Northern Powerhouse Rail

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right that railway improvements, sadly, take a very long time. They take a long time to be delivered safely, unlike in the Victorian era when hundreds of people were killed during their construction, and many of them have to be done on the operating railway, which can tolerate some closures but cannot tolerate everything.

The Chancellor spoke correctly in saying that the benefits will start to be felt in the 2030s. In fact, I think some benefits will be felt before then, because we must improve Leeds station and a new station in Bradford will make a significant difference to Bradford’s economic prospects. I cannot tell the noble Baroness precisely when all the parts of the improvement will be delivered, because we need to plan this out properly, but the Government hope that, with a general consensus about the economic prospects of the north of England being improved by better transport, we have for the first time seen a plan that sets that out in a progressive way that enables it to be delivered. The hope is that, whoever the Government are—hopefully, this Government will be here for a long time—it can be delivered over the course of a number of Parliaments.

The noble Baroness will of course recall that the most difficult occasion in the recent history of railway planning was the peremptory cancellation of phase 2a of HS2, which was done, sadly, without any contemplation of a replacement. If future Governments were to modify this plan, one hopes they would contemplate the effects of what they were doing, in order to be able to deliver the plan roughly as it is set out today.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, there is a great deal in this Statement that I warmly welcome: in particular, the bit the Minister has just referred to about what was HS2, the link from Crewe to Manchester. He has repeated, and it is clear in the Statement, that

“we will retain land … already purchased between the west midlands and Crewe”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/1/26; col. 931.]

The only point of retaining the land—I strongly welcome the fact that it will be—is that a railway will be built on it at some stage.

I would like the Minister’s confirmation that, welcome as these improvements to east-west connectivity are—they are very welcome and probably should be taking precedence—they will not in any way help to solve the capacity problems on the west coast main line, which are being solved in part as far as Birmingham but need to be solved between the West Midlands and Manchester as well. What hope can the Minister offer me that a new railway—he can call it HS2 or whatever he likes—will be built to replace HS2 to Manchester and correct the huge mistake that was made when it was cancelled?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My noble friend is right: the Government are retaining that part of the land between the West Midlands and Crewe that they have bought for precisely that purpose, because they know that at some stage a railway will have to be built. It will probably not be a high-speed railway. It is certainly not a railway to the specification of High Speed 2 phase 1, which has cost an extraordinary amount of money because of its specification. It might be that only part of that route is needed sooner than the more northern parts.

It is clear that the west coast main line is full of trains. There is no space left. The Office of Rail and Road declined all the open access applications last summer, simply because there was no timetable space on the railway to accommodation them. It is right for the Government to think about the future and to plan to deliver this new railway at a time when it is needed.