Ministers have been assessing their options since taking power last summer amid intense lobbying from local leaders across several regions.
Rishi Sunak famously used the Conservative party’s conference in Manchester to confirm he was cancelling the northern leg of HS2 in 2023.
A Government source insisted the plans will be “big” and “significant”.
The shadow of HS2 – which has just been allocated a further £25bn and could yet cost more than £100bn overall – also hangs over any transport spending plans.
At the Spending Review in June, Chancellor Rachel Reeves promised the Government would set out its “ambitions for Northern Powerhouse Rail” (NPR) at a later date.
In 2014, the former MP for Tatton gave a speech at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in which he outlined his vision of a ‘Northern Powerhouse’ that could compete with London and the South East.
Northern Powerhouse Rail would see new lines built and others upgraded to improve services going east to west – which are notoriously slow and unreliable – across the north.
What will be in Reeves’ version of NPR?
Northern leaders have previously told The i Paper they are uninterested in whether Starmer’s government decide to stick with the NPR branding or come up with something new, and are more concerned with the detail of what comes next.
The LMR line would connect Manchester and Liverpool across five stations (Photo: Supplied)
Andy Burnham and his fellow Labour mayor Steve Rotheram, for example, have lobbied hard for a new railway between Manchester and Liverpool they are calling the ‘LMR line’.
Burnham and other leaders in the north west believe the LMR line can, and should, be a priority that can be acted upon now.
And former Conservative rail minister Huw Merriman – who now acts as chair of the Liverpool-Manchester Railway Board – told The i Paper the £17bn required to build it has already been allocated by the Treasury when the northern leg of HS2 was axed in 2023.
Over in Yorkshire, Labour’s mayors Tracy Brabin, Oliver Coppard and David Skaith have set out a programme of rail investments they want worth around £14bn.
The same protections remain in place for the thousands of properties owned by HS2 on the leg from Birmingham to Crewe and Manchester.
Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, Huw Merriman, chair of the Liverpool-Manchester Railway Partnership Board and Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City region (left to right) (Photo: James Manning/PA Wire)“In a perfect world NPR would be as it was first described in the 2010s which was a complete new line from Liverpool to Hull,” said rail expert and campaigner Chris Howe.
“I think realistically looking at what the government are saying, it looks very much like we will get some sort of line from Warrington to Manchester.
“I think if the announcement is just the section to Manchester then I think a lot of politicians in Yorkshire will be quite disappointed.”
What about a replacement for HS2?
Labour has faced repeated questions about whether it intends to revive the high-speed railway north of Birmingham – but ministers have consistently denied any plans to do so.
Labour’s MP Connor Naismith is among those who have kept up the pressure for HS2 to be extended at least as far as his consistuency in Crewe.
Meanwhile, Andy Burnham has supported a plan for a slower, lower specification rail line between Birmingham and Manchester which could be part-financed by the private sector.
But he hopes Labour will include some scope for it to ultimately to come to Manchester in the future.
“The frustration will be if this big announcement that everyone’s gearing up for is just funding for a study.
“I think if Andy Burnham doesn’t get the through-station he wants, and in Liverpool we don’t get a dedicated route to Warrington then I still think there’s scope for politicians to be disappointed.
“I think there’s a real risk in the end of there being not much support for what is put on the table – that’s my fear.”
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