Mayors demand pause on cut-price northern rail plan so full 'levelling up' assessment can be made

Northern Labour mayors are demanding ministers revisit the region’s original plans for high-speed rail so a full assessment of its potential ‘levelling up’ benefits can be carried out.

They have written to the Prime Minister, as well as the ‘levelling up’ secretary, Michael Gove, and transport secretary Grant Shapps, after it emerged no such economic analysis was done when ministers decided to scale the proposal back.

The Integrated Rail Plan, published in November, shaved £18bn off the plans for new east-west links put forward by the North - missing out Bradford and significantly reducing the size of the proposed high-speed network.

READ MORE: North’s own rail plan would have meant faster journeys and more trains, admits government - but it was too expensive

Since then, background papers published last month have revealed that while the North’s own plans would have provided the best connections and biggest cuts to journey times, they were considered too expensive.

However no proper economic assessment had been done to see what benefits the full network could have brought to the North in the longer term, including any ‘levelling up’ of the region’s economy.

In the letter, published on the day Michael Gove is due to join northern leaders on-stage in Liverpool at the Convention of the North, the mayors say it was ‘very strange, to say the least, that the IRP, the government’s flagship levelling up policy, has not been fully assessed for its levelling up impact’.

“Surely the government would want to ensure that any major investment of public money achieved greatest impact on its central mission?

“For this reason, we do not believe that the current IRP should be the final word on rail infrastructure for the North. But,