Rishi Sunak has denied that HS2 high-speed rail will be reduced to a mere “shuttle service” between London and Birmingham, insisting that many more people will be helped by paring back plans for the project and boosting other transport schemes instead.
In his first interview since his speech to the Conservative party conference, the prime minister declined to apologise for scrapping the northern leg of HS2 from Birmingham to Manchester, saying he would take “decisions that aren’t always easy”.
Sunak said “the facts have changed” on HS2, pointing to costs doubling since the project was approved more than a decade ago and changes in passenger behaviour since Covid as evidence that the economic case had been “severely eroded”.
Despite intense criticism from three former Conservative prime ministers, Sunak said promises to reinvest the remaining £36bn of the HS2 budget into other rail, road and bus schemes would “benefit far more people, in far more places and far quicker”.
He dismissed claims the move would harm investor confidence, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he could not disagree more with the suggestion.
He also took issue with suggestions that huge investment in a new line between Birmingham and London was a white elephant. He said supporters of the scheme had said there was a “very strong” business case for phase 1 as a “standalone project”.
“For those people now to say that somehow that’s a shuttle service, they’re not being truthful about what they said previously,” Sunak said.
After making his first speech to Tory activists in Manchester at the party’s annual conference, Sunak faced further questions about his leadership and hopes to win a historic fifth term for the Conservatives at the next election.
He argued that three other announcements – pushing back net zero targets, overhauling A-levels and a planned phase-out of smoking – were “examples of doing politics differently”.
Asked if it took “brass neck” to claim he was the change candidate at the next election despite 13 years of Conservative government, Sunak said “politics needs to change”.
“I want the country to know that I am determined to change things,” he said. “I’m determined to take the country in a better direction.
“These are examples of things that will make a difference, they’re example of doing politics differently, focusing on the long term, not taking the easy way out. That’s the type of prime minister I’m going to be.”
Sunak notably refused several times to say he agreed with the home secretary, Suella Braverman, who said the UK faced a “hurricane” of mass migration.
The transport secretary, Mark Harper, faced further questions about the unravelling of HS2.
Harper could not say “in detail” how much would be spent on paying off contracts that had been cancelled by cutting HS2’s northern leg.
Pressed repeatedly, he told BBC Breakfast: “We’ve made some assumptions. But we’ve also made some assumptions about the money we’ll recover from land sales. We think they will broadly balance out.”
Harper, who also served in David Cameron’s government, defended Sunak’s claim to be representing change at the next election and criticism of previous Tory administrations.
He told BBC Breakfast: “We’ve all made mistakes in government.
“I think [Sunak’s] saying that some of the ways decisions have been taken by governments of both parties over a considerable period of time have not delivered the long-term outcomes that are required.
“He said his approach to politics is to get under the bonnet of some of those decisions, really look at them, take what he thinks are difficult decisions with some short-term unpopularity.”
The Labour mayor of the Liverpool city region, Steve Rotheram, accused Sunak of leaving the north with a “second-class system”.
Despite the promises of funding across what No 10 has called “network north”, Rotheram said: “It’s not going to be seen for many years, in some cases for decades. And some of it which was proposed to be spent across the north is being proposed to be spent down south for potholes – that’s not strategic transport planning.
“I think people quite rightly will be pushing back against what those announcements were yesterday.”
