Sunak scraps rest of HS2 and says A-levels will be replaced

1. Rishi Sunak scraps the rest of the HS2 rail project in England due to spiralling costs, meaning only the new London Euston to Birmingham line will be built
2. He pledges to "reinvest every penny" saved - which he says is £36bn - in rail, roads and buses in the North, the Midlands and across the country
3. Aside from HS2, he also proposes raising the age that people can buy tobacco and cigarettes in England every year to create a "smoke-free generation"
4. And he announces a new educational qualification for England combining A-Levels and T-levels that he proposes all students would sit
5. A number of Northern leaders have reacted angrily to the scrapping of HS2 links, including Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham
6. This could be the last party conference season before the next general election; Labour leader Keir Starmer will set out his stall next week

Sunak rounds off conference with a personal, political speech

Reuters

It's goodbye from them - and it's goodbye from us

And there we have it. After all the talk of shiny new transport infrastructure, the Tory conference delegates are heading home - with today's train strike to contend with.

We'll be off soon too (we'll take our neglected lukewarm cups of tea with us). But there's plenty more for you - whether you just want the headlines, or all the juicy details.

We've got:

• Six key takeaways from Sunak's speech here
• Analysis from our political editor Chris Mason here
• The main stories on the HS2 news here, gradual smoking ban here and new qualifications here
• Fact-checking from BBC Verify on everything from taxing meat to inflation here
• Want to chew over the details and gossip further? Newscast will drop on BBC Sounds later here.

We will of course be back next week for the Laour Party conference, which kicks on Sunday in Liverpool.

But from all of us in Manchester, and in London, thanks for joining us and have a lovely evening.

Was it a good conference for Sunak?

Iain Watson

Reporting from Manchester

EPA

This was Rishi Sunak's first conference as PM.

While rank and file representatives queued from first thing to hear his speech, some attendees at least may have been open to the possibility it could be his last.

There was something of an appetite to sample the political menu on offer from some of those touted as potential successors should the party lose power next year - with a queue, too, to gain access to Suella Braverman's conference speech where she warned of a 'hurricane' of immigration.

Kemi Badenoch also attracted a large crowd at a fringe event and of course the person the party members actually voted for as leader - Liz Truss - rather unhelpfully played to a full house on the fringe too, calling for the tax cuts Rishi Sunak can't quite promise yet.

So was it a good conference for the PM? It was better than some feared but not quite as smooth as some had been predicting.

The central problem was one of communication.

He wanted to give context to his decision to axe HS2 phase two and therefore save the announcment for his speech today, but that meant questions about its future overshadowed the preceding days and gave a platform to his critics.

The speech itself was not short of substance - with sharper dividing lines with Labour and quite a few with some in his own party .

One MP privately warned of civil war over his proposal (albeit on a free vote) to slowly but surely make smoking illegal.

His difficulty is in convincing voters he is the candidate offering change rather than continuity come the next election.

A fringe meeting featuring Theresa May's old pollster James Johnson unveiled findings from focus groups - with one sceptical voter wondering why he wanted credit for bringing inflation down, when it was on his party's watch that it had gone up...

Just catching up? Here are three key points

Reuters

Blinked and missed it all? Don't worry, we'll get you up to (high) speed in no time:

HS2

Sunak scrapped part of the high speed rail line from the West Midlands to Manchester, saying the project had come from a "false consensus" that links between big cities were "all that matters".

Instead, he said the government would invest in road, rail, and tram projects across the country.

The decision has angered some, including local leaders, such as Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, businesses in Manchester and former PM David Cameron. You can read more here.

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Here's what's left of the HS2 project - and what was scrapped by the PM

Smoking ban

The prime minister said the age at which people can buy cigarettes and tobacco in England should rise by one year every year so that eventually no-one can buy them. He says he'd let MPs vote how they like on any new law.

It would mean a child aged 14 today would never be allowed to by tobacco. Our health correspondent Nick Triggle has the story.

Replacing A-levels

A-levels and T-levels will be replaced by a new qualification for all school leavers in England - it's a long-term plan that won't affect anyone currently at secondary school.

Students would be able to combine both academic and vocational elements, with typically three major and two minor aspects including maths and English. Our education team have written it up here.

Plus a bit of bonus content...

Turns out Sunak is a fan of rom-coms - the cheesier the better. That's according to his wife, who made a surprise appearance to introduce him at the conference.

