Theresa May has become the latest former Conservative prime minister to line up against Rishi Sunak over the future of HS2 as party activists and MPs head to Manchester for their annual conference.
The former Tory leader, who was in Downing Street between 2016 and 2019, called for the high speed train line not to be scaled back following concerns the Birmingham to Manchester leg could be ditched.
She said she was in favour of HS2 being delivered because extra capacity is required on the railway line to the North West of England and confirmed she had lobbied ministers urging them not to abandon redeveloping Euston station as the London terminus for the high speed line, following suggestions a drastic cost-cutting exercise could see it end at Old Oak Common in the capital’s western suburbs.
Mrs May follows Boris Johnson, who has been vocally against any moves to further trim the route, and David Cameron, said to have raised his concerns with Downing Street in private, in urging the Prime Minister not to axe HS2’s northern arm.
The Prime Minister will also face criticism from his predecessor Liz Truss who is expected to urge the Conservative leadership to position itself as the “party of business again” by slashing corporation tax.
Ms Truss will argue in a speech on the fringes of the Tory Party conference that high taxes on businesses must not be “normalised”, suggesting the private sector is “drowning in red tape”.
She is expected to use her appearance at a so-called growth rally in Manchester to call for corporation tax to be lowered back to 19%, taking it down from its current 25% rate.
The row over HS2 comes as Rishi Sunak has repeatedly refused to commit to building the second phase from Birmingham to Manchester having reportedly become “alarmed” over the size of the bill for the project.
HS2, announced by the last Labour government but backed by successive Tory administrations, was given a £55.7 billion budget in 2015 for its route from London to Birmingham with a Y-shaped section to Manchester and Leeds.
But reports have suggested its costs have breached the £100 billion mark, even with the Leeds element being binned in 2021.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper on Saturday refused to comment on “speculation” on Saturday.
“If the Government has anything to say, we’ll say that in the usual way in due course,” he told Times Radio.
The stonewalling by ministers has not stopped senior Tories from lobbying Downing Street over the rumours of a scale back, with Mrs May becoming the latest party grandee to intervene in the debate.
Asked during a Q&A at Henley Literary Festival whether HS2 should be scrapped, Mrs May said: “The answer is no.
“I will give you two comments on HS2. First of all, we have to think about why HS2 was designed in the first place.
“It was because there was a lack of capacity on the West Coast Main Line.
“So if there is a lack of capacity on the West Coast Main Line, we need more railway capacity to serve the North West.”
She said there was also an issue for her constituents if the line does not end up terminating in Euston, in central London.
“If HS2 stops at Old Oak Common, it is going to make our railway journeys into London longer and disrupted potentially over the period that Old Oak Common’s building is being done to enable it to take that end point,” she added.
“So I am arguing with Government: ‘Don’t stop at Old Oak Common. You need to take it into Euston because my constituents will be disadvantaged if you don’t’.”
The wading in by another former premier will ensure the debate about the rail project’s future will loom large during the conference, starting on Sunday in Manchester.
Mr Johnson expanded on his concerns in his Daily Mail column on Saturday, arguing the Tory Government would be “betraying the north of the country and the whole agenda of levelling up” if HS2 to Manchester is delayed or cut.
He said suggestions that the southern terminal could become Old Oak Common instead of Euston in central London would leave HS2 as a “white elephant”.
Sir Jeremy Wright, a former attorney general and culture secretary, added his voice to the mix, pressing ministers to “finish the job”.
He said HS2 would never have been given approval by Parliament if it had only been intended for 225mph trains to travel between the capital and Birmingham, saying the “strategic benefits just aren’t there” and that the “price of it would simply be too high”.
Sir Jeremy said that, while some of the rising costs of HS2 had come from “bad management”, other financial pressures were the result of “delivering responsibly a major strategic transport project in a small and crowded island like ours”.
The Phase 1 bill has increased due to lobbying, including from MPs, for more of the route to be tunnelled underground to avoid spoiling the landscape or being routed through communities.
