Rishi Sunak will announce the scrapping of the HS2 high-speed rail line from the West Midlands to Manchester on Wednesday, the BBC understands.
In his Conservative Party Conference speech, the PM is expected to set out a range of alternative projects in the north of England and Wales. He is likely to argue these projects will be better value for money and can be delivered more quickly.
It comes after weeks of speculation about the future of the line. Rumours it could be scrapped have already prompted anger among local leaders and businesses. Labour Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said ditching the link to his city would be a “permanent statement” to people in the North that they were ”second-class citizens' when it came to transport.
The Conservative West Midlands Mayor Andy Street, who on Monday called an impromptu press conference at the party conference to warn Mr Sunak that getting rid of HS2 would amount to “cancelling the future”, is said to be distraught by the news of the prime minister's decision.
The football club Manchester United was among 30 businesses which wrote to the prime minister urging him to commit to the line and avoid “economic self-sabotage”. It was hoped HS2 would cut journey times, create more space on the rail network and boost jobs outside London.
However, there had been concerns about the mounting costs of the infrastructure project, with the latest estimates for the project amounting to about £71bn. But, that was in 2019 prices so it does not account for the spike in costs for materials and wages, for example, in recent months.
Last month Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said it would be “crazy” not to review the project, particularly given the rise in inflation. Deputy chair of the Conservative Party Lee Anderson has described HS2 as “a bad gamble”.
The route was initially proposed in 2010, and given the go-ahead in 2012, when then-Transport Secretary Justine Greening called it “the most significant transport infrastructure project since the building of the motorways”.
There have already been delays, disruption, a big cut to HS2's Eastern leg, and salami slicing on HS2 – but this latest decision would change the project and its outcomes beyond recognition. At least £22.5bn has already been spent building the London-Birmingham section, while £2.3bn has gone towards the second phase, on things such as buying up land and property.
Thirty-thousand people are already working on HS2, mostly in the supply chain. There are also people whose lives have already been uprooted by property purchases along the planned HS2 route north of Birmingham.
If Mr Sunak announces that HS2 trains will go to Manchester using existing tracks, it follows that no extra space would be created and journey time benefits would be reduced. In recent days, there have been suggestions that instead of building HS2, money could be put towards improving rail east-west links across the north of England.
For example, Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) aims to improve connections between Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. However, the project has been designed to intersect with HS2, using a section of the high speed line, and if HS2 does not continue to Manchester this would increase the costs of NPR.
Mr Burnham, Manchester's mayor, said on Tuesday that anyone living in northern England “knows that the thing we most need is a new line” across the region. Speaking to BBC Two's Newsnight, he warned that scaling back HS2 meant anyone of his age – 53 – and older “will never see that new line in their lifetimes”.
He also accused the government of “deciding that the north of England will have a smaller economy for the rest of this century” – and Mr Sunak of having “contempt” for Manchester.
“The prime minister found time for lots of things today but not to speak to the leader of Manchester City Council [and] not to speak to me,” Mr Burnham said.
“We are completely shut out of this decision… Is that any way to treat the good people of Greater Manchester and the wider north? I don't think it is.” Nicola Headlam, who was head of NPR until 2019, said it “beggars belief” that a decision has been made to “leave us with 19th Century infrastructure while we're trying to leap forward to the 21st Century”.
She told BBC Radio 4's World Tonight programme that HS2 would offer people living in the north of England “a transformational, once in a lifetime, once in a generation, modality shift” – and “it will be a great shame if it is diluted”.
A group of Conservative MPs, called the Northern Research Group, have called for a line connecting Liverpool to Hull, which they've named “the Charles Line” after the King. Mr Sunak will be delivering his conference speech at a tricky time for the Conservatives, who have been lagging behind Labour in the polls for over a year.
Speaking from the Manchester Central Convention Complex – an old railway turned into a conference venue – he will tell the audience that he is the man to “fundamentally change our country”. It is likely to be his last conference speech before the next general election and his team will hope that it can help change the fortunes of the prime minister and his party.
— CutC by bbc.com