Who had a good conference - and a bad one?

Brian Wheeler

Reporting from Manchester

EPA

As the last stragglers depart Manchester's Tory Party conference, let's look back at who had a good time - and a not-so-good time - this week.

Good conference:

• Suella Braverman: In a week of pretty lacklustre speeches in the main hall, there was a real buzz about the home secretary’s appearance. Extremely self-assured, it was the performance of someone auditioning to be the next leader of the party.
• Nigel Farage: Partying with top Tories, posing for selfies with adoring activists, being talked up as a future leader if he ever returns to the fold - it's fair to say the former Ukip leader’s first Tory conference in nearly four decades went pretty well.

Bad conference:

• Transport ministers - HS2 dominated this conference, as Rishi Sunak refused to confirm what everyone knew about his decision to scrap much of the project.
• Pity poor Mark Harper, then, the secretary of state for transport, who made a speech to a half empty hall on Monday in which he mentioned the high speed rail line just once.
• Huw Merriman, the minister notionally responsible for HS2, had an even more miserable time, avoiding questions about the future of the project at fringe meetings and from journalists eager for some kind of steer on what the PM was up to.

Plans for Euston station scaled back

PA Media

The Euston construction site - where work has been paused since February amid spiralling costs

Although Sunak confirmed earlier that the HS2 rail project would travel all the way to Euston station in London (as originally planned), a new government document makes clear that the plan for Euston itself has been scaled back.

• The Department for Transport (DfT) document shows that the number of platforms for high-speed trains at the terminus has been cut from 11 to six
• A planned pedestrian tunnel linking Euston with the nearby (but separate) Euston Square tube station has been axed

The plan was attacked as being "totally unambitious" by railway consultant William Barter.

The DfT document stated: "We are going to strip back the project and deliver a station that works, and that can be open and running trains as soon as possible, and which has the leadership in place to deliver maximum value to the taxpayer."

Bradford passengers react to rail announcements

NJ Convery

Reporting from Bradford Interchange station

I’ve been down at Bradford Interchange - the city’s main railway station - speaking to passengers about the PM's announcement cancelling HS2 and promising more investment in northern rail and roads.

While most people I spoke to were excited about the offer of new infrastructure in the region, there was scepticism about whether the plans could or would be delivered. A new Bradford station has been announced previously but locals here will be hoping that Rishi Sunak’s speech today will guarantee it now goes ahead.

Utter nonsense again. It’s spending the taxpayers' money, promising things and not delivering' as they’ve done for the last 13 years... Most other countries have got a high-speed rail network but we don’t and our government can’t seem to organise it."

Fiona Nun, Halifax

BBC

Nadeem Rafiq spoke of the need for faster connections

What we need (is) a new project which will cut time when travelling to different places. Driving down to Manchester takes at least 40-50 mins depending on traffic, so if we’ve got other means that will take us less time then I’d probably go on the train."

Nadeem Rafiq, Bradford

Five-minute listen: Can Sunak bring change to Britain?

HS2 cut, A Level reforms and cigarettes stubbed out. The PM's pitch to conference.

In our latest 5 Minutes On Podcast, the BBC's political correspondent Damian Grammaticas guides us through and offers analysis on what's been billed as Rishi Sunak's biggest speech since he became prime minister.

BBC Verify

Anthony Reuben

Quicker trains and more capacity?

Rishi Sunak said earlier that despite cancelling the second phase of HS2, the government could provide “quicker trains and more capacity between Birmingham and Manchester”.

But that appears to be at odds with the conclusions of the government’s Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands from 2021.

On the question of quicker trains – between Birmingham and Manchester - it said: “No improvement is possible without additional track capacity into Manchester, given the need to serve intermediate towns as well.”

On the question of capacity it said: “Only when a new line and new platforms at Manchester Piccadilly are built can more services… be accommodated”.

We know there is not going to be a new line. We have asked the government if it is still planning to build longer platforms at Manchester Piccadilly for the HS2 trains.

'HS2 destroyed my life'

BBC

A man who says he was forced to sell his house by HS2 said the failed project has "destroyed his life".

Roly Bardsley learned his home in Stanthorne, Cheshire, was affected by the planned route when he received a letter containing a map of the line.

After being denied a compulsory purchase order, the 59-year-old said he had "lost everything".

