Transport secretary Grant Shapps outlined the government’s new plans for rail services on Thursday, with £96 billion to be invested into improving rail networks in the North and the Midlands.
Around half of that £96 billion is thought to be new funding, and the new Integrated Rail Plan comes with major changes to HS2 plans, with the eastern leg planned to run between Leeds and the East Midlands to be scrapped.
The changes will mean that Northern Powerhouse Rail will not go ahead as previously planned, and the high-speed lines between Birmingham and Leeds, and Leeds and Manchester, will comprise of upgrades to the existing network rather than new lines.
The new Integrated Rail Plan will deliver three high speed lines, covering Crewe to Manchester and Birmingham to the East Midlands [with HS2 trains carrying on to Nottingham and Derby, and Chesterfield and Sheffield on an upgraded main line], as well as a new high-speed line from Warrington to Manchester.
Shapps told MPs that the changes will bring faster journey times to the North and Midlands a decade ahead of time, explaining that HS2 would not have reached the East Midlands until the early 2040s.
“This unprecedented commitment to build a world-class railway that delivers for passengers and freight, for towns and cities, for communities and businesses, will benefit eight out of ten of those busiest rail corridors across the North and the Midlands,” Shapps said.
“In the original scheme, the HS2 track would not have reached the East Midlands and the North until the early 2040s. Clearly a rethink was needed so the project would deliver for the regions that it served as soon as possible.”
According to the transport secretary, the plans would reduce journey time:
- Between Birmingham and Nottingham from an hour and a quarter, down to 26 minutes
- Between York and Manchester from 83 minutes to 55 minutes
- Between Newcastle and Birmingham by half
He added that commuters will also be able to travel between Bradford and Leeds in “just 12 minutes”, which is almost half the time that the journey currently takes.
Hailing the move one of the “single biggest acts of levelling up” from any government in history, Shapps added that the plans give passengers in the North and the Midlands “the services they need and deserve”.
Labour MPs have criticised the changes, with shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon labelling it a “betrayal” of the North.
McMahon added: "Let's be clear - the scaling back of Northern Powerhouse Rail coupled with the scrapping of the Eastern leg of HS2 is a massive blow for our regions".
Meanwhile, former treasury minister and Northern Powerhouse Partnership vice chair, Lord O’Neill, has suggested the government may face backlash from its own MPs in traditional Labour heartlands that flipped in 2019.
“Given the amount of uproar it will cause in Red Wall seats and Tory northern MPs, especially in the current time, I’m not quite sure why they [the government] have done it,” Lord O’Neill said.
He added that the North was "being left out" in a move that did not "make a lot of sense".
Rebuffing criticism in Parliament, Shapps said: “I've heard some people say that we're just going about electrifying the Trans Pennine route, this is wrong. What we're actually doing is investing £23 billion to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail and the Trans Pennine route upgrade, unlocking east-west travel across the north of England.
“In total this package is 110 miles of new high-speed line, all of it in the Midlands and the North, it's 180 miles of newly electrified line, all of it in the Midlands and the North.”
Highlighting the fact that original plans for HS2 did not serve any of the three major East Midlands cities, Shapps told the Commons that strengthening regional links was the “most economically beneficial” decision for previously left behind communities.
He said: "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 and it will bring benefits at least a decade or more earlier."
Photo taken from Wikimedia Commons
