PM’s rail U-turn ‘betrayed North’
BORIS Johnson has been accused of a “betrayal” of the North and the Midlands as the Government set out its scaledback plans for rail investment in the regions.
There was anger yesterday in the Commons as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps confirmed that the eastern leg of HS2 was being scrapped, while the planned Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) was being curtailed.
The Prime Minister insisted the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) would double capacity between Manchester and Leeds and treble that between Manchester and Liverpool. At the same time, he said people could not have “everything at once”, while going ahead with the HS2 extension would mean “smashing through unspoilt countryside and villages”.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Johnson had “ripped up” promises he made that HS2 would go all the way to Leeds and that there would be a new NPR line from Manchester to Leeds.
“This was the first test of ‘levelling up’ and the Government has completely failed and let down everybody in the North. You can’t believe a word the Prime Minister says,” he said.
The main elements of the IRP are:
■ The extension of HS2 from the East Midlands to Leeds has been scrapped. HS2 trains will instead run on existing lines.
■ NPR between Leeds and Manchester will be a combination of new track and enhancements to existing infrastructure.
■ Plans to fully electrify the Midland Main Line and the TransPennine route, and upgrade the East Coast Main Line.
On a visit to a Network Rail logistics hub near Selby, Mr Johnson dismissed the charges of broken promises as “total rubbish”, insisting the Government would deliver on them “eventually”.
“Of course there are going to be people who always want everything at once, and there are lots of people who are [going to] say, look, what we should do is carve huge new railways through virgin territory, smashing through unspoilt countryside and villages and do it all at once,” he said. “The problem with that is those extra high-speed lines take decades, and they don’t deliver the commuter benefits that I’m talking about. We will eventually do them.”
In the Commons, Mr Shapps said the Government was investing £96 billion in 110 miles of new high-speed line, “slashing” journey times across the region. He said under the original proposals HS2 would not have reached the region until the 2040s, while the revised plan would bring forward benefits to passengers by “at least a decade”. He added: “This plan will bring the North and the Midlands closer together, it will fire up economies to rival London and the South-East, it will rebalance our economic geography, it will spread opportunity, it will level up the country.”
The Department for Transport said improvements to the LeedsManchester line would cut journey times from 55 minutes to 33 – just four minutes slower than they would have been with NPR – for £18 billion less. But Shadow Transport Secretary Jim McMahon said it was a “betrayal of trust” of the people of the North and the Midlands, while £40bn of the promised £96bn had already been committed.
“He has completely sold us out,” he said. “We were promised a Northern Powerhouse, we were promised a Midlands Engine to be levelled up. But what we have been given today is a great train robbery.”