High speed rail link between Manchester and London via West Midlands cancelled

HS2 – the controversial high-speed rail link connecting the north of England to the south – has been cancelled, the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced on Wednesday (4 October).

The HS2 rail project had been set to connect Manchester to Birmingham and London Euston, but now only the new line between the capital and the West Midlands will be built.

Proposals now scrapped for the 85km (52 mile) route included new high-speed stations at Manchester Airport and Manchester Piccadilly, and would have provided the infrastructure required for Northern Powerhouse Rail and provision for new Metrolink routes, making Manchester the best-connected city outside of London.

As many as 17,500 jobs were quoted to be supported by the project’s construction alone.

Plans to extend HS2 from the East Midlands to Leeds were scrapped back in 2021 with HS2 first announced in 2014. Billions of pounds have been sunk into the project.

Currently the only rail link to London from Manchester is between Manchester Piccadilly and London Euston via Crewe with a travel time of around two hours and 15 minutes, with trains to Birmingham taking a similar time.

The cancellation comes on the day of the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, and followed weeks of speculation that the second phase of the rail link would be cancelled.

Instead, the funding for the northern leg will be ‘re-routed’ into ‘improved travel between the north and the Midlands’ – dubbed ‘Network North’ – with a suggested Metrolink extension between Heywood and Manchester given as an example of “improved connectivity.”

The “spiralling costs” of HS2 and a ‘shift’ in travel patterns have been blamed for the cancellation, with the government saying: “Originally, every pound spent on HS2 was set to deliver £2.30 worth of benefits back to the taxpayer. Despite revising the scope, benefits could fall as low as 80 pence for every £1 spent.

“Covid-19 has completely changed travel patterns and business rail travel is currently around half of 2019 levels while the majority of public transport journeys continue to be taken by bus.”

The Prime Minister said: “Costs for HS2 have more than doubled since forecast – phase one was originally meant to cost £20 billion but latest estimates are up to £45 billion.

“And the project has been repeatedly delayed.

“It was supposed to be operational by 2026 and opened in full by 2033, but now the line to Manchester is forecast to be opened in 2041, in 18 years’ time.

“We will invest £19.8 billion in the North on things like connecting its major cities, a new station in Bradford, a new tram for Leeds, new major roads, reopened train lines and an additional £12 billion for better connectivity between Manchester and Liverpool.”

Last night, business leaders from Greater Manchester and the surrounding area – including PTG Holroyd, Manchester United Football Club, the Manchester Airport Group, the University of Manchester – wrote to the Prime Minister urging him not to cancel HS2. In their letter, they said cancelling the rail link would be “a major act of economic self-sabotage and damage our international standing as a place to do business” before saying “we recognise the challenge of controlling costs.”

They continued: “People know costs need to be controlled, and there is the need for tight scrutiny of the programme, but we also all recognise the need to build for the future success of our towns, cities and communities.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which we cannot afford to throw away. Scrapping this scale of infrastructure investment would risk our standing as a globally competitive UK in the future, and adversely impact our communities for decades to come.”

 

 

Leaders across the north have hit back at the decision, with Rochdale MP Sir Tony Lloyd saying the cancellation is “a betrayal of the north.”

He said: “What a surprise... HS2 will terminate at Euston in central London but will be chopping off opportunities for the North.   

“What Rishi Sunak has put on offer today is what previous Tory governments had promised but had cut - why should we believe these new 'promises'?  

“Today is a betrayal of the North.” 

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said the move was “disrespectful to those who stood behind HS2.”

He said: “The only thing that people here can take from this is that our voice doesn’t matter; this city doesn’t matter, they will do what they want to do.

“They haven’t got a mandate to do that, because they promised us the opposite at the last general election. I do believe people won’t forget this moment, they won’t forget how Manchester was treated when we welcomed this party into our city. Is this any way to treat the city of Manchester and the people of Greater Manchester?

“I would say it’s an appalling way to carry on.”

Lord McLoughlin, chair of Transport for the North, said the cancellation was “naturally disappointing” and “will be seen by many as a missed opportunity”, before adding: “The announcement of investment in the region is obviously welcome.”

The GMB Union has said, without HS2, the economy ‘won’t be rebalanced’ nor will the railway ‘capacity crisis be fixed’.

Laurence Turner, GMB Head of Research and Policy, said the move will cost “hundreds of jobs” in the construction industry and railway supply chain. He added: “The UK’s political instability was already holding the economy back - it will now be even harder to fund and deliver the new infrastructure that the country desperately needs.

“We can’t rebalance the economy or fix the railway capacity crisis without HS2. It’s essential that the planned route is now protected so that a future government can reverse this disastrous decision.”

The Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce has also criticised the move, with its director of policy, Chris Fletcher, saying: “We are still no nearer getting the transport network that we actually needed years ago to unlock the north’s potential.”

He said: “We have been promised a lot before and nothing has been done and this latest attempt from government will be treated with cynicism and scepticism by a lot of people.

“HS2 was a major investment opportunity for the UK that would unburden a worn-out network already at over capacity; boost the country’s net zero ambitions and open up labour markets and job opportunities on a scale like never before. 

“Put bluntly, we are fed up of broken promises, delays, cuts and hopes about finally getting what we need being dashed for political expediency. We will be watching closely and waiting on further details of what will be delivered and, more importantly, when.”

Campaign group Stop HS2 has called the project “the most expensive train wreck in history” and has called for the whole thing to be abandoned, alongside a fraud investigation.

Its founder Joe Rukin said: “Cancelling Phase 2 of HS2 proves exactly what we have been saying since the start, that the project hadn’t been thought through properly, it couldn’t be delivered, it was completely the wrong project delivering the maximum possible damage to environment and communities, and that was going to cost billions and billions more than expected.”

“We have always said that what was needed in terms of transport infrastructure was smaller local transport projects which benefit far more people and can be delivered far more quickly and for less money, and now we have been totally vindicated in that approach.

“The only problem is how much has been wasted on the most expensive train wreck in history.”