Liz Truss pledges to reverse big cuts to key rail scheme in northern England

Liz Truss has pledged to reverse the decision to dramatically scale back the government’s flagship rail scheme in the north of England.

The prime minister said on Monday she would commit to a new high speed line spanning the entire width of northern England between Liverpool and Hull. This would include a stop in Bradford, a city with some of the worst public transport connections in the UK, which was controversially axed by the Boris Johnson government as part of a cost-saving drive almost a year ago.

Truss said the long-promised project, known as Northern Powerhouse Rail, would see a “full new line” built from Liverpool to Hull via Bradford. “I’m very clear about that,” she told ITV.

The Johnson administration was heavily criticised by local politicians and business leaders for cutting back NPR and parts of the HS2 high-speed project between London and the north to save money when it announced a £96bn investment known as the Integrated Rail Plan in November last year.

The original plans for NPR, drawn up by northern leaders to improve the poor rail connections across the north of England, had called for a new high-speed link from Manchester to Leeds, including a station in Bradford, with an extension eventually to Liverpool in the west and Hull in the east.

The ruling Conservatives had included NPR in their 2019 election manifesto. But two years after winning the election Johnson cut £18bn from the scheme, equivalent to roughly half the original budget. This reduced the project to a 40-mile stretch of new line from Warrington via Manchester to a point close to Huddersfield, while the rest of the route to Leeds would have seen existing tracks upgraded.

At the same time Johnson also axed almost the entire planned eastern leg of HS2 which was originally meant to link Birmingham to Leeds. Truss did not address whether she would consider reversing that decision.

Susan Hinchcliffe, Bradford council’s leader, welcomed Truss’s announcement about NPR, and said she would “hold the government to account” to deliver their new plan. “We won’t let up until spades are in the ground,” she added. Bradford council has long argued that the city’s poor transport links have put off investors.

Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said building a new station at Bradford would “correct one of the biggest mistakes of the Integrated Rail Plan,” adding: “If the government follows through on this, their plans for growth and productivity start to look much more credible.”

Charlie Cornish, chief executive of Manchester Airports Group, said Truss’s decision to rethink the Integrated Rail Plan would “help unlock the north’s full potential and drive a rebalancing of the UK economy”.

The government would spend the “next few months” drawing up more detailed plans for the rail line, according to an official at the transport department. “We want to look at it across the piece,” they added.

Separately, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the new transport secretary, said on Monday that she personally wanted to see a third runway built at London’s Heathrow airport. “I’m a supporter. I’m a supporter of moving forwards,” she said.

But Trevelyan said the expansion plans still depended on Heathrow addressing local environmental concerns, particularly on air pollution. Campaigners took legal action in a bid to block the runway but the Supreme Court threw out the objections two years ago, clearing the way for the airport operator to apply for planning permission.

Heathrow said: “While we are now rebuilding capacity after the pandemic, we are also reviewing and looking ahead at the next steps for expansion.”