PRIME MINISTER Rishi Sunak has been condemned for his continuing evasiveness over scrapping the northern leg of the HS2 high-speed rail line.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham accused Mr Sunak of poor leadership for allowing expectation to grow that he will axe the project due to costs.

Mr Burnham told Channel 4 News on Monday that doing so would be devastating for the region.

“You will permanently reduce the size of the northern economy if you do that,” he said. “The evidence is clear that rail infrastructure builds economic growth.

“It’s also terrible news for people just going about their lives and not having daily chaos on the railways.”

He urged government to speak to leaders in the city, describing the Manchester airport to Manchester Piccadilly stretch of the line as a “minimum acceptable” option for the scheme.

Criticising the weeks of speculation over the future of HS2, he said: “Who caused that speculation? This is no way to run a country and certainly no way to treat the north of England.

“I see at the moment that the public and people across the north are being treated with disrespect.

“We will call that out with no holds barred if that’s the final decision.”

The HS2 scheme was given a budget of £55.7 billion in 2015 but costs have ballooned with an estimate of up to £98bn (in 2019 prices) in 2020. Since then, soaring inflation have pushed costs even higher.

Yesterday Mr Sunak told Times Radio: “It’s clear that the costs of this programme have escalated far beyond what anyone thought at the beginning.”

In Manchester for the Conservative Party conference, he could use today’s set-piece speech to announce the decision but is expected to soften the blow by spending on other projects for the north.

Last week unions urged ministers to convene an emergency summit to secure the delivery of HS2.

In a joint statement the leaders of the TUC, Aslef, GMB, RMT, TSSA and Unite said key stakeholders must urgently be brought together to help get the delayed and overbudget project back on track.

They said delivering the northern leg of HS2 could create more than 17,000 construction jobs in north-west England.