Keir Starmer responds to the Government's rail betrayal
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Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, said: “Yesterday, Boris
Johnson admitted he crashed the car when it came to sleaze.
“Today, he has derailed the trains. “He’s taking the country
absolutely nowhere.” Ends BACKGROUND BRIEFING: Rail betrayal
Today, the Conservatives have broken their promise to
deliver HS2 in full and build Northern Powerhouse Rail.
Failure to deliver HS2...Request free trial
Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, said:
“Today, he has derailed the trains.
“He’s taking the country absolutely nowhere.”
Ends Rail betrayal
Today, the Conservatives have broken their promise to deliver HS2 in full and build Northern Powerhouse Rail.
Failure to deliver HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail in full means the North will pay the price for the Government’s mismanagement of major infrastructure projects, Labour analysis shows. At a time when taxes will rise to their highest level is 70 years and families in the North are already facing hikes in National Insurance, council tax and income tax, the Government has rowed back on:
Labour analysis shows:
Abridged timeline of Northern Powerhouse Rail June 2014 - in a Speech given in Manchester then Chancellor George Osborne proposed a new high speed link between Leeds and Manchester. August 2014 – An alliance of 6 city councils unveiled the first route plan for a new trans-Pennine high speed rail link, backed on the day by Osborne. March 2015 – DfT publishes plans for transport infrastructure in the North of England including plans for a new line linking Liverpool to Hull General Election 2015 – the Tory Manifesto states that they would ‘develop High Speed 3 to join up the North’ March 2016 - At the Budget 2016, Osborne backs the NIC’s report calling for High Speed North. The report noted that ‘it takes longer to get from Liverpool to Hull by Train than to travel twice the distance from London to Paris.’ General Election 2017 – the Tory Manifesto states ‘We will continue our programme of strategic national investments, including High Speed 2, Northern Powerhouse Rail and the expansion of Heathrow airport’ October 2017 – Then Chancellor Philip Hammond, recommits to Northern Powerhouse Rail (as it then came to be more regularly called) and allocated £300m to future-poof junctions between Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2. March 2019 – a new Government commission is set up to plan a new £6bn city centre station in Liverpool to accommodate HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail July 2019 – Boris Johnson pledges to fund the Leeds to Manchester section as proposed by Transport for the North, as a first stage. September 2019 – the Government rows back on committing to the exact route plan. General Election 2019 – The Tory Manifesto states ‘now is the time to invest in Northern Powerhouse Rail’ February 2020 – Andrew Stephenson is named the ‘Northern powerhouse Rail and HS2 Minister’ split the role out from the Rail Minister and given the task to ‘keep a firm grip on these vital projects’ October 2020 – Grant Shapps recommits to Northern Powerhouse Rail in his speech to the Great Northern Conference. November 2021 – The Government is yet to approve route plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail While the cost of electrification of the Transpennine route is not insignificant, scrapping plans to build Northern Powerhouse Rail will see £40bn of pledged spending no longer going into rail in the north. Labour has consistently called for Northern Powerhouse Rail to be built. Jim McMahon warned in 2017 that the Government were failure on their commitment to get line built: “the promise (of a new rail line) was wrapped-in George Osborne’s vision for a “northern powerhouse” but, as with that concept, it is being allowed to slowly slide from view” Jim McMahon, 27 July 2017, https://labourlist.org/2017/07/jim-mcmahon-another-broken-tory-transport-promise-shows-why-the-north-must-wrest-power-from-whitehall/
2010: "A Conservative government will begin work immediately to create a high speed rail line connecting London and Heathrow with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. This is the first step towards achieving our vision of creating a national high speed rail network to join up major cities across England, Scotland and Wales. Stage two will deliver two new lines bringing the North East, Scotland and Wales into the high speed rail network.” 2015: “In addition to rolling out our national high-speed rail network, with High Speed 2 and High Speed 3, we will complete the construction of the new east-west Crossrail across Greater London, and push forward with plans for Crossrail 2, a new rail route running through London and connecting Surrey and Hertfordshire” 2017: “We will continue our programme of strategic national investments, including High Speed 2, Northern Powerhouse Rail and the expansion of Heathrow Airport – and we will ensure that these great projects do as much as possible to develop the skills and careers of British workers.” 2019 “HS2 is a great ambition, but will now cost at least £81 billion and will not reach Leeds or Manchester until as late as 2040. We will consider the findings of the Oakervee review into costs and timings and work with leaders of the Midlands and the North to decide the optimal outcome.” Following the Oakervee review: Boris Johnson said on 11th February 2020 (the day the review as published) “The cabinet has given high-speed rail the green signal. We are going to get this done.” Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has repeated committed to building the HS2: “I would say in general though that the benefits of HS2 will be felt by the whole United Kingdom. That means, potentially, ultimately, a journey from London to Edinburgh in three hours or so. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would welcome that levelling up and connectivity throughout the Union.” Grant Shapps, 22 October 2021, https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2020-10-22/debates/DCE1F2E1-50D9-4955-8FC0-94E51236766D/TransportSectorSupportAndCovid-19EmergencyFunding?highlight=%22hs2%22#contribution-FC462A48-CD7A-435E-B2F7-A20FAC41A77F Failure to build Northern Powerhouse rail and HS2 to Leeds is only one part of the Tories 11 years of failure on Rail in the North Rail fares rises The average commuter will likely be paying £3,295, for their season ticket, £1101 or 50% more than in 2010 if rail fares go up by 4.8% in January as expected. 5 example commuter routes in the North
Season ticket data for 2010 has been taken from the Avantix Traveller (National Fares Manual) database. http://data.atoc.org/fares-data 2022 are based on a 4.8% increase on 2021 prices which have been taken from the National Rail season ticket calculator.https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/Season-Calculator.aspx Network Rail cut The Government revealed in a written Parliamentary Question to Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary, Jim McMahon that they were cutting Network Rail’s enhancement budget by £1 billion over the next three years. The Department for Transport’s Rail Network Enhancement Pipeline lists the projects that that this fund would be spent on. It’s split into three stages, from those furthest along the pipeline and closest to being built to those in the earlier development and design phase. As a result of the £1 billion cut, the Government must publish an updated pipeline as soon as possible. For those places and passengers waiting for much needed improvements, and for the workers and firms relying on this pipeline of work, Ministers have to provide certainty without delay. Assuming that those projects in the final stage are likely to get built along with any firm Conservative party manifesto commitments, there remains at least 20 projects in the other two stages that are under threat of being cut.
The Government publishes a list of Rail projects that this Enhancement fund will be spent on but doesn’t publish the potential cost of the projects. It’s called the Rail Network Enhancement Pipeline. The last updated version was published in Autumn 2019
Pacer trains
The Government said they would scrap pacer trains in 2015. Yet
they were still in use on the network until late 2020. Transport spending per head Transport spending per head is over double in London than it is in the North of England.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/country-and-regional-analysis-2020
HS2 project mismanagement
Cost of living crisis All this comes at a time when people are paying more for less:
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