Reaction to the Integrated Rail Plan

The government’s long-awaited Integrated Rail Plan was finally published on 18th November.

In (very brief) summary

  • Most of the eastern leg of HS2 will be cancelled. It will go from Birmingham to the Nottingham area, there will be no continuation from there to Sheffield and Leeds.
  • The western leg of HS2 will continue as planned from Crewe to Manchester
  • The Transpennine Route Upgrade from Manchester to Leeds and York will be electrified throughout, with some three- and four-tracking where practicable. Completion expected 2032.
  • Northern Powerhouse Rail, previously envisaged as a new high speed line from Liverpool to east of Leeds, will not be built in full. Instead, there will be a new high speed line from Warrington to Manchester (mostly shared with the western leg of HS2) and from Manchester to Marsden where it will join the upgraded Transpennine Route. The timeline places this in the early 2040s.

There has been a lot of mostly negative reaction from politicians and business interests within the region. A series of links to reports and opinion pieces (mostly from the Yorkshire Post) and quotes from business or political figures regarding the government’s Integrated Rail Plan published on 18th November.

We did look for some quotes from people within the region supportive of the government’s position on Northern Powerhouse Rail/Transpennine Route Upgrade, but failed to find any. If we do find any, we will add them in.

Faster journeys, to more places, more quickly. That’s what Yorkshire can look forward to thanks to our multi-billion pound investment in the North’s railways.

Because I believe you’ve been stood waiting on the platform for long enough.

Under our Integrated Rail Plan, Northern Powerhouse Rail will run from Leeds to Manchester in just 33 minutes, cutting journey times almost in half, with long stretches of brand-new high-speed track. Capacity will double.

I promised to fund NPR between Leeds and Manchester. This does that – this is one of the three options presented to us by Transport for the North.

But high-speed rail is grindingly slow to build. Under the original blueprint, first drawn up more than a decade ago, Yorkshire would have not have seen the benefits of our investment until at least the 2040s. Levelling up can’t wait that long. And towns like Wakefield, Doncaster, Dewsbury and Huddersfield would have suffered as trains were taken off the existing main lines.

So rather than just waiting for another two decades for a scheme that snubs much of Yorkshire, we will do more, and sooner.

The travel time between Leeds and Manchester will be almost identical to what was promised under the old plans, but you’ll see trains leaving platforms far sooner.

Connectivity is key to prosperity, and that’s what this £96bn blueprint delivers. Not just speeding up journeys between London and a few cities 20 years hence, but levelling up communities right across Yorkshire today.

Boris Johnson, Prime Minister

“Leeds becomes left-behind Leeds and if Leeds is left behind, think what Bradford is thinking. It becomes ‘left behind Yorkshire’ as I see it.”

“It upsets me that it is going to be left behind from decisions being made in London with a London lens. The alternatives put forward are just a smokescreen for cutting Yorkshire out of the future of the country.”

“We’ve lost the vision of a future of the North and Midlands as an economic entity that can stand on the world stage of which being well connected together is a central part of. You can’t have prosperity without being well connected.”

“Going, ‘You’ll be able to run high-speed trains on existing track’ is a bit like saying, ‘You’ve come off the motorway, you’re still in the same car but you are now doing 30 miles an hour’. You are still in the same car but you are not on the motorway.”

Professor Andrew McNaughton

 “The Integrated Rail Plan is a huge moment for the North, and the announcement of the new line from Warrington through Manchester to Marsden, as well as the confirmation of HS2 in the west coming to Manchester and Manchester Airport, is welcome.

“However, the lack of a full new line across the Pennines will dramatically reduce the capacity and potential for rapid economic growth, in particular in the cities of Leeds and Bradford. What Northern leaders had proposed was an economically transformational vision. What we have is, as ever, second class.

Henri Murison, Director, Northern Powerhouse Partnership

“a realistic plan for major long term investments to improve rail for the North and Midlands in the face of public spending constraints”.

Sir John Armitt, chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission

“The deeper you dig into the IPR, the worse it gets. No NPR link from South Yorkshire to Manchester or Hull. No faster trains from Sheffield to Leeds.

“They’re locking in a second class solution for Northern transport for a generation. It’s not levelling up, it’s business as usual.”

Dan Jarvis, South Yorkshire Metro Mayor

“They spent £100 billion and got a massive raspberry from everyone.”

“I think the economics of it and the benefits it brings the north of England, both the eastern leg to Leeds but also, crucially, the east-west link from Manchester across Leeds and Bradford, are very self-evident.

“The business community in the north, the council leaders – both Conservative and Labour – in the north, are absolutely clear that it would create the connectivity to allow these metropolitan clusters to grow and bring economic growth to the north.”

George Osborne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer

“I feel it’s a betrayal of the Government’s levelling up promise. It doesn’t deliver a high-speed line across the Pennines with a crucial city stop in Bradford,”

“It does not support our ambition as northern leaders for a stronger, fairer and better connected North for all.”

“Whitehall seems not to listen to Northern voices. HS2 will now stop short of Yorkshire and the high-speed Northern Powerhouse Rail line will stop at the border.”

Tracy Brabin, West Yorkshire Metro Mayor

“This is about the future of the North of England for the next 100 or 200 years. That is the significance of the decisions that are being announced today.

“We are not prepared to consign our grandchildren, great grandchildren and beyond to being second best when it comes to transport in this country.

“We need the plan that we were promised, a plan that would unlock the northern economy.

“The fight will go on. And we’re asking all Northern MPs to put party politics aside and consider what is best for your constituents in generations to come.”

Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester Metro Mayor

“I’ve heard some people say that we’re just going about electrifying the Transpennine route – this is wrong.

“What we’re actually doing is investing £23bn to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail and the Transpennine route upgrade, unlocking east-west travel across the North of England.

“So, in total, this package is 110 miles of new high-speed line, all of it in the Midlands and the North.

“It’s 180 miles of newly-electrified line, all of it in the Midlands and the North.”

Grant Shapps MP, Secretary of State for Transport

“This is not the first time our city has been promised major infrastructure investment, only for it to be curtailed or cancelled. It is 10 years this month since the Transpennine Route upgrade was announced, yet we are still waiting for the fully-defined scheme.

Even Thursday’s announcement of the electrification of the TransPennine route is only a rehashed version of a scheme that was promised in 2011 but has so far remained undelivered. And with only a quarter of West Yorkshire’s railways electrified so far, against a deadline of 2050 for the full network to be completed, it’s difficult to be optimistic that this will be achieved.

Councillor James Lewis, Leader of Leeds City Council

The Prime Minister promised that HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail were not an either/or option. Those in Leeds and Bradford might be forgiven for viewing it today as neither. That is the danger in selling perpetual sunlight and leaving it for others to explain the arrival of moonlight

Huw Merriman MP, Chair of the Transport Select Committee

“This will have been the only time in history when massively improving everybody’s rail services would have been counted as a betrayal. It’s a strange approach.”

Grant Shapps MP, Secretary of State for Transport

“The issue has never been getting to London, the problem is getting across the North itself,”

“The strategy from some council and business leaders in the North of asking for everything has blown up in their faces and the North is going to be short-changed as a result.

“If the Northern Powerhouse link doesn’t go ahead because of overspend on HS2 they should hang their heads in shame.

“Anything less than the new link would be a massive disappointment and a huge missed opportunity.”

Philip Davies MP (Con, Shipley)

“The trouble is that talk is cheap. We’ve got to put our money where our mouth is and every government has come along and said we want to level up and use different terminology for that but then they look at the price tag and tend to step back. We’ve got to be prepared to invest significant amounts of money for a significant period of time to deal with this.”

Kevin Hollinrake MP (Con, Thirsk & Malton) 

On Radio Four Today Programme

Grant Shapps: ″I should mention that this plan is actually for three high speed lines – the Birmingham to Nottingham and Derby one, Crewe to Manchester, and then a second one in the north which runs from Warrington through Manchester to the west of Yorkshire.

“A lot of this detail has been lost in the newspaper headings.

“There will be a new high speed line.”

Mishal Husain:  in Yorkshire, there’s going to be two miles of high speed tracks, correct?”

Shapps: “That’s right – it comes into the west of Yorkshire…”

Husain: “And stops.”

Boris Johnson was elected on a promise to level the playing fields – to make things better for households across the country.

“We were promised a Northern Powerhouse, we were promised a Midlands Engine and to be levelled up.

“What we have been given today is a great train robbery – robbing the North of the chance to realise its full potential.”

Jim McMahon, Shadow Transport Secretary

“The Prime Minister repeatedly promised that HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail would be built in full. Today that promise has been broken and Leeds and the North have been betrayed.”

Hilary Benn MP (Lab, Leeds Central)

“After 11 years of campaigning for improved rail connectivity both within and across our region, today’s announcements are extremely disappointing and will call into question just how serious this government is, on its levelling up promises.

Amanda Beresford, chair of West and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce,

“Businesses across the Midlands and Northern England will be justifiably disappointed to see the goalposts have moved at the eleventh hour, and concerned that some of the areas most sorely in need of development will lose out as a result of the scaled back plans.”

Beckie Hart, CBI Yorkshire director

Links to a range of press articles (both news and opinion) regarding the Integrated Rail Plan.

Some of the links are behind a paywall

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/norths-betrayal-mps-must-force-vote-on-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-downgrade-tom-richmond-3467035

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/yorkshire-rail-downgrade-seems-like-a-classic-political-fudge-justine-greening-3464697

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/the-region-has-been-betrayed-on-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-the-yorkshire-post-says-3464995

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/how-transport-investment-will-level-up-britain-grant-shapps-3449741

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/boris-johnson-our-integrated-rail-plan-for-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-in-yorkshire-3461833

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/the-betrayal-over-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-means-yorkshire-cannot-trust-this-government-ever-again-mark-casci-3458440

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/from-bold-promises-to-disappointment-how-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-were-scaled-back-3463181

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/what-governments-cut-price-northern-22202253

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/hs2-creator-pleads-for-boris-johnson-u-turn-on-left-behind-yorkshire-after-leeds-leg-axed-3464937

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/yorkshire-to-get-just-two-miles-of-high-speed-track-under-boris-johnsons-integrated-rail-plan-3463377

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/hs2-to-leeds-axed-while-npr-route-will-stop-at-yorkshire-border-grant-shapps-confirms-3462428

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-will-u-turn-on-scaled-back-rail-plan-former-chancellor-george-osborne-predicts-3465357

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/northern-leaders-say-the-fight-will-go-on-after-government-downgrades-rail-plans-3463467

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/19/england-scaled-back-rail-plans-are-not-a-betrayal-says-grant-shapps

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/20/hs2-transpennine-express-train-passengers

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/fury-from-yorkshire-council-leaders-over-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-announcements-3463934

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/transport-downgrades-set-to-harm-yorkshires-economy-business-leaders-3463207

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/20/leeds-hs2-government-eastern-leg-jobs-homes

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