"I tried to sell it and estate agents laughed at me. It was blighted forever," he said.

The BBC has contacted the Department of Transport for comment.

• Read the full article from Danny Savage and Jenny Coleman

Environmental groups welcome rail curtailment

Malcolm Prior

Climate and science

Reuters

HS2 construction work at Amersham, Buckinghamshire

Environmental and wildlife groups have given their own cautious welcome to the PM's announcement about cancelling “the rest of the HS2 project”.

The Wildlife Trusts said the route’s northern leg would have destroyed “nearly 190 hectares of woodland, hundreds of kilometres of watercourses and thousands of hedgerows.”

But Joan Edwards, the Trusts’ director of policy and public affairs, said the environmental damage of the London to Birmingham route was still “profound” and called for its design to now be modified.

Richard Benwell, CEO of coalition group Wildlife and Countryside Link, said the government needed to learn lessons for future infrastructure projects and that the rest of the prime minister’s speech had “been silent” on investment for nature and climate.

“A leader’s speech without a plan for environmental improvement has a massive hole at its heart,” he said.

'Fabulous that we'll no longer be blighted by HS2'

As well as those opposing the prime minister on the HS2 question, it's worth a reminder that plenty of others have endorsed his decision to chop the northernmost part of the rail scheme.

Cllr Jamie Stephenson, the leader of Madeley Parish Council in Staffordshire, said landowners who'd been forced to move out of the area to make way for rail lines would be "relieved" to hear of the cancellation - but added that they needed compensation.

Conference delegates reacted enthusiastically. Jane MacBean - a Tory councillor - told the BBC she was glad Sunak was "able to make the tough decisions". Another party member, Jonathan Rowlands, said the move was "pragmatic" after the Covid pandemic.

And the Stop HS2 campaign welcomed the development, saying Sunak had realised there was "no business case, no environmental case and no money to pay for HS2".

BBC

Jane MacBean, a Tory councillor, praised the PM's decision-making

'An awful lot of money for a quicker journey to London'

Erica Witherington

Reporting from Manchester Piccadilly

PA Media

At Manchester Piccadilly this morning, I spoke to two ladies from nearby Stalybridge about the plans to scrap the Manchester HS2 link.

"I don't go to London a lot," one tells me. "So personally I just think it's an awful lot of money to spend for what you're saving on your journey to London - half an hour?"

I ask if they would prefer the money spent on local transport.

"Certainly," came the reply.

BBC Verify

Anthony Reuben

£2.3bn already spent on cancelled parts of HS2

During his speech, Sunak described HS2 as "a project whose costs have more than doubled".

A lot of that money has been already spent on the parts of the project that have now been cancelled. Let's look at how much...

Some £300m was spent on the cancelled sections from Birmingham to Crewe and then on to Manchester in 2022-23, taking the total amount spent so far on that cancelled section to £1.6bn.

Another £700m has been spent on the sections from the West Midlands to East Midlands Parkway in Nottinghamshire, which is now being scrapped, and the West Midlands to Leeds line, which was cancelled in 2021.

That takes the total spent on cancelled sections to £2.3bn.

HS2 'fiasco' from 'lame-duck PM': Opposition parties react

Getty Images

Louise Haigh says scrapping HS2 is a "colossal symbol of Conservative failure"

It's not just the former PM levelling criticism at Sunak. Labour has reacted to the PM's decision to curtail the HS2 rail link by calling the project a "staggering Tory fiasco".

"Is there anything more emblematic of 13 years of dismal failure by this broken government than their flagship levelling-up project that fails to even reach the North?" shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh asks.

"What started as a modern infrastructure plan left by the last Labour government has, after 13 years of incompetence, waste, and broken promises, become a colossal symbol of Conservative failure."

(It's worth noting that the project itself was green-lit in 2012, during the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition era.)

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has called Sunak's conference speech "empty rhetoric from a lame-duck prime minister". His broadside continues: "Every bungled announcement confirms that this shambles of a Conservative Party is not fit to govern.

"Sunak had no answers on how to fix our crumbling health services or help people seeing their bills go through the roof."

Scaling back HS2 is wrong - David Cameron

EPA

Former PM David Cameron has called Sunak's decision to scrap HS2 "the wrong one".

In a post on X, Cameron says today's announcements "will help fuel the views of those who argue that we can no longer think or act for the long-term as a country".

