The British government yesterday unveiled revised plans for a public-private partnership to build a long-delayed high-speed rail link between London and the Channel tunnel.
Under the complex rescue plan, construction on the 100 km line to the mouth of the tunnel will begin this year and part of the route will be completed by 2003.
But the final leg, from north Kent through the eastern suburbs of London to St Pancras Station in the north of the capital, will not be finished until 2007 - more than a decade after the tunnel linking Britain and France opened.
The Deputy Prime Minister, Mr John Prescott, told parliament that the government, in addition to £1.8 billion sterling it has already earmarked, would provide £140 million to help the London and Continental Railways (LCR) consortium to complete the troubled link.
The fate of the line was thrown into doubt in January after Mr Prescott, who is also responsible for transport, rejected LCR's request for an extra £1.2 billion to complete the project.
"This is an agreement snatched from the ashes of LCR's collapse," Mr Prescott told parliament. "We will join the fast track to Europe."
The aid is less than the £700 million that newspapers had said the government would contribute, but Mr Prescott said the government's credit would also stand behind £3.7 billion of bonds LCR will issue to fund the link.
Mr Prescott defended the government's decision to guarantee the bonds, saying the alternative would have been considerable delay and extra costs.
"The debt will be repaid out of the proceeds of the sale of the completed link. The risk of the government incurring liability under the guarantee is therefore remote," he said.
In return for the aid, the government would take a stake in LCR that would yield it a 35 per cent share of its pre-tax surplus after 2020. And if LCR sells the business, the government would get 35 per cent of the proceeds, Mr Prescott said.
As part of the deal, a consortium comprising British Airways, National Express, and the national railways of France and Belgium would operate the Eurostar trains using the route.
Eurostar has captured an estimated 60 per cent of the market for travel between London and Paris. But LCR had to abandon its original plans after admitting its projections for passenger traffic were too optimistic.
The consortium, which was chosen over a rival bid from Mr Richard Branson's Virgin Group, plans to start a service to Paris from London's Heathrow Airport as early as 2001, Mr Prescott said.
The government would take a 5 per cent stake in the Eurostar management company.
Railtrack plc, which owns Britain's rail infrastructure, will build the link with its US engineering partner, Bechtel.
Railtrack said it had agreed to buy the first stage of the link between the tunnel and north Kent for £1.5 billion when it is completed. It has an option to buy the rest of the link in 2006 for £1.8 billion. Delays to the project have embarrassed successive British governments and have dented the attempts of the Prime Minister, Mr Blair, to rebrand Britain as a modern go-ahead country.
Whereas new rail lines ferry passengers from Paris to the tunnel at speeds approaching 180 m.p.h., Britain's creaking infrastructure forces the new Eurostar trains to slow to a crawl once they are on English soil.