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Johnson warns against version of rail

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Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged the government against building a “mutilated” version of HS2.

He said suggestions the high-speed rail link that began construction under his premiership could be scaled back were “Treasury-driven nonsense”.

Last week, the government refused to guarantee HS2 would continue between Birmingham and Manchester.

It comes as more than 80 companies and business leaders seek clarity over the commitment to HS2.

In a letter to the government, they expressed “deep concern” over “the constant uncertainty” that “plagues” the project.

However, a government spokesperson said on Friday that “our focus remains on delivering” HS2.

It was under Mr Johnson’s government that HS2 – intended to link London, the Midlands and the north of England – was given the green light to start construction in 2020.

The first part of HS2, between west London and Birmingham, is in mid-construction, and £2.3bn has already been put towards the next sections including acquiring land and property.

But the scheme as a whole has already faced delays, cost increases and cuts – including to the planned eastern leg between Birmingham and Leeds.

On Thursday, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said it was to be expected that he and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would have discussions when “major infrastructure projects overrun in their costs”, but said no decisions had been made.

Mr Johnson argues that what he calls “desperate truncations” would not yield any short-term savings “and make no difference to the case for tax cuts”.

He added that it would be “the height of insanity to announce all this just before a party conference in Manchester”.

The former prime ministersaid: “It makes no sense at all to deliver a mutilated HS2”, adding there was a “need” for the rail link in the north of England.

The bosses of dozens of businesses and business groups – including Manchester Airports Group, British Land, Virgin Money, and the Northern Powerhouse – have all signed the letter to the government urging renewed commitment to HS2, saying that repeated mixed signals are damaging the UK’s reputation and the wider supply chain.

“Two years ago, Yorkshire and the North-East lost the eastern Leg of HS2, with no settled alternative yet identified following protracted delays,” they said.

“It is now reported that the entire line from Birmingham to Crewe – allowing access to Scotland – the new line to Manchester, and Euston station as the terminus may all be cancelled entirely in the upcoming Autumn Statement”.

They added the “repeated mixed signals” on HS2 were damaging the country’s wider supply chain as “spending commitments cannot be made with confidence”.

HS2 map

Northern Powerhouse chief executive Henri Murison said any rowing back on HS2 may come to be seen as Sunak’s “worst decision as prime minister”.

“It will put back the cause of rebalancing this country for another 100 years”, he told BBC Breakfast.

Mr Murison heavily criticised recent government changes in policy, arguing: “What that says to British business is: ‘You can’t rely on this government. If they tell you something is going to happen, you shouldn’t believe them.’ And that’s terrible for our country.”

John Dickie, Business London’s chief executive, also suggested policy shifts were “no way to run Britain’s long-term infrastructure projects.”

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “The constant chopping, changing, the uncertainty over the scope and the timing of this project is a big reason why its costs have risen over the past decade or so.

“It makes no sense to stop doing work now today when it will just cost taxpayers more in the future.”

John Armitt, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, said scrapping the Birmingham to Manchester leg “would be a tragedy”.

He told Today: “Here is a country which sets itself ambitions and then runs away when it starts to see some challenges. We have to meet the challenges.”

Labour’s position on HS2 has not been completely clear.

Labour peer and deputy chair of the Oakervee review Tony Berkeley told the Today programme that money would be better spent elsewhere.

But party leader Sir Keir Starmer insists he still supports the project and blames the government for introducing the “uncertainty” over its future as ministers consider the move to save billions.

The party’s campaign co-ordinator Pat McFadden said that he needs to see the price-tag before committing to the full original route as “there may be revised costs”.

Shadow Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq has also said it would be irresponsible for her to make a commitment without the final costs.

HS2 is meant to create more capacity and speed up journey times.

The government has previously argued it would have economic benefits too, but critics think it is far too expensive and the money could be better used in other ways.

In March, Transport Secretary Mark Harper said there would be a two-year delay on the Birmingham to Crewe leg.

Work on Euston was also paused while an “affordable” design was worked on.

The eastern leg to Leeds was scrapped by the government in 2021.

The government’s official estimate of the cost of the project, excluding the eastern leg, is about £71bn in 2019 prices.

— Reports /TrainViral/

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Six tonnes of cocaine found in banana shipment

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Sniffer dogs in Ecuador have found 6.23 tonnes of cocaine hidden in a banana shipment, police say.

The dogs alerted their handlers, who seized 5,630 parcels filled with a white substance that later tested positive for cocaine.

