A half-thought through list of stations that will be 10 minutes nearer to Manchester is no substitute for a high quality rail infrastructure, after Rishi Sunak has crumbled in the face of years of Conservative mismanagement and scrapped the Tories headline HS2 project.

The scrapping of the project will have massive implications for Saddleworth, with the East–West Northern Powerhouse line dependent on HS2 infrastructure being constructed. With Bradford apparently now listed as being one of the stations getting works, local Liberal Democrat councillor Sam Al-Hamdani has questioned what this means for the high speed line which was scheduled to run through Saddleworth.

He said: “Rishi Sunak seems to have just thrown a large shopping list of projects up in the air and named a few, with no thought or consideration as to how they actually fit together.

“We have been desperate for clarity on the Northern Powerhouse line, which is threatening to bulldoze through Saddleworth, and push all the local services out of the way. Does this mean that they have reverted to their original plans to build a line through Bradford? Who knows!

“The Government seem to be playing the hokey cokey with huge multi-billion projects. You put Euston in, you take Manchester out … all we know for certain is that it has completely shaken private investors’ confidence in the North West.”