Boris Johnson defends HS2 U-turn, saying ‘levelling up cannot wait that long’ – UK politics live

Jamie Driscoll, the Labour mayor of the North of Tyne, said there were only two rail tracks open into the north-east. The priority should have been to re-open an old route. But that did not happen, he said.

He said the argument that this plan would bring benefits sooner was like promising someone a three-course meal, and then giving them a quick bag of crisps instead.

Steve Rotheram, the Labour mayor of Liverpool city region, says today’s plans could have been produced by Gladstone. They do not look to the future, he says.

He says the plans could have been transformation. People were promised Grand Designs, but they got a 60-minute Makeover.

He says, if the north had received the same per capita funding as London, the investment would have been worth £86bn more. He says he is not having a go at London. Londoners deserve decent infrastructure, he says. But he says the north needs proper infrastructure too.

Metro mayors from the north are holding a press conference now giving their response to the integrated rail plan. There is a live feed here.

Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, told peers earlier that Brussels should not interpret his “reasonable tone” in talks on the Northern Ireland protocol with a softening of the UK’s position.

There has been some comment recently on the apparent softening of the UK’s tone. Last week Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice president who represents the EU in Brexit talks with the UK, said the change in tone from Lord Frost had been welcome. EU member states have also noticed a shift, although at least one, Ireland, has questioned whether it is sincere.

During questions in the Lords, asked if he was softening his negotiating stance, Frost replied:

No. We are trying to reach agreement. That has always been our position. I would suggest our friends in the EU don’t interpret the reasonable tone that I usually use in my discussions with them as implying any softening in the substantive position.

Jenny Chapman, his Labour shadow, asked Frost to give his “percentage assessment of success” by Christmas. Frost said:

I think it’s somewhere between zero and a hundred to be honest. I don’t think it helps to put specific numbers on these sort of things.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman would not comment on a report in the Times (paywall) saying the government was seeking to fly migrants crossing the Channel to Albania for their asylum claims to be processed there. Tom Newton Dunn in the Times says:

Under the plan, arrivals on Britain’s beaches in small boats would be taken to the country within seven days for off-shore processing.

The prospect of a long wait there while claims for asylum in Britain were evaluated will act as a deterrent against making the crossing, it is thought.

The spokesman said he would not comment about speculation about talks with specific countries. But he said that the government was looking at “all options” to stop these crossings and that it was engaged in talks “with both France and other international partners to help reduce illegal migration”.

Olta Xhaçka, the Albanian Europe minister, dismissed the report as “fake news”.

The Labour MP Zarah Sultana refused to withdraw the word “dodgy” three times in the Commons earlier, as she claimed she did not think “another word suffices the level of corruption and what we have seen from the government”, PA Media reports. PA says:

During business questions in the Commons, Sultana, accused transport secretary Grant Shapps and Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg of being “dodgy”.

Sultana said: “It has been reported that the transport secretary used public money to create a departmental team that lobbied against plans to build on airfield sites, including a giga-factory at Coventry airport. Disgracefully, that would mean he used public funds to lobby against green investment and jobs coming to Coventry.

“And why? We know he is an aviation enthusiast. From a dodgy transport secretary to a dodgy leader of the house who last week tried to rewrite the rules to let his mate off the hook. This Conservative government is rotten to the core. Is the leader of the house proud of this shameful record?”

Interjecting, Commons deputy speaker Dame Eleanor Laing told her to think of a different form of words, as she did not like the word “dodgy”.

She said: “She can make clear she disagrees with what has happened. Perhaps she could put it in different words.”

Sultana said she could not think of another word that implied the same level of corruption.

Laing insisted that while “it is absolutely in order to have disagreement here”, we must “moderate our language and be careful of the adjectives that are used about a member by another”.

Sultana again said she could not think of a suitable alternative, but after a further exchange she eventually withdrew her remarks.

Here is the graph Sir Andrew Dilnot showed to the Commons Treasury committee this morning to illustrate what share of your assets you might have to spend on care costs under the current system (the red line), what share you might lose under the law that was passed, but never activated, based on the original Dilnot report plan (the blue line), and what share you might lose as a result of the change announced yesterday (the orange line).

It illustrates his point that those with assets worth £106,000 are now at risk of losing the largest share of their wealth. (See 10.30am.)

An earlier post (see 12.20pm) quoted the Conservative MP Craig Tracey as saying he was disappointed HS2 was not being extended in full. In fact he said he was disappointed it was not be scrapped in full. I’m sorry for the error.

In his interview during his Network Rail visit Boris Johnson claimed it was “total rubbish” to say he was breaking promises, and undermining levelling up, with his rail announcement.

Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked him:

You’ve broken your promises to people here, pledges on Leeds to Manchester. You promised Northern Powerhouse Rail between Leeds and Manchester, and you are talking about speed, not capacity. Do you think the people in the north are stupid?

Johnson told Guru-Murthy he was talking “total rubbish”. He went on: “We’re doubling capacity between Manchester and Leeds.” When Guru-Murthy said capacity was cut compared with the original plans, Johnson ignored this and went on:

We’re trebling capacity between Liverpool and Manchester.

And, of course, there are going to be people who, you know, always want everything at once. And there are lots of people who’ll say, ‘look, what we should do is carve huge new railways through virgin territory, smashing through unspoilt countryside and villages, and do it all at once’.

The problem with that is those extra high-speed lines take decades and they don’t deliver the commuter benefits that I’m talking about. We will eventually do them.

Guru-Murthy then put it the PM that he was “derailing levelling up by cutting your promises”. Again Johnson told him (three times, in this answer) he was talking “total rubbish”. He went on:

This is the biggest investment in rail, at least for 100 years, and it’s a fantastic thing. What it does is it delivers the types of commuter service that people have been expecting, people have got entitled to, in the south-east of the country. And it will deliver that.

And it will deliver better services for places that weren’t on the original plan. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Leicester – all sorts of places will benefit from what we’re doing in ways that hadn’t been foreseen.

In virtually every case you will find that journey times are shorter and capacity is going up. This is a much, much better plan.

In his interview during his Network Rail visit Boris Johnson also defended his social care plans in response to criticism from Sir Andrew Dilnot, the economist who first developed plans for a cap on care costs in a report for the coalition government 10 years ago. (See 10.23am and 10.34am.) When it was put to him that people in the north of England would lose out, Johnson replied:

No. This is a massive improvement for everybody in the whole country because what we’re saying is for the first time in history we’re stopping people having to pay unlimited quantities for their care.

We’re restricting the amount you can possibly pay to a fixed limit and the state comes in and helps you, the state comes in and helps you as soon as you have assets of £100,000 or less. And that’s never been done before.

In fact, Dilnot’s point was not that people in the north might lose out but that they would lose out proportionally to richer people, who will benefit most. Dilnot told the Commons Treasury committee this morning:

On the whole, this [the operation of the price cap] will tend to hit less well-off people obviously harder. It will tend to hit people in regions of the country with lower house prices harder than it does those in regions with higher house prices, so there is a sort of north-south axis to this that people living in northern and other less high house price areas are likely to be hit harder by this on average.

Keir Starmer has said the north of England has been betrayed by the prime minister’s plans for rail. In an interview for broadcasters, he said Boris Johnson had broken his promise to extend HS2 all the way to Leeds, and to build a new line between Manchester and Leeds. He went on:

This was the first test of levelling up and the government has completely failed and let down everybody in the north. You can’t believe a word the prime minister says.

When it was put to him that the government says this is the biggest investment ever in rail, and that it will benefit passengers more quickly than the original HS2 plan, Starmer replied:

You don’t have to drill down very long into that £96bn to realise that most of that, or a good deal of that, is money already spent or the bit of the line that comes up to the Midlands. So that argument doesn’t hold water.

And as for the improved speed of [journey times], of course that’s a good thing. But if you don’t have a new line, you don’t sort out capacity. And that is the biggest problem that we’ve got across the north.

So, that is, I’m afraid just the tactics of trying to ensure that the focus isn’t on what’s really happened here, which is the breaking of two very, very important pledges. If you can’t level up in Bradford, then the whole levelling up agenda is seen for what it really is, which is just a slogan.

In an interview during his Network Rail visit, Boris Johnson was also asked if he would give up free holidays and declare his interests in the proper way in the light of the new Commons focus on standards. He replied:

I always declare everything in the normal way. I was very glad to see the House of Commons approving yesterday a cross-party approach and I think that’s what we need to do.

Actually, that is not true. Johnson has been repeatedly criticised by the Commons standards committee over the way he declares interests. In 2019 a report said that making late declarations had become “a pattern of behaviour” for Johnson and that displayed “an over-casual attitude towards obeying the rules of the house”. And a report this year said it was “unsatisfactory” that Johnson took so long to respond to questions about his holiday in Mustique, and how it was declared in the register.

Boris Johnson has declined to say whether his father, Stanley Johnson, will be investigated by the Conservative party after two women made allegations of inappropriate touching. Interviewed during a visit to a Network Rail logistics hub near Selby, North Yorkshire, Johnson said:

First of all, it’s absolutely right that everybody, women in particular, should be able, have the confidence, to come forward and make complaints.

I’m obviously not going to comment on individual cases.

Johnson also declined to say whether he had spoken to his father about the allegations.

Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, is not holding back. She is calling Boris Johnson “a liar, a fraud and a con artist”.