The shipment was destined for Germany, officials said, and would have been worth $224m (£173m) had it reached its destination.

Five people had been arrested following the discovery, according to the prosecutor-general’s office.

Police said they had found the massive cocaine haul during a routine inspection of container stored at Posorja deepwater port south-west of Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil.

The cocaine parcels had been hidden beneath crates of bananas destined for export.

One of those arrested in connection to the drug discovery was a representative of the export company responsible for the shipment, whom prosecutors said had been present at the inspection and gave officials the names of the four other suspects.

They include the managers of the banana plantation where the cocaine is suspected to have been added to the fruit shipment, as well as the driver who took the container to the port.

Ecuador has become a major transit country for cocaine produced in neighbouring Peru and Colombia, with transnational criminal gangs using Ecuador’s ports to ship the drug to Europe and the US.

Last year, Ecuadorean security forces seized more than 200 tonnes of drugs, most of it cocaine. Only the US and Colombia seized more drugs in 2023.

Gangs have caused a wave of violent crime in Ecuador, leading President Daniel Noboa to declare a state of emergency and deploy tens of thousands of police officers and soldiers in an effort to combat them.

These security forces have stopped large amounts of cocaine from being shipped to Europe.

In January, officers found the largest stash ever to be seized in Ecuador – 22 tonnes of cocaine – buried in a pig farm.

However, extortion, kidnappings and murders remain high in the Andean country.

Reports /Trainviral/

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Thailand expands v-free entry to 93 countries

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Thailand has expanded its visa-free entry scheme to 93 countries and territories as it seeks to revitalize its tourism industry.

Visitors can stay in the South-East Asian nation for up to 60 days under the new scheme that took effect on Monday,

Previously, passport holders from 57 countries were allowed to enter without a visa.

Tourism is a key pillar of the Thai economy, but it has not fully recovered from the pandemic.

Thailand recorded 17.5 million foreign tourists arrivals in the first six months of 2024, up 35% from the same period last year, according to official data. However, the numbers pale in comparison to pre-pandemic levels.

Most of the visitors were from China, Malaysia and India.

Tourism revenue during the same period came in at 858 billion baht ($23.6bn; £18.3bn), less than a quarter of the government’s target.

Millions of tourists flock to Thailand every year for its golden temples, white sand beaches, picturesque mountains and vibrant night life.

The revised visa-free rules are part of a broader plan to boost tourism.

Also on Monday, Thailand introduced a new five-year visa for remote workers, that allows holders to stay for up to 180 days each year.

The country will also allow visiting students, who earn a bachelor’s degree or higher in Thailand, to stay for one year after graduation to find a job or travel.

In June, authorities announced an extension of a waiver on hoteliers’ operating fees for two more years. They also scrapped a proposed tourism fee for visitors flying into the country.

However some stakeholders are concerned that the country’s infrastructure may not be able to keep up with travellers’ demands.

“If more people are coming, it means the country as a whole… has to prepare our resources to welcome them,” said Kantapong Thananuangroj, president of the Thai Tourism Promotion Association.

“If not, [the tourists] may not be impressed with the experience they have in Thailand and we may not get a second chance,” he said.

Chamnan Srisawat, president of the Tourism Council of Thailand, said he foresees a “bottleneck in air traffic as the incoming flights may not increase in time to catch up with the demands of the travellers”.

Some people have also raised safety concerns after rumours that tourists have been kidnapped and sent across the border to work in scam centres in Myanmar or Cambodia.

fatal shooting in Bangkok’s most famous shopping mall last year has also caused concern among visitors.

Reports /Trainviral/

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Royal Mail will deliver letters forever

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The prospective new owner of Royal Mail has said he will not walk away from the requirement to deliver letters throughout the UK six days a week, as long as he is running the service.

“As long as I’m alive, I completely exclude this,” Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky told the BBC.

Mr Kretinsky has had a £3.6bn offer for Royal Mail accepted by its board.

Shareholders are expected to approve the deal in the coming months, but the government also has a say over whether it goes ahead.

Currently the Universal Service Obligation (USO) requires Royal Mail to deliver letters six days a week throughout the country for the same price. But questions have been raised over whether the service could be reduced in the future.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Mr Kretinsky also said he would be willing to share profits with employees, if given the go-ahead to buy the group.

However, he appeared to reject the idea of employees having a stake in Royal Mail, which unions have called for in exchange for their support.

