by Our News Desk

LABOUR tore into the government yesterday for misleading voters about its plans to electrify Midland mainline between London and Sheffield and the TransPennine route between Manchester and Leeds.

The Tories pledged during the election campaign to pull old, polluting diesel engines off the tracks, but shadow transport secretary Michael Dugher said that ministers knew full well that the scheme was in trouble.

In a letter to Prime Minister David Cameron, Mr Dugher demanded that he and his underlings came clean about when they knew of problems with the plan.

“The public have a right to know if they have been deceived and if members of your government knew for months that these projects would not be delivered as promised,” he stormed.

Mr Dugher cited publicly owned Network Rail boss Mark Carne as saying that “we knew very early on last year” it would be hard for the infrastructure agency to meet the goals set for it.

“People knew perfectly well there were high levels of uncertainty about this, it was widely flagged at the time,” Mr Carne told the Guardian.

Network Rail is reviewing its current five-year plan, which runs until 2019, and Mr Carne hinted that other railway projects could face the chop.

Mr Dugher accused the Tories of “trying to shift the blame to Network Rail, but this happened on the government’s watch.”

He pointed to a transport select committee warning in January that ministers had announced projects without Network Rail having a chance to work out the cost and urged that a September 2014 report on electrification be published.