Cabinet supporters of high-speed rail link to North ready to fight

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said yesterday it was “insane” to oppose the £32bn scheme, which would cut 45 minutes from journey times between London and Leeds.

But Tory MPs in the South and opponents of the scheme are using this week’s party conference in Manchester to step up their criticism of the project, which they claim is poor value for money and will cause significant environmental damage.

In an essay to be published today in the Blue Book, in which several Tory MPs plot a course for the party after the coalition, backbencher Steve Baker will renew his call for the project to be scrapped. He claims the business case for it is unclear and is one of a number of Tories in the South who oppose the scheme.

But Mr Maude put up a staunch defence of the scheme, which is expected to take 20 years to complete and projected to be worth billions of pounds to the economy of the North, in an interview yesterday.

He said it was “absurd that virtually every other country has high-speed rail” and added: “We are a long, thin country – it’s insane that this hasn’t been done before.

“The national government has to take a view on the route, consult and do all the right things, but actually you have just got to take a view that this is in the national interest and see it through.”

A consultation on the high-speed proposals recently concluded. If the Government were to go ahead a line from London to Birmingham would be built in the first phase to be followed by two branches north, one to South Yorkshire and Leeds and the other to Manchester.

But the route of the line to Birmingham is being fiercely challenged by those living near it, with several Tory donors and MPs coming out as strongly opposed to it.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond, who addresses the conference today, has repeatedly called on supporters of the high-speed scheme in the North to voice their backing or risk the network being halted.