This is a story of how the Government has wasted a fifth of a billion pounds and delayed an essential national infrastructure by at least a decade. It’s a story that quite literally runs straight through Tameside. This is the story of the Transpennine Rail Upgrade.

Back in 2010, when I first elected as our MP, I knew campaigning for better local trains was something I wanted to make a big deal of. As well having spent several years commuting myself between Mottram and then Stalybridge and Manchester city centre, it was obvious to me better Northern transport had to be a major priority for the country as well as my constituency.

Although this was the age of George Osborne’s austerity in public spending budgets, he was promising an increase in capital (investment) spending. His rhetoric went even further – he intended to create ‘the Northern Powerhouse’, one integrated economy stretching along the M62 from Liverpool to Hull. It was (and still is) a good idea. It felt like pushing on an open door.

The Transpennine Rail Upgrade was announced just a year later in 2011. It promised electrification of the line, delivering faster journeys and therefore more services an hour, completed by 2019. The cost was £289m (in 2011 prices).

Work did begin in 2015, but Ministers soon equivocated on the scope and detail of the project. Having been told electrification was essential to getting the improvements we needed, I began to be told that engineering works could deliver the same improvements whilst causing less disruption. I was sceptical. Having seen electrification projects run into trouble in other parts of the country, I suspected the real reason was the Government had over-promised and their budget was just not sufficient. This became the norm. The Government not only redrew the scope of this project in 2017, they did so again 2018, again 2020 and then did so twice in 2021.

Last month the National Audit Office, which is independent of the Government, published their report on the work so far. To quote from it directly: “Between 2011-12 and 2021-22, Network Rail spent £1 billion on the Programme, of which an estimated £190 million has been spent on work no longer needed as a result of changes in the scope”.  This is despite that fact that, since the 2017 redrawing, the fundamental outcomes for the programme have remained unchanged: improving journey times for passengers, increasing track capacity and decarbonising the railway. The cost of this, not including the extra features that have since been announced to accommodate the plans High Speed Rail, is now forecast at between £6.2 billion and £6.5 billion.  Completion will be between 2030 and 2033.

I don’t want to sound all doom and gloom. The Manchester to Stalybridge section of the electrification work is well underway. We’ve also had some station improvements in recent years such as the lifts at Stalybridge and the platform extension at Mossley, and the rolling stock has significantly improved. But it’s not good enough. This is the major strategic rail line for Northern England, for passengers and for freight. In his resignation press conference, Boris Johnson said he couldn’t understand why colleagues had removed him ‘when he was delivering so much’. But that rhetoric is miles from the reality. The Levelling Up White Paper compares the Government’s agenda to Renaissance Florence, yet so far they’ve proved incapable of upgrading the railway to Leeds.

All of this change has been close to impossible to follow, even for people who travel on the line every day. There are also several Tameside residents who have done or are working on the programme. I’m grateful to them for all their work but they can only deliver what the Government directs and is willing to fund. The Government simply have to do better.