• THE leaked Oakervee report is an explicit recommendation, from a past chairman of HS2, that this monstrous megaproject should go ahead in its entirety, regardless of its astronomical cost and the damage it will do.

The report’s blanket endorsement of the project includes the construction of the destructive and disruptive terminus at Euston. Fortunately for opponents of the scheme the report is so one-sided as to be self-exploding.

Drawn up by Doug Oakervee himself, it was submitted unilaterally. His vice-chairman, Lord Berkeley, a long-standing expert on railways and an informed critic of HS2, was not shown the report before it was submitted.

As the report makes no attempt to answer HS2’s many opponents, it does not reflect Lord Berkeley’s views. He has since dissociated himself from the report and is preparing his own.

It is not surprising that the Oakervee report is so completely inadequate. It is based largely on Oakervee’s own meetings with HS2 executives and Department for Transport officials from which Lord Berkeley, astonishingly, was excluded.

It looks only at the logistics of delivering the project, not at whether HS2 addresses a real problem. It ignores HS2’s minimal value for money, its appalling treatment of those affected by its plans and its disregard for the truth.

Oakervee, who completed the report at great speed, has simply ignored the many highly reasonable and valid objections to HS2. The Oakervee report is therefore a totally unsound basis on which to come to a decision on the viability of HS2.

The report is a blatantly biased attempt by an interested party to rubber-stamp HS2, a project with no public support. The report must be recognised for what it is and discarded as worthless.

MARTIN SHEPPARD, NW1