Northern Powerhouse Rail

Lord Kempsell Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I will not spoil the Answer to my noble friend’s Question tomorrow, except to say that the east coast main line has a better timetable with more trains on it. The Government do not see the end of their aspirations for railways in the north to be solely the announcement from last week. There may well have to be further improvements to the east coast main line; if there are, they will only enhance its capacity, both in journeys north-south and in the connections between Newcastle, York, Leeds and places to the west side of the Pennines.

[Lord Kempsell (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the update on this important cause. Let us assume that the cap will be busted. If that is the case, and the Treasury’s £45 billion envelope is broken, what assessment have the Government made of the impact on local authorities and businesses that will have to shoulder the local funding uplift?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Let us not assume that the cap will be busted, because the progress on the trans-Pennine route upgrade demonstrates pretty satisfactorily that, planned properly, you can make substantial railway enhancements without limitless additions to the budget. We will come back to this House and the other House in short order about the costs and timescale of HS2, but there are some really substantial lessons to be learned from starting a project with no specification and giving contractors, in essence, a licence to print money. There is no way that this Government are prepared to do that with anything that has been announced in the past few days. One of the consequences of that is to allow ourselves time to plan what needs to be done properly, to cost it properly and to contract for it properly. I do not think that we can tolerate assuming that caps will be busted, because we have a terrible example of it at the moment, and we should leave that example in isolation and deliver projects properly, having planned them first.