The Government is finally expected to outline its vision for major rail investment in the North next month.
Ministers have been assessing their options since taking power last summer amid intense lobbying from local leaders across several regions.
The i Paper understands an announcement is expected to coincide with the party’s conference in Liverpool starting on 28 September, giving Keir Starmer the opportunity to contrast his premiership with the previous Tory government.
Rishi Sunak famously used the Conservative party’s conference in Manchester to confirm he was cancelling the northern leg of HS2 in 2023.
Starmer will hope to reinvigorate northern Labour MPs – many of whom are worried about the rise of Reform – by offering a symbol of Labour’s commitment to their constituencies.
A Government source insisted the plans will be “big” and “significant”.
There remains uncertainty, however, over what the Government is able to afford in a climate of sluggish economic growth, rising inflation and spiralling costs such as the extra £5bn required for its U-turn on welfare reform.
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.
Here The i Paper looks at what options are on the table and which moves could leave some northern leaders happy and others missing out.
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.
Her reuse of the NPR branding surprised some observers – it is a political slogan that now dates back more than a decade to one of her Tory predecessors, George Osborne.
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.
Osborne said transport investment would play a key role in allowing cities such as Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Hull to pool their collective resource and pack more of an economic punch.
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.
However, it has been beset by a series of false starts and cutbacks ever since.
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.
Will ministers commit to no more than some funding to develop a business case for part of a rail route? Or will they make use of existing design and legislation to get things moving quickly?
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’.
This would include five new or rebuilt stations including an underground through-station at Manchester Piccadilly which the previous government deemed too expensive.
Burnham and other leaders in the north west believe the LMR line can, and should, be a priority that can be acted upon now.
Experts say parts of the Hybrid Bill that was laid in Parliament for the building of Phase 2 of HS2 could be reused to give the legal powers for a crucial section between Cheshire and Manchester.
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.
Starmer’s government has refused to recommit to the funding since coming to power, however.
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.
They were dealt a blow last month, however, when the government officially lifted ‘safeguarding’ protections for the land and property it bought up for the eastern leg of HS2 which was supposed to take the high-speed railway to Leeds.
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)Yorkshire leaders are worried this is a further indication that the Government will prioritise the North West in their vision of what NPR should be, The i Paper understands.
“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 it should include Sheffield as well because traffic between Manchester and Sheffield is immense.
“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.
“As it stands that is what NPR has become – it’s shrunk from this east-west railway to a 20km railway 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?
Another tricky issue for the government to resolve is that NPR was always envisaged as integral to the success of 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.
The party’s position appears to be that it admits there needs to be some action taken on the West Coast Mainline, which is predicted to be beyond its capacity by the mid 2030s, but it has not yet decided what that will be.
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.
This option is also supported by the High Speed Rail Group (HSRG), the body that represents many of the biggest businesses in the rail industry.
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.
Howe believes the government is unlikely to announce an extension of HS2 due to the controvery surrounded its escalating costs and mismanagement.
But he hopes Labour will include some scope for it to ultimately to come to Manchester in the future.
“I think people in the north will probably be more receptive to east-west rail than they were to HS2,” he added.
“The frustration will be if this big announcement that everyone’s gearing up for is just funding for a study.
“What we need to hear is the Hybrid Bill is being progressed through Parliament with immediate effect, I don’t think northern leaders will settle for anything less.
“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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