The Government’s controversial rail plan is “better” than the improvements demanded by Northern leaders, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has insisted.
Politicians, business leaders and industry figures have lined up to criticise the Government since the Integrated Rail Review last week downgraded long called-for improvements to the rail network in the North East.
However, speaking at the opening session of the CBI conference, held at the Port of Tyne in South Shields, he said critics of the plans had been “missing the point”.
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In a speech in which he twice lost his place and talked at length about a visit to Peppa Pig World, Mr Johnson said that the Government’s plan would bring faster journeys from Newcastle to London and Birmingham.
But he did not address concerns that the rail plan fails to address the North’s main demand of increasing capacity on the rail network to improve reliability.
The Prime Minister said: “I must say that I thought, as a lesson in what happens when you tell the British people we’re investing £96bn in the biggest railway programme for 100 years, some of the coverage was missing the point, let me put it that way.
“So, Birmingham to Newcastle is 40 minutes quicker under the IRP; from Newcastle to London will have 20 minutes shaved off because of the upgrades to the East Coast Mainline.
“You are mad as a railway enthusiast, which I am, to think that you always have to dig huge new trenches through virgin countryside and villages and housing estates in order to do high speed rail.
“If we’d done Crossrail like that, we couldn’t – we had to use lots of existing line.
“So, Northern Powerhouse Rail will have about 40 miles of new high speed line from Warrington to Marsden but they can speed up the rest by electrification and other improvements. And that’s how you get the massive gains that are going to come.”
Mr Johnson has said his “levelling-up” agenda was a “moral mission” as well as a necessary move for the economy.
The Prime Minister said achieving his goal would help the UK become a bigger economy than Germany but acknowledged there were “chronic problems” underlying the UK economy, including the imbalance between firms which were “go-getting world-beaters” and the “long comet tail” of businesses which lacked the necessary skills and investment to boost productivity.
Mr Johnson, who set out plans to boost the number of electric vehicle charging points, said the green industrial revolution meant “fate has handed us an opportunity” to reshape the economy.
The North East England Chamber of Commerce last week called the Integrated Rail Review as “huge missed opportunity” while the Northern Powerhouse Partnership said it was “second best, as ever” for the North.
