Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will publish the independent costings of linking High Speed 2 to the Northern Powerhouse Rail work for both Manchester and Sheffield city centre station locations.

Since the publication of the March 2015 Northern Transport Strategy, the government and Transport for the North have undertaken significant work to understand what the capability of the rail infrastructure – between and within cities - would need to be to deliver the Northern Powerhouse Rail vision.

Network Rail and HS2 Ltd. are currently working to establish the scale of investment required. We expect to have an understanding of the relative scale of costs by autumn 2016.