Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has axed the northern leg of the HS2 high-speed rail line to Manchester, confirming the worst kept secret in politics, as he told the Conservative party conference he would be “bold” and “radical”.
He pledged sweeping education reforms and announced a smoking crackdown, setting out his case to remain PM ahead of an expected general election next year.
“We will give the country what it so sorely needs and yet too often has been denied – a government prepared to make long-term decisions so that we can build a brighter future for everyone,” he claimed, essentially damning the previous 13 years of the Tory party being in government and 32 of the past 44 years if you include the 2010 coalition.
In his speech to the conference in Manchester, Sunak argued that £36 billion could be saved by scrapping HS2 north of Birmingham and that the money would be spent on ‘better-value’ transport projects across the north of England.
Mark Littlewood, director general of the free market thinktank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “It never made sense to spend over £100 billion for slightly faster trips between London and Manchester. Commuter transport, linking people to work and family, delivers far better value for money.”
But the CBI said the decision “sends a damaging signal about the UK’s status as global destination for investment.”
While Andy Burnham the mayor of Manchester called the decision a “disgrace.”
"I said, build HS2 in the North first. And if they had done that, do we honestly think the London leg would be cancelled today?”
Sunak also pledged major reforms to education for 16 to 19-year-olds, with the introduction of an “advanced British standard” that would merge A-levels and the more vocational 'T-levels' into a single qualification.
He added that education would in future be his top spending priority.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union felt post-16 curriculum reform is “worthy of debate, but simply increasing the number of hours taught would require an additional 5,300 teachers.”
He pointed out: “We need an additional 4,300 mathematics teachers and 2,600 English teachers to cover current needs.”
There were also moves on smoking. Sunak said that the legal age for smoking would be raised by one year, every year, so that a 14-year-old today would never legally be sold a cigarette.
Sunak also wants to restrict the availability of vapes to children.
The government will look at flavoured vapes, disposable ones and packaging, he said.
Even this attracted criticism with the Telegraph reporting Sunak’s predecessor Liz Truss will vote against the measures.
Dan Hodges of the Mail on Sunday wasn’t overly impressed with the speech.
He tweeted: “So far this hasn’t been a speech. It’s been a check-list of second tier policy announcements. HS2. Smoking ban. Sentencing. Unspecified policies on small boats and benefits. Boilerplate on family, gender and the union. Functional. Unimaginative. Certainly not a game changer.”
But Tory chair Greg Hands defended his boss.
“Today, the Prime Minister made major, long-term decisions to transform the UK for a brighter future” with decisions “based not on short-term advantage - but on long-term success.”
Unsurprisingly, Labour has taken a different view.
Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, said: “After 13 years and five Tory prime ministers, Rishi Sunak’s latest desperate attempt to reset his weak leadership and divided government won’t fool the British public who are looking at Tory failures all around them.”
“Sunak’s weakness is having a decaying effect on his party and the country.”