£43bn HS3 hits buffers

(but don’t worry, HS2 is still on track...though none is laid)

A MAJOR project designed to help deliver Boris Johnson’s “levelling up” agenda in the North could be scrapped at a secret Whitehall meeting this week, a civil service source has claimed.

The £43billion Northern Powerhouse Rail project (NPR), sometimes known as High Speed 3, was promised to MPS in the red wall seats to help create prosperity across the north of England.

But well-placed sources have said that available funds have been swallowed up by the controversial High Speed 2 project which, it is claimed, has now reached £158billion without any track being laid.

The Department for Transport denies this figure, saying it is “unsubstantiated and incorrect”.

If NPR is scrapped it would infuriate Conservative MPS who won in the red wall seats and will be seen as a betrayal of promises made to invest in the hard-hit region.

Insiders have claimed that Department for Transport (DFT) officials would rather money is sunk into Crossrail 2 in London.

Any decision to scrap NPR could have a major impact on the Batley and Spen by-election in Yorkshire on July 1, when the Tories hope to take a seat off Labour.

But it also comes in the wake of fury over HS2 being stoked up after voters in Chesham and Amersham gave the Conservatives a drubbing.

The Lib Dems last week turned a 16,223 Tory majority into an 8,028 majority for them after tapping into local anger over plans to build HS2 through the constituency.

The original plan for NPR was for a line to be built linking Manchester to Leeds via Bradford, which would have a major new station. That line would eventually branch to Newcastle and Hull, giving the region its first east-to-west-coast link.

But the Sunday Express has been told that Treasury and DFT officials and ministers are set to meet in the Treasury tomorrow to effectively kill the project.

The green light would instead be given to a series of upgrades worth around £10billion on the “Dingle route”, including the electrification of the transpennine line between Manchester and Leeds.

This will involve building a hub station in Huddersfield, with hundreds of homes in the Yorkshire town being compulsorily bought and demolished.

One civil service source said they feared that it would be claimed that electrification was the promised NPR, whereas, in fact, it is a different and cheaper project.

A DFT spokesman said: “The Integrated Rail Plan will soon outline exactly how major rail projects, including HS2 phase 2b, the Transpennine route upgrade and other transformational projects such as Northern Powerhouse Rail, will work together to deliver the reliable train services that passengers across the North and Midlands need and deserve.”

Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, near Bradford, and co-founder of the Blue Collar Conservative Movement, warned Boris Johnson not to go back on his promises.

He said: “Unlike HS2, which is more likely to benefit London, NPR is crucial for the northern economy and it would be a scandal if the spiralling costs of the white elephant HS2 led to NPR being scaled back in any way.

“The Government has repeatedly made clear that NPR will be delivered and, along with other northern MPS, we will keep their feet to the fire about that.”