The minister for transport this morning declined to address the ongoing furore over prospective plans to scrap portions of HS2.

Following prime minister Rishi Sunak’s lead, transport secretary Mark Harper during a round of morning interviews refused to comment on ‘speculation’ the Birmingham to Manchester leg of the controversial rail project may be axed. 

It follows as senior Conservative figures continue applying pressure on the government to ‘finish the job.’

Mr Sunak is said to have become concerned over HS2’s price tag after its cost was widely reported to have surpassed £100 billion, almost twice the budget it was initially awarded in 2015. 

The route was originally expected to run from London to Birmingham before branching off toward Manchester and Leeds, with the latter section already canned back in 2021. 

Mr Harper told Times Radio ‘spades are in the ground’ on the London to Birmingham leg, but said he was ‘not going to comment’ on ‘speculation in the media.’

He said: ‘If the government has anything to say, we’ll say that in the usual way in due course.’

Mr Sunak has himself dodged dozens of questions on the same topic this week, instead emphasising Conservative pledges to invest in road and bus travel. 

Multiple senior Tory figures have since jumped on the wagon calling for Mr Sunak’s administration to finally complete the long-running project. 

Mr Johnson wrote in the Daily Mail on Saturday that abandoning the Manchester leg of the route would be ‘betraying the north of the country and the whole agenda of levelling up.’

He added: ‘We simply cannot afford to abandon this vision now – to panic, and throw up our hands, and say it is all too difficult.’

Fellow former PM Theresa May similarly said during a Q&A at a literary festival today that ‘we have to think about why HS2 was designed in the first place.’

She added: ‘I am arguing with the government: “Don’t stop at Old Oak Common. You need to take it into Euston because my constituents will be disadvantaged if you don’t”.’

Sir Jeremy Kenilworth, MP for Kenilworth and Southam, also told BBC Radio 4: ‘I want the government to finish the job. 

‘My constituents are undergoing the pain now of the delivery of Phase 1 of HS2 and they have been told all the way through this project… that the significant local pain they will be suffering is justified by the significant national game that building a network of high speed rail lines will deliver.’

He went on: ‘I don’t think that gain, that advantage strategically to the nation, comes from a single line that runs from London to Birmingham… We need to finish it in a way that delivers its intended benefits.’

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