Government reportedly considering backing high-speed link between Liverpool and Manchester
The deputy leader of Reform UK has told contractors not to bother bidding for work on proposed high-speed rail projects in the north of England, promising to scrap them if his party comes to power.
A new high-speed link between Manchester and Liverpool has been mooted by successive governments going back to the coalition government, when then-chancellor George Osborne announced it under the moniker ‘Northern Powerhouse Rail’.
Plans have yet to get off the ground, despite its popularity with the mayors of Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region. However, there have been reports that the government could come out in support of the scheme at the Labour Party conference at the end of September.
However, this week, Richard Tice, the deputy leader of the Reform Party and MP for Boston and Skegness, warned firms away from getting involved in such a scheme.
“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,” he wrote, in a foreword to a paper published by the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange.
The paper claims that a high-speed line between Manchester and Liverpool would cost up to £30bn and would not make journeys quicker.
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“Outside a bubble of politicians, journalists and construction industry lobbyists […] the voters of the North do not want, and never have wanted, a handful of high-speed rail lines, serving a handful of big cities, at fares only business people on expenses can afford,” wrote Tice.
The report suggested spending money instead on other improvements, including an ‘Elizabeth Line’ for Manchester. Of these options, Tice said Reform would “examine them closely”.
Given the time taken to progress infrastructure projects started in the UK, it is unlikely that any high-speed link between Manchester and Liverpool would be completed before the next general election, which will occur no later than August 2029.
Current YouGov polling of voting intention puts Reform above all other parties, on 27%.
However, the pollster has also found that high speed rail projects for the North are popular, with 69% supportive against 16% opposing in the North of England, and similar figures for the rest of the country.
Responding to Tice’s comments, Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, said: “We are trying to move our region forward. Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City region [are] now growing faster than the UK economy and they just come along and think they can just tear it all up.
“They’ve got another thing coming, because we know [that if we] get the right infrastructure, the growth will keep coming to the North-west and we’re not going to let Reform UK with their London-centric approach break all of that up.”
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