MPs cast doubt on £45bn Northern Powerhouse Rail 

During a hearing in the House of Commons, transport secretary Heidi Alexander revealed plans for NPR are to be designed in full before any contracts are tendered and declared ‘railways are not built overnight’, as opposition ministers questioned the scheme’s funding and timelines.

Setting the scene

In a session that was focused on extending the High Speed Rail (Crewe – Manchester) Bill to provide a legislative option for NPR, a number of MPs raised concerns with the £45bn cap and the £1.1bn pledged for this spending review.

In short, a formal Bill was created to progress Phase 2 of HS2 between Crewe and Manchester. That scheme was cancelled but the bones of the Bill remain in place, and the government intends to adapt it to provide powers for delivering newly suggested NPR projects around Manchester.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves set out the government’s vision for the long-promised rail project to boost east-west links across the North of England last month.

The government has allocated £1.1bn during the current Spending Review period to support planning, development and design work to enable the preparation of a detailed delivery programme, including construction sequencing and timelines, with a total funding cap of £45bn for the full NPR programme.

Not enough funding, appeasing Northern Mayors, and when contracts will be procured

Shadow minister for transport Jerome Mayhew shared his concerns about the budget, saying: “Real progress has been kicked down the road, perhaps because the Secretary of State knows that she does not have the money to do what she has promised.

“His Majesty’s Treasury has capped Northern Powerhouse Rail at £45bn, yet that was the claimed cost back in 2019.

“That was before Covid, since when, as we all know, costs have soared.

“She knows that she does not have the money, so she distracts her back-benchers with castle-in-the-air planning, with the taxpayer picking up the bill… We are none the wiser as to how the Government expect to fill the gap.”

Conservative MP for Tatton in Cheshire, Esther McVey, echoed doubts about the cost of the scheme: “According to the secretary of state’s announcement, the money being put forward was, I think, £1.1bn out of a £45bn cost, which was to be delivered in decades to come, when the secretary of state and her government will no longer be around – hence, it is a charade to keep the Mayors of the north happy at the local elections.”

Mayhew also alluded to this when he said: “It would have been better for the public to have had such clarity nearly three weeks ago than the spectacle of the Secretary of State signing bits of paper on her rail tour of Northern cities.”

In response, Alexander said that lessons would be learned from HS2, with one of the main points being that full design work will be completed before NPR contracts are procured.

She said: “The money we allocated in the Spending Review is to acquire land and do preparatory works on the Yorkshire schemes – those three corridors improving links into Leeds from Bradford, York, and Sheffield, as well as to plan properly…

“We will not be making the same mistakes as the previous Government – we will not be letting contracts when we have not defined the scope of works…

“We have been clear that we expect work to start on the Yorkshire package of improvements in this Parliament.

“We have also said that we expect work to start on the link between Manchester and Liverpool in the 2030s…

“Crossrail in London was granted consent back in 2007 and the line was opened in 2022 – I make that 15 years. Railways are not built overnight.”

Let’s hope, for everyone travelling in the North, that they get built at all.