Rail Investment and Integrated Rail Plan

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. London colleagues will be battling with the Government in the next three days over promises that were made to Londoners about TfL funding, on which they are again engaging in that brinkmanship.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share the frustration of so many people in Leeds and Yorkshire that, after 11 years of planning and working hard, the Government cancel the eastern leg and the integrated rail plan says:

“We will look at the most effective way to run HS2 trains to Leeds”?

We do not have to look very far; there was a plan, which the Government have reneged on.

[Louise Haigh]

Absolutely. I am afraid, as my right hon. Friend has pointed out, that the IRP is full of nonsense like that.

The economic case for delivering the original plans as promised could hardly be stronger. Both schemes would have created more than 150,000 new jobs, connecting 13 million people in major towns and cities in our industrial heartlands. Without that eastern leg of HS2, the business case barely makes sense. In the middle of a climate emergency, when we know that we need to double rail capacity in order for the Government to meet their own net zero target, the decision makes even less sense. This was a once-in-a-generation chance to transform opportunity across the whole country, rebalance the economy and level up, but last month the Government tore their promises up.