Government’s disgraceful broken promise on rail upgrade shows what they really think about the north
Staggering difference in the amount of public money spent per head on investment in transport
TWO years ago ministers promised a fully electrified Manchester to Leeds rail line would be ‘at the heart’ of the Northern Powerhouse. After pausing it for a ‘review’, they swiftly un-paused it in the face of public outrage and a campaign by the Manchester Evening News and other northern titles.
Last week, they broke that promise.
Incredibly transport secretary Chris Grayling let slip that not only might it not happen, but that Manchester Piccadilly’s platform extension may not either.
And if that was the injury, this week brings the final insult.
Grayling saved the real sting for Monday morning, when he announced that unlike northern commuters, London’s staggeringly expensive £30bn Crossrail 2 scheme does have his backing.
If the howls of fury from passengers crammed onto creaking Transpennine commuter trains cannot not be heard in Whitehall, it’s only because government has wedged on its tin hat tightly enough to block them out.
As even a northern Tory said privately after the Crossrail announcement: “I genuinely don’t know what we are playing at. It’s awful.”
Grayling’s broken promises about our railways seem to suggest he hasn’t even read the business case for their improvement. He certainly can’t have caught a train here, because if he had, he would know.
Perhaps that the answer.
If ministers really believe our pathetic northern rail services are not worthy of a full upgrade – if the clear economic arguments don’t wash for a government that prizes a strong economy above all else, despite those promises in 2015 – then maybe they should try using them. They would quickly find that while they can get from the capital to Manchester in two hours, on a bad day it can sometimes take the same time again to reach Bolton. They would find slow, sardine-tin Pacer trains if they’re lucky. If not, they would find a replacement bus. They would find no wi-fi. They would find journeys that take the same time today that they did in the 1960s, but for many, many times the price. And they would find billions lost to the northern economy because in 2017 – people still cannot get themselves directly from one side of the Pennines to another – a distance shorter than London Underground’s Central Line. The numbers are well-rehearsed but are worthy of another airing. London already gets an extraordi- nary £2,595 per person in publicly-funded transport investment, according to analysis by data researchers Statista. Here in the north west the figure is £99.
Grayling’s argument last week that the cost of Crossrail 1 ‘ skews the figures’ doesn’t help the government’s case – it underlines its weakness. Of course, spending billions on Crossrail skews the figures. That’s the problem.
And spending another £30bn on Crossrail 2 while throwing our own rail investment into doubt is hardly going to solve it.
His suggestion that Network Rail ‘does something with digital technology’ to solve the capacity problem at Manchester Picca-
dilly was suspiciously vague. Perhaps he wants us to upload ourselves to Leeds. Northern leaders are rightly not taking all this lying down. If the government can’t electrify one rail line and expand two platforms, how is the north ever going to punch its weight? Manchester council leader Sir Richard Leese, who with the help of former chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein had helped convince the last Tory administration of the rational case for northern transport investment, is damning. “Billions of pounds for London and nothing but uncertainty for Leeds and Manchester suggests this government is abandoning the rebalancing of the economy,” he says.
“Manchester and the rest of the north is not going to just sit back and let this happen – and we will make the secretary of state for transport think again.”
Similarly Andy Burnham, the region’s new mayor, now looks vindicated for demanding assurances from government last summer.
“The time has passed where we can take these decisions lying down,” he agrees, pointing out that the cancellation last week of electrification projects in Wales and Sheffield, as well as the question mark over Manchester to Leeds, suggests people outside of London are paying for Crossrail 2. People here have had to put up with sub-standard rail services for decades and will simply not accept that spending billions more on London is the country’s highest priority for transport investment.”
Ironically Theresa May herself underlined that very argument to the M.E.N. last September.
After a summer of wobbles over the Northern Powerhouse agenda she attempted to silence her critics, writing that the ‘whole machinery of government’ would get behind it.
“I don’t want to see our country dependent on one city any more,” she wrote.
But much like a northern train, it seems government machinery is just not fit for purpose.