Sparks fly as academics contest KPMG’s analysis of HS2 benefits

The Government’s high-speed rail plans received a big boost when the media reported consultant KPMG’s prediction that the project would deliver £15bn of productivity benefits a year for the British economy. But two academic specialising in spatial economics told MPs last week that KPMG’s work contained grave methodological errors and should never have been published.

Andrew Forster

15 November 2013

Committee chair Andrew Tyrie was puzzled by KPMG’s confidence in its approach to assessing the economic impacts of HS2

KPMG’s Lewis Atter said the £15bn was if anything a conservative estimate of benefits

Henry Overman said KPMG had “made up” its methodology

Dan Graham said he wouldn’t have used KPMG’s “strange” approach

It’s not every day that a committee of MPs pores over the detail of a transport consultant’s report. But that’s what happened last week when the Treasury select committee took evidence on KPMG’s study into the regional economic impacts of HS2. KPMG’s report, commissioned by Government company HS2 Ltd and published in September, gave a much-needed boost to the troubled £50bn project, containing as it did the headline-grabbing prediction that the high-speed...