Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what discussions he had with Transport for the North in advance of his announcement that the full electrification of the Transpennine route between Leeds and Manchester would no longer take place.

Pending Transport for the North’s formal establishment as the first statutory Sub-national Transport Body, co-operation on investment planning takes place through our existing partnership with Rail North.

The Government has not made any changes to our upgrade plans for the Transpennine Route. We are currently working with Rail North and Network Rail to develop very significant improvements for rail passengers on this route with phased introduction from December 2022. These could be the result of investment in new trains, electrification or other infrastructure work. The options will be costed by December, ahead of a decision next year.

The upgrade aims to deliver major reductions in journey times (such as a target time of 40 minutes for fast trains from Manchester to Leeds, and 62 minutes from Manchester to York), the ability to run more frequent and longer trains offering more seats on both long distance and local services and improvements to overall performance on the whole route. There has been no change in these ambitions.