The High Speed 2 rail link between London and the north is "ready to happen" and "going to happen", Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has insisted as he reiterated the Government's support for the controversial project.

He said the UK had achieved a "great track record over the last 200 years" which must continue, envisioning that the estimated £55.7 billion project would help create an Elizabethan age of British rail.

Mr Grayling told an HS2 conference in East London: "It is ready to happen, it is going to happen, and it's going to make a massive difference to our country.

"We will see it though to completion with the first trains running in the next decade."

Mr Grayling said it would be a "fantastic career opportunity", promising that it would support a further 100,000 jobs - 75% of which would be outside London.

"We need HS2 now more than ever," he added.

The first phase of the railway is planned between London and Birmingham by 2026.

Mr Grayling announced £30 million of funding for improving road safety and £40 million to support communities affected by the line to the Midlands.

Asked if he felt the Government could deliver the project as promised amid the pressures of Brexit, Mr Grayling said: "We have got a good team, a good plan and a good track record.

"I am very confident that this is a project that will happen on time and on budget."

Mr Grayling acknowledged the controversy surrounding the plan, but said it was important that Britain was operating at the cutting edge of engineering technology.

He said: "Of course I understand that this project remains controversial.

"Often it is not necessarily because the underlying case of the project is perceived to be weak, but because people are genuinely concerned about the effect it will have on their homes, their businesses - whether it's in construction or whether it's in operation."

MPs warned last month that ministers must set out a realistic timetable for delivering HS2.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was ''not convinced'' that the target for completing phase one between London and the West Midlands by December 2026 will be met.

Its report also warned that cost estimates for phase two, which takes it from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds, are ''still volatile'' and exceed available funding by £7 billion.

But, Mr Grayling asked: "Why on earth would we not want to build a new, state-of-the-art, world-beating railway line, rather than using yesterday's technology?

"So what happens in 2033, is we don't have a railway line that is entirely harping back to the Victorian era, we have a network with an Elizabethan heart, able to deliver everything we need of a 21st century transport system."

He added he hoped Britain would get back to "where it should be" - "the heart of technological and engineering development".

Leading transport figures expressed concern that the high speed rail project would go ahead.

Ukip Transport spokeswoman Jill Seymour said she had hoped the Government would seek a cheaper alternative, "particularly when so many other areas of our country's infrastructure are crying out for overdue investment".

She said: "HS2 has never been needed. It is just a vanity project with an ever-growing budget, which is edging closer to the £100 billion mark.

"It will never pay its way, and will always be a burden on the taxpayer."

"I have yet to see a convincing economic case made for HS2, and the reason for this is that it simply doesn't exist," she added.

John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said the arguments for HS2 were "incredibly weak" and called for it to be "consigned to the scrapheap".

He said: "HS2 offers appalling value for money and there are many more worthwhile projects that ought to be funded instead.

"The business case is based on absurd assumptions and it completely ignores the potential of disruptive technologies like driverless cars which could deliver extra capacity at a fraction of the cost for hard-pressed taxpayers."

Meanwhile, Mark Littlewood, director general at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) said the project was a "wildly inefficient solution" to improving transport capacity.

In a statement responding to Mr Grayling's speech, he said: "This vanity project offers zero value for money for taxpayers who will bear the burden of the cost: one which the IEA estimates will exceed £80 billion - more than double what the Government initially planned for.

"If the HS2 project made any economic sense the private sector would pay for it, rather than piling on the costs to already hard-pressed taxpayers."

Richard Wellings, the IEA's head of transport, tweeted: "Disturbing that ministers appear not to understand opportunity cost and the deadweight losses from taxation. #HS2."

Conservative politician Philip Davies said the project was a "chronic waste of money" and would do more to benefit London than the North.

The MP for Shipley in West Yorkshire added: "The money would be much better spent improving the transport in the North rather than to the North, and as such HS3 would be a much better priority than HS2."