Reform promise to scrap ‘insane’ Northern Powerhouse Rail
Reform UK has pledged to scrap Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), labelling the project “insane” ahead of a major announcement by the Labour government in the coming weeks.
Richard Tice, in a forward to a report by centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, told companies considering bidding for contracts to build NPR that they should “not bother” as the party would “spend the money instead on things the country needs more”.
NPR is a proposal to boost east-west rail connections across northern England while Labour is expected to make a commitment to NPR in the coming weeks.
The Policy Exchange document predicted that NPR would be an “even greater train crash” than HS2, as a new line between Liverpool and Manchester could cost £30bn.
Researchers warned journeys between the cities on this line would take one minute longer than the quickest current services – which are 34 minutes – because the new line would serve Manchester Airport.
The report proposes alternative schemes, such as “an Elizabeth line for the North”, a northern equivalent of the railway between Berkshire and Essex via tunnels under central London.
This would involve a tunnel under Manchester city centre, linking conventional lines serving destinations such as Liverpool, Preston, Bradford, Leeds and Sheffield.
Policy Exchange said the “crisis in HS2 is even worse than ministers admit”, as the “true cost” for the line between London and Birmingham is “up to 22 per cent” higher than the amount “declared to Parliament”.
An HS2 Ltd source disputed this figure.
HS2 a ‘historic disaster’ – Reform’s Tice
Tice linked the “political obsession with high-speed rail” with how politics is “estranged, in so many ways, from ordinary voters’ real wishes and needs”.
He added: “We all know the phrase that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results.
“All of us, it seems, except the government.
“Even as the historic disaster of HS2 blows through more billions in overspending and more years of delay, even as it sucks money from things the country actually needs, even as taxes on people and business rise, ministers are about to commit to further high-speed rail schemes which could make HS2’s problems and price-tag look trivial.”
He also said: “To anyone tempted to bid for the Liverpool-Manchester high speed scheme, or the revived northern leg of HS2, I give this warning: do not bother.
“A Reform government will spend the money instead on things the country needs more.
“That is the choice: tens of billions freed to spend on conventional rail and roads that help ordinary folk get to work – or another two decades of failure and waste.”
The report’s author is Andrew Gilligan, senior fellow and head of transport, infrastructure and liveable London at Policy Exchange and a former No10 transport adviser.
He said: “Public transport is a network. Creating better public transport means creating a better network – allowing people in thousands of places to travel easily door-to-door, often by connecting from a train to a tram or bus.
“It does not mean grafting one or two new high-speed lines, serving a handful of places, onto an otherwise still decrepit system.
“The focus on high-speed rail has also meant an obsession with links – lines between places.
“But the key capacity problem of the North’s railway is at nodes – that is, what happens to all the trains when they hit chokepoints like central Manchester or Leeds.
“The high-speed schemes on the table would help relatively little with this problem, at enormous expense.”