Andy Burnham is looking at ways to resurrect the scrapped northern section of HS2, even as opponents warn the idea risks becoming an expensive “fantasy scheme” that could deliver slower services rather than the promised high-speed rail revolution.
HS2 is currently being built between London and Birmingham, after former prime minister Rishi Sunak cancelled the planned extension to Manchester in 2023.
Burnham, often dubbed the “King of the North” and now being discussed in the context of national leadership ambitions, is exploring whether the northern phase of HS2 could be revived through a Crossrail-style funding model combining public money with private investment.
However, critics argue the proposals could mean reduced train speeds and increased business rates, piling further pressure on a rail project whose overall cost has already surged towards £100billion.
When HS2 was first costed, the full route from London to Birmingham and then onward to Leeds and Manchester was expected to require around £33billion in 2011 prices.
By the time the Manchester leg was abandoned, it was priced at £36billion, although HS2 engineering specialist Trevor Parkin has suggested the same stretch would now cost closer to £60billion in current prices.
The Department for Transport has yet to provide its latest position, but Burnham said last month that, as prime minister, he would want to restore the northern leg of HS2.
During his time as Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham commissioned a 2024 report that floated an alternative 50-mile route known as the “Midlands-North West Rail Link”.
The initial HS2 case was given as increasing capacity on the 700-mile West Coast Main Line
The line was originally intended to connect London with Manchester and Leeds via Birmingham
This route from Lichfield in Staffordshire to High Legh in Cheshire would use land bought for HS2 and link up a new rail line from Liverpool and Manchester.
The report claimed the new line could be 25 to 40 per cent cheaper than the HS2 northern leg, with more private sector investment – and trains from London to Manchester taking about 15 minutes longer than the original HS2 plan.
However, they would still be 30 minutes quicker than current services, which take over two hours. Cash could also be saved by changing the type of track used.
But concerns have been raised by experts including Andrew Gilligan, head of transport at the Policy Exchange think tank and a former special adviser to Mr Sunak.
He told the Daily Mail today: ‘Reviving the northern leg of HS2 will cost perhaps £60billion and do very little to address the north’s real transport problems.
‘Every week and every pound we spend on a fantasy scheme that will never happen is time and money not spent on things which actually could help improve the North’s railways.’
John Smith, the founder and outgoing chief executive of GB Railfreight, is also sceptical about the funding.
He said: ‘I welcome his ambition to bring back HS2 to Manchester, but I just don’t think they’ve got the money to do it.
‘The civil engineering work, when you look at rebuilding Manchester Piccadilly station, it’s mammoth. And they’ve still got a lot of money to spend at Euston to complete the station.’
Speaking to the Mail today, he added: ‘Extending HS2 to Crewe would provide huge benefits for all users of the railway.
‘It would create much-needed capacity on the network, supporting the movement of rail freight across the North West and into Scotland, while helping to deliver the new Prime Minister and his Government’s ambition of driving economic growth across the regions. Passengers would also benefit from a more resilient and better-connected railway.
‘The challenge with the current scheme is that it creates a bottleneck at Colwich and Stafford, which restricts many of the wider benefits HS2 was designed to deliver, particularly for freight.
‘With royal assent already in place, extending the line at least as far as Crewe would welcome boost for our sector but also industry across the country.’
Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership think tank, referred to Mr Burnham’s business-led review on the alternative to HS2.
He told the Mail: ‘That plan was broadly supported by the former chancellor who agreed in principle to an alternative to HS2 but only in the longer term after Northern Powerhouse Rail is built.
‘The question is not if something is needed but whether we can afford to wait that long if we want more seats between London and the North West, or better services from Leeds to Birmingham. To do that we need to get going.’
He added: ‘We need some sections of new line most importantly between Crewe and the Midlands.
‘This plus the key bit of what was originally called HS2 in the North which is still being built between Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Airport to allow people from Leeds and Bradford to get to the airport and to Liverpool.
‘This could all work together to get more trains to London and Birmingham if we can unlock private funding and finance because we will generate more taxes and more business rates if we get on building rather than further delaying starting work.’
Rail expert Mark Smith, founder of travel website The Man In Seat 61, also told the Mail: ‘HS2 was originally about linking eight of Britain’s ten largest cities with a modern high-capacity railway, releasing capacity on the classic lines for more regional services and freight.
‘In effect, it would be two extra tracks on the busiest mainline in Britain, just not built adjacent to the curvaceous Victorian-era tracks. In the same way the M40 wasn’t just two lanes added to the existing A40.
‘Cutting phase two emasculated that plan. Phase two was always going to be cheaper per mile than phase one with all its tunnelling, and it would significantly raise the cost-benefit ratio of the whole project. Putting phase two back on the agenda therefore makes a lot of sense.’
Mr Burnham told the i paper on June 15 that he wanted to bring back the northern leg as prime minister.
He said: ‘I am absolutely clear, I’ve seen it myself in terms of expansion of our travel system. If you put that infrastructure in, it lays the foundations for higher growth.
‘The lack of high-quality rail infrastructure in the North of England holds back its growth potential… There’s a cleverer way of funding this.
