Andy Burnham backs plan to bring HS2 back to north west

Reports on Thursday morning (October 17) suggested Sir Keir Starmer is planning to re-introduce ‘phase 2a’ of the high speed railway, which was cancelled by Rishi Sunak last year in Manchester.

This section of the line runs from Birmingham to Crewe.

However, the LBC Radio report does not suggest HS2 would come back to Manchester. It also would not fall back to the taxpayer, instead would ‘be handed to a private sector consortium’.

Now, the Greater Manchester mayor has appeared to back the plan, which is similar to the proposals Mr Burnham and former West Midlands mayor Andy Street put together.

Last month, they unveiled a ‘very similar’ scheme for a privately funded line from Lichfield to High Legh that would connect up to Birmingham and Manchester respectively.

Speaking on BBC Radio Manchester on Thursday, Mr Burnham said anyone designing a new line between the two cities ‘would want it through Crewe’.

He also suggested it could connect to his proposed Liverpool-Manchester railway line, the future of which hangs in the balance after a row over funding.

He went on: “The Liverpool-Manchester line could have a spur from it to Crewe so you would have a new line from London up the country.”

To make his Liverpool-Manchester dreams a reality, it would require a new underground Piccadilly station. That, he added, combined with phase 2a, might be ‘better’ than the original HS2 plan.

“We are clear the station at Piccadilly, that may well be built first, is an east-west station,” Mr Burnham explained.

“It would work better on an east-west alignment as an underground station. That would be a better solution in the long-run than what HS2 was proposing with a surface station.”