Hammond '˜should give North £50bn for transport'

CHANCELLOR PHILIP Hammond is under growing pressure to use his first Autumn Statement to announce major investment in better transport for the North.
Ed CoxEd Cox
Ed Cox

Ed Cox, director of the influential IPPR North thinktank, yesterday added his voice to demands that the new chancellor significantly increase the Government’s investment in transport.

Former chancellor George Osborne committed £13bn and created a new body, Transport for the North, to drive improvements but Mr Cox argued that sum should be increased to £50bn in November’s Autumn Statement.

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He used a speech at a conference on the ‘northern powerhouse’ organised by Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman to urge the new government to take a broader look at transport in the North rather than just focusing on speeding up journeys between major cities.

He said: “We are planning to spend £3,000 per person on transport connectivity in London compared to about £400 per person on transport in the North.

“The good news, I think, is that Philip Hammond has recognised that. He has already started to nod towards not just the big schemes but, as he puts it, the modest schemes.

“And I think with Transport for the North now bringing forward some really quite carefully worked up proposals then we are going to see the kind of investment now that the North actually needs.

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“The Autumn Statement is a great opportunity to announce that. We cannot have another re-announcement of that same £13bn that we have now heard re-announced about five or six times.

“We’ve got to hear about some new funding, I reckon £50bn is what we need to make transport in the north fly.”

Fresh questions have emerged over the future of the HS2 project which will connect Leeds and Sheffield to London via a new high speed rail link along with suggestions that the new government could switch its focus to the proposal for trans-Pennine high speed rail, sometimes known as HS3.

A report from the Public Accounts Committee of MPs this week raised questions over the cost and economic impact of Hs2.

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Radical changes to the proposed route and plan for stations has also tested political and pubblic support for the project in South Yorkshire.

Mr Cox said: “It is a silly conversation and it is being engineered by the Westminster bubble that we have to choose between HS2 and HS3.

“What the choice is really is whether our nation is going to invest two per cent of GDP in transport infrastructure or as in Germany, France, Italy, eight per cent of GDP in transport infrastructure.

“If we were to invest eight per cent, if we were to look at that over a 20, 30, 40, 50 year period suddenly we find we’ve got all the money we need to do these kind of things and to make much better roads and so on.

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“Nobody asks questions about Crossrail 2, that’s a given, whereeas we are being forced by a Westminster commentariat to choose between HS3 and HS2.

“It’s a false choice and we should reject it.”

The Government is due to set out firm plans for the route and stations for the second phase of HS2 which will branch north from Birmingham to Manchester to the west of the Pennines and Leeds and Sheffield to the east.

Mr Hammond will make his Autumn Statement on November 23 with speculation growing that he may soften some of his predecessor’s austerity measures.

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