A1 dualling and Blyth Relief Road funding among Prime Minister's pledges after HS2 axed

The Prime Minister confirmed on Wednesday that the Birmingham to Manchester section of the high speed rail line will be scrapped and pledged instead to divert £36bn into hundreds of other transport projects in the North and Midlands.

Among the projects included in Mr Sunak’s promised ‘Network North’ is the dualling of the A1 between Morpeth and Ellingham and funding for a Blyth Relief Road.

However, Labour warned that the chances of Mr Sunak’s promises actually being delivered were “slim,” while the Lib Dems branded the announcements “typical Tory hot air.”

The A1 project has been the subject of decades of campaigning yet work has never begun, despite former chancellor George Osborne having given it the go-ahead back in 2014.

Mr Sunak said in his keynote address that the costs of the HS2 project had “more than doubled” and that “the facts have changed”.

He added: “I am ending this long-running saga. I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project and in its place, we will reinvest every single penny, £36bn, in hundreds of new transport projects in the North and the Midlands, across the country.

“This means £36bn of investment in the projects that will make a real difference across our nation.”

Northumberland County Council leader Glen Sanderson said he was “absolutely delighted” by the announcements, calling the long-awaited A1 dualling and the Blyth Relief Road “incredibly important.”

But Kim McGuinness, Labour’s candidate for North East mayor, warned that “after 13 years of broken Tory promises the chances of this latest offer being delivered in full are slim.”

She added: “We need better connections between the North East, Yorkshire, and the North West, we need the Leamside Line in Durham reopening, we need buses brought back into public control, we need Metro investment for expansion and upgrading, and we finally need the A1 fully dualled.

“The government has been told the Metro system needs more than £500m to upgrade its signalling system before the system starts to fail completely in 2030. That’s non-negotiable, it needs urgent sign off from government.

“But after this latest Tory transport axe, people across the North East will be asking themselves, can we trust this government to deliver on any of its transport promises? They have promised investment again and again, and not delivered. No one wants to be the last fool to trust Rishi Sunak.”