Grayling faces rail row in Parliament
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling faces a potential Commons challenge today over the future of the trans-Pennine link amid growing fears the planned electrification of the route could be scrapped to save money.
Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald plans to raise the issue in Parliament.
TRANSPORT SECRETARY Chris Grayling faces a potential Commons challenge today over the future of the trans-Pennine rail link amid growing fears the planned electrification of the route could be scrapped to save money.
Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald plans to raise the issue in Parliament today as government officials refused to deny reports that the £3bn upgrade of the route would not include electrification between Leeds and Manchester.
A group representing northern business and civic leaders last night called for strategic body Transport for the North to be given full power over all northern rail infrastructure and responsibility for overseeing the vital project.
According to the reports, a report by Network Rail setting out how journeys on the 76-mile route could be improved found the option to electrify the line was the most expensive, because of the difficulty of fixing electric cables to Pennines rock. The Government says the reports are “pure speculation” and that officials are considering the options presented by Network Rail before making a decision later this year. Mr McDonald told The Yorkshire Post: “Cancelling TransPennine electrification would be a betrayal of the North. Yorkshire has suffered decades of underinvestment and if this vital upgrade is scrapped at the same time as Grayling backs further investment in the South East with Heathrow expansion and Crossrail 2, it will be the final straw for the people of the North.”
Hull North MP Diana Johnson said that if the reports were true, “this would mean that George Osborne’s ‘Northern Powerhouse’ has finally been cancelled and the new Transport for the North body increasingly looks powerless and side-lined”.
Electrification of the transPennine route from Manchester to York, via Leeds, was announced by then-Chancellor George Osborne in the 2011 Autumn statement, with the aim that work would start in 2014.
But in 2015 the project was “paused”, before being put back to the five year ‘control period’ starting in 2019.
The future of the trans-Pennine electrification was thrown into doubt last summer when Transport Secretary Chris Grayling cancelled two similar schemes in other parts of the country, citing the emergence of new technology that can run on both electric and diesel power. In March, Mr Grayling told The
Yorkshire Post that the £3bn upgrade of the line would involve a mix of improvements and that “part of our strategy is electrification, where it makes a difference to journey times”.
Henri Murison, of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said: “Decisions which affect the North should be made openly and with proper debate.”
Decisions which affect the North should be made openly. Henri Murison, of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership.