparing the HS2 project to Britain's European neighbours, Lis added: "When you go to our neighbours, France, Italy, Spain, they have high speed rail across the entire country.

"And the countries are much bigger than Britain as well. How is it possible?"

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Weighing in on HS2's unsuccessful building project, Bev fumed: "Arab countries are literally building cities out of the desert with water that gets sent from the sea 400km in pipes, and we can't get a train up and running. It is so depressing!"

Delivering her verdict on HS2, broadcaster Linda Dauberley agreed that the project is an "embarrassment" for Britain: "It is an embarrassment. I think the problem here is that when you do these very, very big projects, which are non-Governmental in the commercial and corporate sector, they run a certain way.

"And I don't think that civil servants or politicians have the necessary skills to run them tightly or to budget, and so I think it doesn't matter what the project is, they will always attract the same type of person."

Highlighting the amount of "documentation" and "preparation" major projects in the UK undergo before anything is built, Lis argued that although regulation must be in place, they shouldn't need "entire encyclopaedias" of documentation before getting underway.

Lis told GB News: "I think part of it is that you just look at the basic projects that we have now, there's a railway in Bristol that's been planned for years now, and I think that it's taken eight years or something to plan it. It's kind of like an entire encyclopedia's worth of documents in preparation.

"The same thing with the new tunnel that's planned in London, you just have millions and millions of words. Now, obviously, we need regulation, we need building codes, we need standards, but we have to find a balance.

"Somewhere between regulating and making sure that these projects are safe and that they are sustainable, but at the same time not being so ludicrous that use of millions of unnecessary words and pounds."