Five Labour mayors from across the North, including the North of Tyne Mayor, have called on the Government to treat the "chaos" in rail services across the north of England as an emergency.
Jamie Driscoll was joined by mayors from West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Manchester and Liverpool for an emergency meeting on Thursday afternoon in the wake of weeks of disruption. The group want Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Transport Secretary Mark Harper to "haul operators to the table to sort out this mess," after hundreds of services have been cancelled by several rail operators including TransPennine Express, Northern and Avanti West Coast.
The statement from the five mayors read: "As thousands of last-minute cancellations continue to make life miserable for people in the North, and cause serious damage to the economy, the Government remains in a state of paralysis having just appointed its third Transport Secretary in seven weeks. If this level of disruption was being experienced in other parts of the country, we believe action would already have been taken to improve matters.
