Sunak announces HS2 leg to Manchester to be scrapped

Rishi Sunak announces at the Tory party conference that the Birmingham to Manchester leg of the HS2 is to be scrapped.

The Prime Minister made a key speech at the conference held in Manchester city centre where he confirmed the rail line will stop in Manchester but from Birmingham it will switch onto using the existing West Coast Mainline track.

This means the high speed route, to connect the north with the south, will no longer exist, effectively confirming days of speculation.

After being introduced by his wife, Akshata Murty, as a ‘wonderful father, my best friend, your prime minister’, Mr Sunak thanked both his wife and the audience.

Speaking live from Manchester, Mr Sunak called HS2 the ‘ultimate example of the old consensus’.

The Prime Minister then said he’s cancelling ‘the rest of the HS2 project’ – which means everything outside the London to Birmingham leg, and is currently under construction.

He then said he ‘will reinvest every single penny’ saved from HS2 – £36 billion pounds – into hundreds of new transport projects in the North and in the Midlands, as well as across the country.

He went on to say that the north would benefit from the new projects rather than HS2, saying he ‘challenges anyone to tell me with a straight face that all of that isn’t what the north really needs’.

Mr Sunak said: “With our new Network North, you will be able to get from Manchester to the new station in Bradford in 30 minutes, Sheffield in 42 minutes, and to Hull in 84 minutes on a fully, electrified line.”

He continued: “So those who wish to disagree with me, I respect that. But they should have the honesty to admit that they would now be cancelling the hundreds of alternative projects right across the country that people will benefit from instead.

“I think our plan is simply a better long term investment of £36 billion pounds of taxpayers money.” 

He also said that he will keep single bus fares capped at £2 ‘across the whole country’.

The prime minister added: “I say, to those who backed the project in the first place, the facts have changed. And the right thing to do when the facts change, is to have the courage to change direction.

The anticipated announcement came after defence secretary Grant Shapps suggested a change in HS2 plans was thanks to fewer people travelling into work and instead choosing to work from home, following the coronavirus pandemic.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has labelled the, now confirmed, decision as ‘disgraceful’.