The Prime Minister has been in York today (Monday) as part of a campaign to highlight his government’s transport policies.
Rishi Sunak visited the site of the proposed Haxby railway station.
He met the chief executive of Network Rail Andrew Haines and York Outer Conservative MP Julian Sturdy at the site which is on the York to Scarborough line.
The station, which may cost around £24 million and could open in 2026, is designed to relieve road traffic into the city centre.
Mr Sunak looked at plans for the station, which is still in the design process, then spoke to Network Rail employees.
It comes as it was announced that the north of England would be allocated £2.5 billion in funding for transport projects redirected from scrapping HS2’s northern leg.
Of that, £380 million is for York and North Yorkshire.
He defended that decision during a series of phone interviews with BBC local radio stations this morning.
The PM told Radio York: “We could have carried on with a project that was going to cost well over £100 billion, take decades and have a very specific set of benefits, whereas I made a different decision.
“I said ‘I’m going to take that money, and instead I’m going to give it to local areas to spend on their local transport priorities’.
“And that’s already started to happen.”
In the interviews, Mr Sunak also said Conservative MP Lee Anderson’s remarks that sparked an Islamophobia row “weren’t acceptable, they were wrong”, as he denied the Conservative Party has Islamophobic tendencies.
He addressed the row after facing growing calls to speak out about the former Tory deputy chairman’s comments.
Mr Anderson lost the Conservative whip over the weekend after failing to apologise for claiming “Islamists” had “got control” of Sadiq Khan and London.
But critics including the London mayor and Tory peer Baroness Warsi hit out at Mr Sunak for failing to explicitly condemn the comments.
Speaking to local BBC radio stations during a visit to North Yorkshire, the Prime Minister said: “I think it’s incumbent on all of us, especially those elected to Parliament, not to inflame our debates in a way that’s harmful to others.
“Lee’s comments weren’t acceptable, they were wrong. And that’s why he had the whip suspended.”
Mr Sunak continued: “Clearly his choice of words wasn’t acceptable, it was wrong.”
Local responses
Keane Duncan, mayoral candidate and North Yorkshire Council’s executive member for highways and transport, said: “This funding is unprecedented in scale. It’s a landmark settlement, the very first for a rural region.
“It gives us the guaranteed, long-term funding we need to transform our transport network. Millions extra for road repairs, new infrastructure and expanded public transport.”
Luke Charters, Labour Parliamentary Candidate for York Outer said: “This reheating of old announcements shows that the Conservatives are out of ideas.
“Locally, Julian Sturdy bas been promising things like A64 dulling since 2010, and every election since. Yet we are still a long way off work even commencing.
“Rishi Sunak visiting York Outer twice in one month will not make up for Julian Sturdy’s 14 long years of being an invisible MP.”