The project was given the go-ahead under Cameron's premiership in 2012.

In reaction to Sunak's speech, Cameron writes: "HS2 was about investing for the long-term, bringing the country together, ensuring a more balanced economy and delivering the Northern Powerhouse".

But he adds that today's announcement by the current prime minister instead "throws away fifteen years of cross-party consensus, sustained over six administrations".

Six takeaways from Rishi Sunak's speech

Brian Wheeler

Reporting from the Conservative conference

Reuters

1. After weeks in which he kept insisting no decision had been made, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak finally announced that the northern leg of the HS2 project was being cancelled
2. Sunak wants to be seen as Margaret Thatcher's true heir. He said that politics had failed for the past 30 years - encompassing every prime minister since Thatcher, including five Conservative ones
3. The word "change" was mentioned 30 times as Sunak sought to position himself as the "change candidate" at next year's general election - something that's not an easy task after 13 years of Conservative rule
4. Education was a major theme in the prime minister's speech, as he announced a string of new policies aimed at boosting the prospects of 16 to 19-year-olds
5. He pledged to end smoking for the next generation by raising the age at which cigarettes can be purchased every year. The decision will be voted on by MPs
6. The prime minister's wife is a major political asset. Akshata Murty, Sunak's wife, made a surprise appearance on stage at the conference, which went down very well in the hall

Read more here.

HS2 decision impacts Scotland, too

Douglas Fraser

Scotland business and economy editor

PA Media

Commuters in Scotland have long-known they are not getting high speed rail travel

Scotland has long known it was not part of the HS2 plans but the PM's announcement that he'll scrap the line from Birmingham to Manchester will still have an impact north of the border.

Until last year there was a plan for high-speed trains to eventually travel to Scotland on existing tracks via the so-called Golborne Link, a 13-mile stretch in Cheshire.

It would have connected the HS2 line to the existing West Coast Main Line built by Victorian engineers.

However, high-speed trains on lower-speed tracks would bring little benefit north to Scotland if there was no increase in track capacity.

• Read more here

Welsh government dubious over rail project costing

Mark Palmer

BBC Wales

The Welsh government has welcomed the UK government's decision to electrify the north Wales rail main line (more on this in our previous post), while casting doubt on the costs quoted.

Lee Waters, the deputy climate change minister, said the £1bn cost stated by the Westminster government was "a finger-in-the-air figure".

He said the Welsh government had not been consulted. And though he welcomed the announcement, he said the project was "nowhere near the top of the list" of rail priorities in Wales.

Speaking in the Senedd, he said: "It will take at least ten years and as far as we’re aware no development work has been done on this at all, none".

What the HS2 announcement means for Wales

Gareth Lewis

Political editor, BBC Wales

Wales has got something, having previously had nothing, and now has something that might or might not be as good as what it felt it should have had.

HS2 is officially an England and Wales project, justified by quicker journeys via Crewe. But it never really washed – Wales wouldn’t have had a millimetre of high speed track. And it meant Wales missed out on equivalent funding, as is the way when a project is designated England-only.

It could have been as much as £5bn.

Now Wales now has the promise of £1bn to electrify the North Wales main line, although at time of writing with no confirmed timescale.

It is much-needed and much-demanded and should mean quicker, cleaner and more frequent services.

Will this wash with voters and businesses in a part of the world where seven seats will be keenly contested at the next general election?

BBC Verify

Daniel Wainwright

How have train journeys changed since the pandemic?

When justifying the scrapping of the rest of HS2 earlier today, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said people's travel patterns had changed since the pandemic. We've been looking at the latest numbers.

Train journeys in Great Britain are recovering, but are still below pre-pandemic levels, with 1.4 billion in the year to 1 April 2023. That’s 17% down on the previous year, but it varies by operator.

Avanti West Coast - which connects London with Glasgow and Edinburgh - had 29% fewer journeys than pre-pandemic. Five other operators saw demand down by over 30%.

Yet some other companies - such as London North Eastern Railway, East Midlands Railway – have seen demand recover.

Weekend travel has also changed. Govia Thameslink, for example, says journeys to Brighton are busier on Saturdays than weekdays.

It’s not just people’s habits, though, that are affecting travel patterns. There were 29 days of rail strike action between June 2022 and March 2023. The Office of Rail and Road says this led to reductions of 32% to 81% in trains planned on the affected days.