HS2 cuts will leave line as a ‘monument to British mentality’, Manchester mayor says

Andy Burnham has said stopping HS2 at Birmingham will leave the railway as a “monument to the British mentality” in a stinging attack on Treasury spending decisions.

The Manchester mayor told the Labour conference in Liverpool that the truncated line would be a constant reminder of regional inequality and that some parts of the country are “more equal than others”.

Labour has ruled out reinstating the second phase of the high speed line which was to run between Birmingham and Manchester before it was scrapped by Rishi Sunak in 2023.

But Burnham says the Treasury will now have to “undergo quite a big change” if it wants to fulfil chancellor Rachel Reeves’ promise, made in her speech to the conference yesterday, to ensure growth in all regions of the country.

“I listened carefully to the chancellor’s speech and I heard a lot in it that I wanted to hear,” he said at a panel discussion hosted by Transport for the North.

“The message from us is that we all want growth but you don’t get it without good transport,” he said, adding that the Treasury would have to “think differently than it has in the past” about investment in transport infrastructure.

Burnham also criticised the department’s so-called Green Book, which limits spending on major capital projects to regions which are more likely to see a bigger return on investment.

Reforming the rules, which have long been blamed for entrenching regional inequality and focusing investment in more affluent parts of the country, were a key part of the ‘levelling up’ agenda championed by Boris Johnson during the 2019 general election.

The mayor said the Treasury “sees its main mission as controlling or cutting public spending, and that explains part of why we’re in the position that we’re in”.

He added: “Why are we just expected to put up with this? We as citizens of this country should absolutely be demanding equivalent living standards, equal quality transport. 

“HS2, in the end, is going to turn out to be the kind of monument to the British mentality that some places are more equal than others. You’ll get on in a gleaming new station to Birmingham on a brand new train, and then you’ll go off onto the West Coast mainline on the current plan. 

“What does that say to anybody visiting this country about what our own country thinks about the north of England? That we can somehow be expected to accept not even second best but third best.”

Burnham is currently lobbying for £17bn in government funding to build a new rail line between Manchester and Birmingham using money which he claims has been left over from the cancellation of HS2’s northern leg.

Transport secretary Louise Haigh has suggested the funding is not “practically available” at the moment as there had been no formal agreement between the previous Conservative government and the Treasury on how the leftover funds would be spent.

The line would run from Manchester to Manchester Airport, through Warrington and to a new £5bn station in the centre of Liverpool.

Yesterday afternoon Burnham announced former Conservative railway minister Huw Merriman as the new chair of the Liverpool-Manchester railway partnership board, the organisation which will work with the private sector on the project.