The Royal Mail board agreed a £3.6bn takeover offer from Mr Kretinsky in May for the 500-year-old organisation, which employs more than 150,000 people. Including assumed debts, the offer is worth £5bn.

But because Royal Mail is a nationally important company, the government has the power to scrutinise and potentially block the deal.

As well as keeping the new government on side, Mr Kretinsky also faces the task of convincing postal unions that the proposed deal will benefit employees.

The USO is a potential sticking point for both the government and unions.

Royal Mail is required by law to deliver letters six days a week and parcels five days a week to every address in the UK for a fixed price.

How well this has actually been working in practice is a different matter. Ten years ago, 92% of first class post arrived on time. By the end of last year it was down to 74%, according to the regulator Ofcom.

Last year the regulator fined Royal Mail £5.6m for failing to meet its delivery targets.

Royal Mail has been pushing for this obligation to be watered down. It wants to cut second class letter deliveries to every other weekday, saying this will save £300m, and lead to “fewer than 1,000” voluntary redundancies.

‘Unconditional commitment’

Mr Kretinsky has committed in writing to honouring the USO, but only for five years.

And after that, in theory, the new owners could just walk away from it.

However, Mr Kretinsky told the BBC: “As long as I’m alive, I completely exclude this, and I’m sure that anybody that would be my successor would absolutely understand this.

“I say this as an absolutely clear, unconditional commitment: Royal Mail is going to be the provider of Universal Service Obligation in the UK, I would say forever, as long as the service is going to be needed, and as long as we are going to be around.”

Mr Kretinsky added that the written five-year commitment was “the longest commitment that has ever been offered in a situation like this”.

Woman's hand posting a letter into a red post box

Another potential stumbling block for the deal, however, is how the company will be structured.

Unions would like to see the company renationalised, but Dave Ward, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), told the BBC that would be “difficult in the current political and economic environment”.

Instead, what the CWU is pushing for is “a different model of ownership” – that is, where the employees part-own the business.

To get its support for the takeover, the union wants employees to share ownership of the company, along with other concessions including board representation for workers.

It says profit sharing is “not going to be enough to deliver our support and the support of the workforce”.

If the union doesn’t get what it wants, it won’t rule out industrial action, Mr Ward said. Its members went on strike in 2022 and 2023.

Although Mr Kretinsky said he is “very open” to profit sharing, he is not in favour of shared ownership.

“I don’t think the ownership stake is the right model,” he said. “The logic is: share of profit, yes, [but an] ownership structure creates a lot of complexity.

“For instance, what happens if the employee leaves? He has shares, he is leaving, he is not working for the company, he [still] needs remunerating.”

Mr Kretinsky said he didn’t want to create “some anonymous structure” but instead “remunerate the people who are working for the company, and creating value for the company”.

The union is also concerned about job losses and changes to the terms and conditions of postal workers’ contracts.

Mr Kretinsky has guaranteed no compulsory redundancies or changes in terms and conditions but only until 2025.

“If we are more successful, and we have more parcels to be delivered, we need not less people, but we need more people,” he said. “So really, job cuts are not part of our plan at all.”

He said if the management, union and employees work together, “we will be successful”.

Another concern is the potential break-up of the business.

The profit for Royal Mail’s parent company last year was entirely generated by its German and Canadian logistics and parcels business, GLS. Royal Mail itself made a loss.

Mr Kretinsky has promised not to split off GLS or load the parent company with excessive debt, although borrowings will rise if the deal goes through.

But he has a way to go to convince the CWU.

“I can’t think of any other country in the world that would just just hand over its entire postal service to an overseas equity investor,” Mr Ward of the CWU said.

However, Mr Kretinsky said that the postal unions “do understand that we are on the same ship, and that we need this ship to be successful, and that if we are there, we don’t have any real problems to deal with, because the sky is blue, and it’s blue for everybody.”

The union cannot stop this deal but the government can block it under the National Security and Investment Act.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has said he will scrutinise the assurances and guarantees given and called on Mr Kretinsky to work constructively with the unions.

Mr Kretinsky may say that he and the unions are ultimately on the same ship but, as things stand, they are not on the same page.

Who is Daniel Kretinsky?

Daniel Kretinsky started his career as a lawyer in his hometown of Brno, before moving to Prague.

He then made serious money in Central and Eastern European energy interests.

This includes Eustream, which transports Russian gas via pipelines that run through Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

He then diversified into other investments, including an almost 10% stake in UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s and a 27% share in Premier League club West Ham United.

The Czech businessman is worth about £6bn, according to reports.

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