One of Rishi Sunak’s predecessors has attacked the decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2 to Manchester, saying the prime minister had “thrown away 15 years of cross-party consensus” and made future infrastructure projects much harder.
Conservative former prime minister David Cameron condemned the decision as losing a “once-in-a-generation opportunity”.
Mr Sunak used his Conservative Party conference speech to promise to put the £36 billion of savings into a raft of other transport schemes.
He also unveiled radical plans to stamp out cigarette-smoking for future generations, announcing plans for a UK smoking ban by raising the legal smoking age by one year every year. It means a 14-year-old today will never legally be able to buy a cigarette.
However, it’s understood another of Mr Sunak’s predecessors, Liz Truss, will vote against the plan, raising the prospect of other right-wingers trying to join her in blocking it.
The PM also pledged to crack down on the sale of disposable vapes to children, saying more must be done to restrict their availability to under-18s.
The Independent first revealed secret talks to scrap the link beyond Birmingham.
No northern leaders were consulted, says mayor
West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin said: “It’s great that he’s saying it’s what the North needs. How would he know, he’s not spoken to us – not one leader in the North has been in that room when they’ve come up with this plan.”
The Labour politician told Channel 4 News: “We’re not involved at all and actually we could be helpful, we could help solve a lot of these problems.
“This doesn’t work for north-to-south, it doesn’t work east-to-west, and what we’re seeing in this plan is a decade of rail replacement buses with electrification.”
Ms Brabin voiced concerns over a lack of timeframes for the money, saying: “We’re slightly cynical because we’ve been promised so much by Conservative governments … fundamentally it feels like just pure electioneering.”
Rail minister Huw Merriman, asked if anyone will believe the pledges, told the same programme: “It’s £36 billion at play, the bulk of that will be spent up in the North to add improvements.”
He declined to give detailed costings on improvements to the A1, saying they will have to be “calculated out from a pot we’ve dedicated towards roads funding”.
Analysis: Tories traps laid for Labour
Speech after speech laid down challenges that were consciously designed to put Sir Keir Starmer on the spot and disrupt Labour’s own conference. Sean O’Grady asks what effect they will have:
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Tories ‘facing competing schisms’
The Conservatives are facing competing splits, commentators say, after former chancellor George Osborne stood by David Cameron’s attack on the HS2 decision.
Craig Oliver, who worked for Mr Cameron in No 10, said the ex-PM would not have made his statement had he not been certain.
A rail expert wrote on social media: “A man who has never fought a general election as PM reckons he has a mandate to rip up a key tenet of the 2019 Conservative manifesto and, through selling land already purchased for it, make it impossible for a future government to recover from.”
But one supporter of the decision said it would save ancient woodlands and historic buildings from being destroyed.
Sunak reveals replacement for A-levels
Rishi Sunak has announced his plan to scrap A-levels and replace it with a new qualification called the Advanced British Standard (ABS) aimed at creating the “best education system in the western world”.
But unions dismiss promise £30,000 teacher bonuses:
Homeowners left heartbroken ‘must be compensated’
Residents in a Staffordshire village where HS2 bought up family homes to make way for the line to Manchester have “suffered immensely” and will be “relieved” to hear it has been cancelled – but now they must be compensated, a local councillor has said.
Jamie Stephenson, chairman of Madeley Parish Council, near Stoke-on-Trent, said the rail project had already had a “major impact” on the villages of Madeley, Whitmore and others.
Cllr Stephenson said the decision should have been made years ago to save residents from stress and heartache.
He said: “We have had loads of farmers who have had their land compulsory purchased, some of them have been left completely heartbroken because these farms were their whole lives, some were born there and grew up there and they have been taken away from them and they don’t really understand why.
“A lot of it has been for early environmental works, which, from what we can see, is planting small trees and carving up the fields.
“It has been really unclear what the actual purpose of that is, other than to try and diminish the environmental impact of HS2, while they are ripping up ancient woodland in the process. It has been very strange process.
“To be frank, the biggest problems were probably yet to come with the construction work itself so I think we have been lucky that those main construction works haven’t actually started.”
A padlock on the gates of a house on Heath Road, Whitmore Heath in the West Midlands, where 70% of homes have been purchased for HS2
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A padlock on the gates of a house on Heath Road, Whitmore Heath in the West Midlands, where 70% of homes have been purchased for HS2
Schemes No 10 the money will go into
Labour claimed that “almost all” of the schemes announced by the Prime Minister “had already been part of government plans so cannot be described as new investments nor reinvestments”.
These are the projects Downing Street says the HS2 money will go into:
Sunak speech goes up in smoke as two predecessors attack key plans
Rishi Sunak’s flagship plans came under fire from two Tory former prime ministers, as well as northern leaders, business chiefs and other senior Tories. The full story:
Tory mayor of West Midlands ‘disappointed’ but won’t resign
Tory Party conference fallout: Ask our political commentator
John Rentoul will be taking your questions on the fallout from the Conservative Party conference live at 2pm tomorrow. Submit your question here:
