HS2 rail leg to Leeds scrapped, Grant Shapps confirms
The eastern leg of HS2 to Leeds has been scrapped and a full high-speed east-west line linking Manchester to Leeds will not be built, the government has confirmed, as it insisted faster train journeys would be delivered earlier and cheaper under a £96bn rail plan.
The high-speed rail network will go ahead to Manchester but will be curtailed at an existing east Midlands station rather than run from Birmingham to Leeds, while the TransPennine route will be improved mainly through upgrades rather than a full brand new line.
The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, told the Commons that the changes and investment would bring better rail connections for passengers years earlier in a network that would work for every community.
He said that the Oakervee review of HS2 had shown a rethink was needed, and a subsequent National Infrastructure Commission report meant “a flexible approach” and “strengthening regional rail would be most economically beneficial”.
Shapps said the plan was “ambitious and unparalleled” and would speed up intercity connections as well as improving local services.
The plan would include a brand new section of high-speed line from Warrington to Manchester and the western fringes of Yorkshire, Shapps said.
He said the plan, which includes a new West Yorkshire mass transit system, would “fire up economies and level up” at least a decade earlier than building HS2 as originally intended.
However, the move has been met with anger and disappointment in the north of England and Midlands, with Labour describing the new plan as “crumbs off the table” after promises of a full joined-up high speed network.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, said as recently as last month that the government would build Northern Powerhouse Rail, but the route that northern leaders hoped would be at the centre, a new high-speed line from Manchester to Leeds via Bradford, will not be built.
Responding in the Commons, the shadow transport secretary, Jim McMahon said the government “had completely sold out” the north. “We know exactly what Northern Powerhouse Rail means. They had repromised and recommitted 60 times. That opportunity looks set to be lost.”
The Conservative MP Huw Merriman, the chair of the transport select committee, said the announcement showed “the danger of selling perpetual sunlight and leaving it to others to explain the moonlight”. He said ministers had long said that it was not “either/or” HS2 or NPR, while people in the north would now think they had neither.
The HS2 line from London to Birmingham and Manchester will still be built.