Liz Truss will perform a major U-Turn on Northern Powerhouse Rail if she wins the Tory leadership race, pledging to deliver the project in full.
It would mean tens of billions of pounds of new infrastructure investment and new high speed connections running from Liverpool to Leeds via Manchester and Bradford.
The move would be a reversal of Boris Johnson's much maligned proposal, unveiled last November, which saw the budget for NPR slashed by £24.9bn, with the original vision for a new line replaced with upgrades to existing routes.
