HS2: What does Lord Adonis have to say to the hundreds of people facing living out their lives next to the noise and pollution from the construction site?

LORD Adonis. Lord Andrew Adonis! Come out, come out wherever you are!

The former transport secretary was the original architect of the HS2 railway and later became its non-executive director, earning £950 an hour from the public purse.

Over the years he has never responded – more likely downright ignored – several requests for interviews or comments about the impact of HS2 on Camden from New Journal reporters.

Now resting in the House of Lords, he chose for himself the title of the Baron of Camden Town. But has he ever answered to his people who have been so outrageously affected by the railway project?

We would genuinely like to hear what he has to say about works grinding to a halt in Euston – 14 years after he first floated the railway plan during the death throes of the last Labour government.

What does he say to the hundreds of people facing living out their lives next to the noise and pollution from the construction site? To those whose homes were flattened to make way for a railway that now no one really believes is going to ever be built in Camden?

What about the people living in blocks a few metres from the vast building site, without air filtration units or double glazing. Then there are the businesses in Drummond Street left struggling to survive but without any compensation.

Why did he choose Camden Town for his title and then become so tight-lipped about the people who live here?

Would he like to explain to people living in the midst of the already disgustingly polluted Euston Road why many mature trees were cut down there a few days before the Euston works were put on ice.

Lord Adonis and the other high-ranking politicians like him have promised us a world-class railway but have left us with a world-class hole in the ground – the size of Trafalgar Square – that is likely to be left for developers to squabble over.

HS2 has been an appalling misuse of public funds. And yet Labour and the Conservatives continue to pass it off as essential for modern Britain.

Having a faster railway, more capacity, doesn’t prepare us for the future. It just delivers the present, but 40 years too late.

We need radically different solutions for the future, not simply geared to moving people and goods long distances.

Just think what a really bold new government could create without HS2 in Euston, on what is now all publicly-owned land.

HS2 should be cancelled, the money spent on the North’s appalling transport systems and the Baron of Camden should break his silence.