Northern leg of HS2 to Manchester will be scrapped
The northern leg of the HS2 line is set to be scrapped, Sky News understands.
Rumours had been circling for weeks that the high-speed rail line between Birmingham and Manchester was going to be axed by the prime minister and chancellor due to soaring costs.
Even the reports – which have been denied by Number 10 – led to a huge backlash from all sides of the political spectrum, including from former Conservative prime ministers Boris Johnson and Theresa May.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: “These reports are incorrect. No final decisions have been taken on Phase 2 of HS2.”
The development threatens to attract controversy and overshadow Rishi Sunak’s first Tory conference as leader and prime minister as the party faithful gathers in Manchester for the annual event.
The first indications that the leg to Manchester could be scrapped came after The Independent reported that ministers were considering shelving the northern phase because of concerns about spiralling costs and severe delays.
Politics live – Chancellor set for big conference speech
The newspaper said a cost estimate revealed that the government has already spent £2.3bn on stage two of the railway from Birmingham to Manchester, but that ditching the northern phase could save up to £34bn.
Sky News understands the Department of Transport (DfT) has worked up a package of alternative projects – rail, bus and road schemes – which could be funded from money saved by scrapping the Manchester to Birmingham leg of the project.
But Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, accused the government of treating people in the north of England as “second-class citizens” with regards to HS2.
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‘Second-class citizens on transport’
He told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips: “An east-west line is really important for north of England, as well as north-south. Why is it always that people here are forced to choose? That we can’t have everything, ‘you can have this or you can have that but you can’t have everything’?
“London never has to choose between a north-south line and an east-west line and good public transport within the city.
“Why is it that people in the north are always forced to choose, why are we always treated as second-class citizens when it comes to transport?”
Number 10 is trying to shut down an announcement it is not ready to make public
Ahead of today, Downing Street drew up a plan for announcing a decision on scrapping the northern leg of HS2 in Manchester.
It would involve a cabinet meeting here at conference, possibly a visit by the PM and the announcement itself.
Earlier today, I was told a decision had been made. This would have been at the heart of government’s inner sanctum, with this communicated only to a small number.
All the internal government documentation on HS2 is numbered to try and capture leakers, with press spokesman not in the loop.
It has also not yet gone to cabinet – we would know if this had happened.
Therefore Number 10 can legitimately say that no final decision has been made – as some decisions have, we are told.
This revelation – as the chancellor was due on stage – could not be more disruptive for conference, meaning HS2 is eclipsing yet another day of the coverage.
Number 10 are now trying to shut down an announcement they are evidently not ready to make in public.
That is why they have issued the following: “These reports are incorrect. No final decisions have been taken on Phase 2 of HS2.”
We await the next twist in the tale.
He was joined in his criticism by Mr Johnson, who said delaying or scrapping the northern leg of HS2 would be “betraying the north of the country and the whole agenda of levelling up”.
The ex-prime minister’s intervention came on on the eve of the party conference.
In a series of interviews on Thursday, Rishi Sunak repeatedly refused to be drawn on the future of HS2, saying: “I’m not speculating on future things.”
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Are Tories planning ‘rail betrayal’?
But writing in his weekly Daily Mail column, Mr Johnson appealed to his former chancellor to show Britain still has “the requisite guts and ambition” to invest in infrastructure and labelled the aim of saving money “deluded”.
Mr Johnson – who made levelling up a centrepiece of his 2019 manifesto and government – said when he heard reports the northern leg was set to be delayed or cancelled, he let out a “long, low despairing groan”.
Read more:
HS2 ‘pause’ designed to save money is costing the taxpayer more than £360m, leaked govt briefing reveals
HS2: The morphing conundrum – Why are so many people upset with rail project?
He wrote: “Cancel HS2? Cut off the northern legs? We must be out of our minds.”
Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, has also warned against any downscaling of HS2.
Asked about the reports by Sky News at the conference in Manchester, he said: “You must ask the PM – I’m confident he’ll do the right thing.”
Delivery of the high-speed railway has been a core pledge of the Conservative government, but it has been plagued by delays and ever-increasing costs.
The initial opening date of 2026 has fallen back to 2033, while cost estimates have spiralled from about £33bn in 2010 to £71bn in 2019 – excluding the final eastern leg from the West Midlands to the East Midlands.
It is not just the northern section of the project that has encountered trouble.There are also doubts about the future of Euston station in London and whether services will terminate there or at Old Oak Common in west London.
The TON Foundation could have avoided its golden visa controversy in the UAE with a brief legal review, a local lawyer told Cointelegraph.
Politics
Norman Tebbit: Former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government dies aged 94
Norman Tebbit, the former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government, has died at the age of 94.
Lord Tebbit died “peacefully at home” late on Monday night, his son William confirmed.
One of Mrs Thatcher’s most loyal cabinet ministers, he was a leading political voice throughout the turbulent 1980s.
He held the posts of employment secretary, trade secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Conservative party chairman before resigning as an MP in 1992 after his wife was left disabled by the Provisional IRA’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
He considered standing for the Conservative leadership after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation in 1990, but was committed to taking care of his wife.
Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit in 1987 after her election victory. Pic: PA
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called him an “icon” in British politics and was “one of the leading exponents of the philosophy we now know as Thatcherism”.
“But to many of us it was the stoicism and courage he showed in the face of terrorism, which inspired us as he rebuilt his political career after suffering terrible injuries in the Brighton bomb, and cared selflessly for his wife Margaret, who was gravely disabled in the bombing,” she wrote on X.
“He never buckled under pressure and he never compromised. Our nation has lost one of its very best today and I speak for all the Conservative family and beyond in recognising Lord Tebbit’s enormous intellect and profound sense of duty to his country.
“May he rest in peace.”
Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret stand outside the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Pic: PA
Tory grandee David Davis told Sky News Lord Tebbit was a “great working class Tory, always ready to challenge establishment conventional wisdom for the bogus nonsense it often was”.
“He was one of Thatcher’s bravest and strongest lieutenants, and a great friend,” Sir David said.
“He had to deal with the agony that the IRA visited on him and his wife, and he did so with characteristic unflinching courage. He was a great man.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage said Lord Tebbit “gave me a lot of help in my early days as an MEP”.
He was “a great man. RIP,” he added.
Lord Tebbit as employment secretary in 1983 with Mrs Thatcher. Pic: PA
Born to working-class parents in north London, he was made a life peer in 1992, where he sat until he retired in 2022.
Lord Tebbit was trade secretary when he was injured in the Provisional IRA’s bombing in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference in 1984.
Five people died in the attack and Lord Tebbit’s wife, Margaret, was left paralysed from the neck down. She died in 2020 at the age of 86.
Before entering politics, his first job, aged 16, was at the Financial Times where he had his first experience of trade unions and vowed to “break the power of the closed shop”.
He then trained as a pilot with the RAF – at one point narrowly escaping from the burning cockpit of a Meteor 8 jet – before becoming the MP for Epping in 1970 then for Chingford in 1974.
Lord Tebbit during an EU debate in the House of Lords in 1997. Pic: PA
As a cabinet minister, he was responsible for legislation that weakened the powers of the trade unions and the closed shop, making him the political embodiment of the Thatcherite ideology that was in full swing.
His tough approach was put to the test when riots erupted in Brixton, south London, against the backdrop of high rates of unemployment and mistrust between the black community and the police.
He was frequently misquoted as having told the unemployed to “get on your bike”, and was often referred to as “Onyerbike” for some time afterwards.
What he actually said was he grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father who did not riot, “he got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it”.
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