Labour ministers back HS2 to Leeds amid uncertainty over inclusion in manifesto

It comes after concerns this weekend that Labour was watering down its commitment, after Pat McFadden, the party’s national campaign coordinator, said that the party would have to review costs following uncertainty over the project’s future under the Government.

Louise Haigh, the shadow transport secretary and shadow ministers Nick Thomas-Symonds and Jonathan Ashworth, yesterday insisted that the line would be built.

“Labour are committed to delivering HS2 in full and maximising its economic benefits,” Ms Haigh said yesterday.

“If we do end up in a situation where the Government has spent well over £45 billion on an infrastructure project that isn’t even going to go all the way from Birmingham to London, what an indictment of Tory incompetence and waste that is,” Mr Thomas-Symonds added.

However, Labour sources yesterday did not commit to the project's inclusion in its manifesto for the next election.

The commitment to deliver HS2 in full has been adopted in a document from the party’s National Policy Forum, but further meetings of senior officials within Labour could see proposals watered down or dropped in a fully-costed manifesto.

It comes amid continued confusion over the projects future, with the Government again refusing to deny reports that it is looking at scrapping significant chunks of the route, including to Manchester, in order to save on costs which have risen sharply in recent years.

Transport minister Richard Holden yesterday said there is “no question of this Government abandoning the north”, but he repeatedly refused to clarify whether the project would run to Manchester.

Mr Holden yesterday attacked Labour’s spending plans for HS2, in an indication that the Government is set to scale the project back significantly ahead of Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement in November.

“No mention of how they’d pay for this combined £140 billion spending commitment. Same old Labour,” he told MPs.

“While the shadow chancellor tries to talk tough about ironclad discipline, she (Louise Haigh) goes around the country promising hundreds of billions of pounds of unfunded spending on rail alone.”

According to the latest plans, Phase 1 of HS2, which will link the West Midlands and London, is expected to cost up to £44.6bn and open between 2029 to 2033.

Phase 2a, linking West Midlands to Crewe, is due to be delivered between 2030 and 2034, and cost up to £7bn. While Phase 2b, linking Crewe and Manchester, is expected to cost up to £22bn and open between 2035 to 2041.

Andy Burnham, Labour’s mayor of Manchester, yesterday criticised ministers for going backwards on the delivery of rail projects in the North.

“The north of England was given massive promises by the Cameron-Osborne government, by the Johnson government, and now it looks like the Sunak government finally takes away what has been promised,” he said.

His comments come as Tracy Brabin, his Labour mayoral colleague for West Yorkshire, confirmed that she would be standing again for her role, and that she will get “spades in the ground” for the region’’s mass transit system “within four years”.

It comes after she warned last week that the proposals which would see trams in Leeds and across West Yorkshire must be in Labour’s manifesto “if you believe in the North”.