Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram slams Nigel Farage’s party as Reform deputy leader says Northern Powerhouse Rail plans would be cancelled
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice told companies bidding for contracts for a planned new Liverpool-Manchester rail line ‘not to bother'(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock)
Reform UK have been accused of “taking the North for granted” after revealing that they would scrap a planned high-speed rail line between Liverpool and Manchester if they win power at the next election. The Labour government is working up its plans for a Northern Powerhouse Rail project that would see new lines across the major cities of north – including a new line between Liverpool and Manchester, with an announcement expected shortly.
But Reform UK’s deputy leader has told companies considering bidding for contracts to build Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) they should “not bother” as the party would “spend the money instead on things the country needs more”.
Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram described the announcement from Reform as “an absolute shambles” and suggested the party of Nigel Farage “haven’t got the faintest idea how to govern.”
Mr Tice made his comments in a forward to a report by centre-right think tank Policy Exchange. The document predicted NPR would be an “even greater train crash” than HS2, claiming that a new line between Liverpool and Manchester could cost £30 billion.
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 claimed 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%” higher than the amount “declared to Parliament”. An HS2 Ltd source disputed this figure, according to the PA News Agency.
Mr 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 went on: “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.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram are long-term backers of Northern Powerhouse Rail(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
“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 added: “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.”
Responding to the comments, Mayor Rotheram, who has long championed Northern Powerhouse Rail and particularly a new line between Liverpool and Manchester said: “Nigel Farage isn’t someone you usually associate with the truth – but he was right when he admitted what we all know about Reform: they haven’t got the faintest idea how to govern.
“This shambles of an announcement proves it. Scrapping Northern Powerhouse Rail – and the £90bn of additional economic value it would generate – means scrapping investment in our towns, in jobs, in apprenticeships for our young people, in new homes and in better opportunities for families right across the North. And it would mean more lorries clogging up our roads, instead of shifting freight onto rail to cut congestion and pollution.
“Reform are taking the people of the North for granted if they think we’ll accept being left worse off. Labour is committed to delivering Northern Powerhouse Rail and investing in our future.”
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham had an equally withering response. He said: “Mr Tice and Mr Farage are both creatures of the London establishment and so I am not surprised in the slightest to hear Reform make the argument for a second-class railway for the North of England.
“Across Europe, every other country connects its big cities by modern high-speed rail but, like the Conservatives before them, the Reform Party seems to believe that this should be a privilege only conferred on the southern half of the UK. We have higher ambitions for the North than them and will resist any politician who says people here can be treated as second-class citizens when it comes to transport.
“The Liverpool-Manchester line will be an Elizabeth Line for the North West with five stops. And because it’s a new line, it will hugely increase the capacity of our railways making local lines run with much greater reliability.
He added: “We are confident that this new line will bring an accelerated level economic growth to the North West which will more than pay for this railway over time and which would be otherwise choked off by Reform’s low ambitions for the North.”