Liz Truss says she will perform U-Turn and deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail in full as Prime Minister

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Liz Truss will perform a major U-Turn on Northern Powerhouse Rail if she wins the Tory leadership race, pledging to deliver the project in full.

It would mean tens of billions of pounds of new infrastructure investment and new high speed connections running from Liverpool to Leeds via Manchester and Bradford.

The move would be a reversal of Boris Johnson's much maligned proposal, unveiled last November, which saw the budget for NPR slashed by £24.9bn, with the original vision for a new line replaced with upgrades to existing routes. Read more: Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss told 'don't turn your back on the North' At the time, the Government argued NPR scored lowest on "affordability and value for money", despite internal civil service documents advising it would provide "the greatest increase in connectivity and capacity" of all the options considered.

Northern metro mayors, in a joint letter published last night, said building NPR in full was "critical to unlocking the full potential of the Northern economy in the 21st century and levelling us up with the South".