Greater Manchester mayor proposes compromise on HS2 rail line

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Andy Burnham, Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has said he is open to a discussion with ministers about delaying construction of the northern leg of the UK’s High Speed 2 rail line if the government commits to building an east-west route.

Rishi Sunak has sparked a political row by launching a review of HS2 with a view to scrapping the northern section that is meant to take trains from Birmingham to Manchester.

Burnham told the prime minister in a letter that northern England should not be forced to choose between HS2 and the proposed east-west route called Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) that would link Liverpool and Leeds.

But he added “if you are adamant on making changes to the [HS2] scheme, we could be open to a discussion about prioritising the northern section of the line between Manchester airport and Manchester Piccadilly so that it enables NPR to be built first”. 

The cost of HS2 has spiralled and is set to be revised up from £70bn to around £91bn within months.

Construction of the line between London and Birmingham is under way. Sunak hopes to save tens of billions of pounds by dropping the HS2 section from Birmingham to Manchester and is drawing up a package of alternative transport funding for northern England as compensation for axing half of Europe’s biggest infrastructure project. 

He is examining a range of light-rail projects, bus improvements, tram schemes and an acceleration of NPR. 

NPR is politically more popular than HS2 in northern England because it would connect cities in a region with notoriously poor transport links, but the project is at an even earlier stage of development.

In his letter, Burnham insisted any support for Sunak’s plans “would be conditional on two things: NPR being built in full with an underground station at Manchester Piccadilly and a new line via Bradford, and a clear commitment that HS2 to Manchester is not being scrapped but rephased”. The letter was also signed by Bev Craig, leader of Manchester city council.

The government is considering whether to build the underground station at Manchester Piccadilly but there have been suggestions by ministers it could add an extra £5bn to the cost — a figure that is disputed by local leaders.

Moreover, NPR is interlinked with HS2 because about 15 miles of the high-speed line would form part of the link from Manchester airport to Manchester Piccadilly in the city centre. Cancelling the northern leg of HS2 would increase the cost of carrying out NPR as a standalone project. 

“You can do NPR without HS2 but it would cost a lot more,” said William Barter, an independent rail planning consultant.

Plans for NPR were downgraded in 2021 by the then prime minister Boris Johnson as part of a broad attempt to rein in the costs of HS2, by slashing part of the original route from Birmingham to Leeds. 

The original £39bn vision for NPR involved construction of a line from Leeds to Manchester via Bradford.

But it was replaced by a £17bn hybrid model that included a new line from Manchester to Marsden near Huddersfield, with upgrades to the existing Transpennine line from there to Leeds.

As yet there is no suggestion the government would revert to the original, more expensive plan for a £39bn NPR line connecting Bradford to Leeds and Manchester — which could be a sticking point for Burnham. 

Either way, supporters of HS2 point out that switching capital spending to NPR is problematic.

The 15-mile stretch of HS2 line which is shared with NPR is hugely expensive because it passes through urban parts of Manchester and involves two new stations.

“You’d be building the most costly part of the [HS2] scheme and then not linking it up with Birmingham,” said one person close to the project. 

Barter said that in theory ministers could switch spending from HS2 to NPR. “But the government is not going to want to spend the money on anything unless the business case for it stacks up, and NPR without HS2 almost certainly wouldn’t,” he added.

Former Tory chancellor George Osborne, a supporter of HS2, said on his podcast recently that new railways could not be conjured up overnight.

“It’s all very well saying cancel this leg . . . you cancel this leg that is 13 years of work preparation, planning in parliament, endless studies.

“Then you’re basically saying nothing’s going to be built because it will take years to then design a . . . line across the Pennines.” 

Sunak is expected to decide to end HS2 in southern England at Old Oak Common in outer London, rather than at Euston in the centre of the UK capital.

This could undermine any proposal to construct the northern leg of HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester, because Old Oak Common can only incorporate six platforms for the line.

The redevelopment of Euston for HS2, which was paused indefinitely by the government in June, would have featured 10 platforms — allowing far more trains to offload passengers from northern England.

“If they cancel Euston, they are jeopardising any chance of having a regular high-speed rail service from the north,” said one official.