‘If you go back, I put the funding package together for Crossrail and it was actually a package that did have contributions from business and residents.’
Andy Burnham with his Labour colleagues Louise Haigh and Rachel Reeves on a train in 2024
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was asked about the status of the HS2 northern leg on BBC Breakfast on Wednesday.
She said: ‘In January, we announced plans to improve rail connectivity in the north of England. So, a new railway line between Manchester and Liverpool, calling at Manchester Airport, improvements to the rail network in Yorkshire as well.
‘When we made that announcement, what I agreed with Andy is that we would also do a study about how you address the capacity constraints on the West Coast Main Line between Birmingham and Manchester.’
She added: ‘I’m fully expecting the new Prime Minister to tell me to put some rocket boosters under that study, perhaps to do it a bit quicker.’
Ms Alexander also said: ‘The first priority is completing HS2 between London and Birmingham. The next priority is improving those rail links across the North of England between the great cities of the North of England, like Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, York, Newcastle, that’s work that is in train, that’s work that was agreed with a £45billion price tag over the next couple of decades. That was agreed with Andy. And I will also be working with him on this study.’
In May, Ms Alexander gave an update on HS2, saying the project could now cost more than £100billion and may not open until 2039.
She told the Commons she was ‘angry’ about the ‘obscene increase in time and costs’, which she blamed on ‘the failures of successive Conservative governments’.
Ms Alexander said the expected cost of completing the high-speed railway was between £87.7 billion and £102.7 billion in 2025 prices.
That means it will be more expensive than the Artemis II mission to send four astronauts to the Moon, which is estimated to have cost $93billion (£69billion) to date.
Constructing HS2 from London to Leeds and Manchester was initially estimated to cost £32.7 billion in 2011 prices, but the budget has spiralled.
An HS2 employee looks towards the front of the tunnel boring machine as new sections of the Euston tunnel wall are manoeuvred into position in London last month
The previous cost range was £35billion to £45billion in 2019 prices, set under the Conservatives.
Services were planned to launch in 2026, but the new target schedule is between May 2036 and October 2039.
Ms Alexander also announced that HS2 trains will run slower than planned to save money. She said the maximum speed of services will be 199mph (320km/h), down from the original design of 224mph (360km/h).
This could potentially save between £1billion and £2.5billion through factors such as reduced testing and earlier launch of services, Ms Alexander said.
Under the current plans, HS2 tracks will begin being laid in 2029, and services between Old Oak Common in west London and Birmingham’s Curzon Street station are expected to start running between May 2036 and October 2039.
The high-speed trains will not run between London Euston station and Handsacre Junction in Staffordshire until between May 2040 and December 2043.
Handsacre Junction is where HS2 trains are planned to leave the dedicated high-speed tracks and merge onto the conventional West Coast Mainline.
Ms Alexander said the overall budget includes work at Euston – which has been paused since March 2023 – but the Government was still seeking a private investor for the site.
The revised cost and schedule for HS2 follows a comprehensive review by HS2 Ltd chief executive Mark Wild, who began his role in December 2024.
A major review published following the announcement found that ‘gold plating’ HS2, including by focusing on achieving the ‘highest possible speeds’, is among the faults that contributed to the project’s woes.
Labour ministers commissioned an internal review into whether scrapping the entire project would be better value for money than continuing with it.
This found that abandoning the scheme – which has already cost £44 billion – would require at least the same amount of funding as completing it.
Test designs for high-speed HS2 trains at manufacturer Alstom’s Derby factory last October
The Government has already committed at least £45billion towards Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), which would improve east-west infrastructure across the North.
And HS2 Ltd is still ‘safeguarding’ about 1,000 properties between Birmingham and Manchester purchased to build the line.
Former Conservative rail minister Huw Merriman, who is chair of the Liverpool to Manchester Rail Board, has said he is hopeful the northern leg can be delivered by Mr Burnham.
He told BBC Politics North West last month that it was ‘really exciting’ as an enabler for growth.
Labour had established HS2 Ltd to examine the case for a new high-speed rail line in January 2009, before a consultation on a London to Birmingham route with a Y-shaped section to Manchester and Leeds was published the following year by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.
Transport Secretary Justine Greening then said in 2012 that the Government had decided to go ahead with the project, despite concerns over its cost and the environmental impact of construction.
But in November 2021, HS2’s eastern leg between Leeds and the East Midlands was scrapped by the Government. And by March 2023, the Government said construction of the Birmingham to Crewe leg would be delayed by two years.
Work at Euston was also paused as costs ballooned to £4.8billion compared with an initial budget of £2.6billion – meaning services would start and stop at Old Oak Common until at least the 2040s.
And in October 2023, Mr Sunak announced at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester that he would scrap the northern leg of HS2 due to soaring costs.
The Department for Transport has been contacted for comment today.
But a DfT spokesperson said earlier this month: ‘HS2 will free up significant capacity on the southern section of the west coast main line as services will run on dedicated new tracks between London and Birmingham.
‘We are actively exploring ways to increase capacity beyond Birmingham through improved service patterns, timetables and longer rolling stock, alongside our commitment to deliver a new line between Birmingham and Manchester.’
