Andy Burnham vows to personally ask Rishi Sunak not to scrap HS2's Manchester line
25.09.2023 - 08:01
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
The mayor of Greater Manchester has said he will personally write to the Prime Minister and urge him to not scrap HS2.
Andy Burnham told the BBC he will write to Rishi Sunak after highlighting the importance of the high-speed rail project on the "northern powerhouse rail". It comes after reports indicated last week that the government aims to get rid of the project's leg from Birmingham to Manchester, something that it has refused to deny.
After announcing the launch of the Bee Network over the weekend, which aims to bring Greater Manchester's bus services under public control, Mr Burnham pleaded the government to sustain the project. Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson rejected suggestions the project would be axed as 'Treasury-driven nonsense'
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Appearing on the Today programme, he said: "Scrapping HS2 rips the heart out of northern powerhouse rail. It would leave the north of England with Victorian infrastructure, probably for the rest of this century.
“And if we’re trapped with that old infrastructure and the southern half of the country has new lines that is a recipe for the north-south divide to become a north-south chasm, the very opposite of the levelling up that we were promised in this Parliament.”
HS2 has already seen £2.3 billion injected into it, however, a photograph of a leaked documents which was published by The Independent, suggests curtailing the route could save £35 billion. The railway plans, which were announced by the former Labour government but backed by successive Tory administrations, aimed to connect London,