Tory Chancellor Kenneth Clarke warned that initial plans for the Elizabeth Line were a “folie de grandeur” that taxpayers would be unwilling to foot the bill, during a protracted rearguard action against the megaproject by the Treasury in the 1990s, City AM can reveal.
According to a fraught set of ministerial correspondence released to the National Archives on Tuesday, Clarke told the then transport minister he would not support a parliamentary motion on the railway line, arguing it was too expensive and that cheaper alternatives would have a similar economic impact.
Clarke, who served as John Major’s Chancellor between 1993 and 1997, lobbied furiously behind the scenes for the project that would later become the Elizabeth Line to be shelved by the Department for Transport in a campaign from Treasury ministers lasting several months.
“I repeat my view that the only sensible course… is to stand back from Crossrail and think seriously about better options for achieving our objectives,” Clarke wrote to then-transport secretary John MacGregor in one memo, copies of which were also sent to Major and civil service head Robin Butler among others.
“I detect an increasing reluctance on the part of taxpayers to pay for such follies [sic] de grandeur in future,” he added.
Clarke’s broadside formed part of a series of missives launched by the Treasury in early 1994, when the governing Conservative Party was preparing to introduce a bill to parliament to green-light the construction of two parallel tunnels between the City and Paddington.
The bill, which was being spearheaded by backbench Tory MP David Lidlington, had the support of MacGregor and 10 Downing Street, which said it was “committed to the Crossrail project” in other communications from the time released on Tuesday.
Portillo: Elizabeth Line ‘will never happen’
But the Treasury’s rearguard action won the day, and the Conservatives eventually abandoned plans for the line, which were then revived up by Tony Blair’s Labour party in 2006.
The National Archives files show several interventions from Michael Portillo, also bolstered Clarke’s arguments. In a letter to the Prime Minister, the then-chief secretary to the Treasury wrote he did not believe the Elizabeth Line would “ever be built”.
The Tory grandee, who went on to become defence secretary, argued that difficulties in securing private-sector funding would mean construction would not start until 2006, with Crossrail opening in 2011.
“So if we go ahead with the Crossrail Bill, the project will not be built in the next Parliament. Or in the Parliament after that,” he wrote. “Indeed, I think that it will never be built – and that a decision to go ahead with the Bill now simply means, one day, taking another decision to cancel it.”
Clark and Portillo both also voiced concerns about future demand for the service, and urged colleagues to consider other expensive options, including extending the Heathrow Express into the City, and fixing signalling issues on the Northern line.
The warnings come despite demand for the Elizabeth Line vastly outstripping official estimates since it was opened in 2022, earning it a reputation as one of the UK’s only major infrastructure successes of recent years.
But the megaproject was also blighted by delays and budget overruns. It rose from an initial budget of £14.8bn to £18.8bn, and opened four years later than its original 2018 launch date.