SHADOW Chancellor George Osborne, in an exclusive interview with The Northern Echo, committed his party to start construction on a high-speed rail line to the North-East by 2015.
He said: “We have done a tremendous amount of work into how you can pay for a high-speed link from London to Leeds and Manchester in the first wave, and phase two up to Newcastle.
Every railway built in the past 170 years was built in stages.
“It will not be built overnight, but we would hope to start construction from 2015, and it would take many years to build.”
Mr Osborne, who is MP for Tatton in Cheshire, said: “I know from the North- West that the best regional policy is having really good strong road and rail links.”
Nick Brown, the Minister for the North-East, pledged to have a meeting with National Express, the company which operates the line, to begin to create a business case for investment in a high-speed route.
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