Rishi Sunak has insisted he will not be forced into “premature decisions” as the Prime Minister continues to refuse to say whether he will scrap the northern leg of the HS2 line.
There is widespread expectation that Mr Sunak will axe the project due to cost concerns, but he has refused to settle speculation or even confirm whether a decision has been made.
Mr Sunak, in Manchester for the Conservative Party conference, could use his set-piece speech on Wednesday to announce the decision but is likely to soften the blow by spending on other projects for the North.
In a series of broadcast interviews, the Prime Minister repeatedly referenced his decision to water down the timings for a series of net zero measures, suggesting that showed he was prepared to make tough long-term choices.
“As I do with all the things I go through, I take the time to get it right and do what I think is right for the country,” he told Sky News.
“I think it’s right that I’m not going to get forced into making premature decisions. Not on something that’s so important, that costs this country tens of billions of pounds.”
The HS2 scheme was given a budget of £55.7 billion in 2015 but costs have ballooned, with an estimate of up to £98 billion – in 2019 prices – in 2020.
Since then soaring inflation will have pushed costs even higher.
Questions about the project have overshadowed Mr Sunak’s first party conference as Prime Minister, but Mr Sunak denied that proceedings in Manchester have been “chaotic”.
He is expected to hold an emergency Cabinet meeting to sign off the measures during his party conference in the city most directly hit by the cut to HS2.
The Times reported that after intense lobbying from within his Cabinet he will say the line will terminate in Euston, in central London, rather than the western suburb of Old Oak Common.
Tory mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street on Monday made an impassioned last-ditch appeal to Mr Sunak not to cancel the link between Birmingham and Manchester.
Not ruling out resigning over the issue, he warned Mr Sunak not to turn his back on a “once-in-a-generation opportunity”.
“When you make decisions, as I did on net zero, there are always going to be people who criticise you when you’re doing big things,” Mr Sunak insisted.
Labour’s Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham was among those hitting out at the Prime Minister.
“If they’re about to pull the plug, that would just be a desperate act of a dying Government with nowhere left to go,” he said.
An expanded Northern Powerhouse Rail project linking cities, and cash for potholes and bus routes, could be announced to sweeten the pill of curtailing the project feared to have spiralled past £100 billion.
Mr Sunak, whose Richmond constituency is in North Yorkshire, said: “I want people everywhere to feel that this Government is backing them… Just at this conference, we announced a billion pounds for 55 towns across the UK, including many in the North and Midlands, why?
“More people live in towns than in cities, they’re often ignored by Westminster politicians… That’s me backing millions of people across our Midlands and northern towns with the funding and tools they need to change their communities for the better.”
But Mr Burnham said reports of extra projects “will not deliver the new east-west line promised in the last three Conservative manifestos”, adding: “The North is being betrayed and people here won’t forget it.”
A decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2 would also be overruling the concerns of Tory former prime ministers Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said Mr Street was only “speculating” on the future of HS2 and that no “formal” decision has been made.
Speaking at a fringe event, hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies, Mr Hunt said: “He has done an incredible job, but he is speculating on what he thinks a decision might be, rather than talking about what the actual decision may be, and no formal decision has been made.”
Mark Reynolds, chief executive of Mace Group, which is building a new station in Birmingham and also in Euston if that part of the project continues, said the central London terminus was crucial.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If anyone thinks that ending from Birmingham to Old Oak Common is going to be strategic infrastructure, that is a waste of money and you might as well scrap the whole lot, which is ridiculous.
“What we have to do is invest in Euston because Euston also provides the capacity for Birmingham to Manchester, and that needs to be done as well.”
This is likely to be Mr Sunak’s last party conference before a general election, widely expected to be held next year.
Speaking to Sky News, he said he would be prime minister at the next Tory gathering.
But he also insisted that he “was going to do what I believe is right for the country in the long term”.
Asked if he was willing to be unpopular to do that, he told BBC News: “I’m prepared to persuade people that what I’m doing is right.”