A train driver refused to depart Manchester Piccadilly due to “unsafe overcrowding” in the same week Rishi Sunak cancelled the northern leg of the HS2 rail line.
Channel 4 correspondent and author, Symeon Brown, tweeted a photograph showing passengers stood up in a carriage walkway on board the train.
He wrote: “This week the PM cancelled the HS2 from London to Manchester that would reduce overcrowding.
“Today I’m on a train for Manchester with the driver refusing to depart as “it’s unsafe” due to overcapacity.
“”The trains going nowhere until passengers leave” he says.”
Sunak defended his decision to shift policies on HS2 and environmental targets and pitched himself as the person to change the UK as he continued with public messaging while the Labour Party meets for its conference in Liverpool.
The Prime Minister visited a Currys repair and customer service centre in Newark, Nottinghamshire, on Monday, where he took questions from employees there as well as the media.
Sunak was speaking just days after his own party met in Manchester for their conference, where Mr Sunak announced he would cancel the HS2 rail line north of Birmingham.
The PM defended the decision on Monday, saying: “We’re going to take every penny of that £36 billion and we’re going to spend it on transport across the country – on bus, on road, on rail, on all the forms of transport that you use every day.
“We’re going to deliver it far quicker so that you can see the benefits faster. We’re going to see it across more parts of our country.
“I think that is the right thing to do for the long term.”
He added: “There were lots of communities, including many in the East Midlands, who would have seen worse service to London as a result of HS2 being built, because those services will either have been slower or will have been reduced.
“That won’t happen now.”
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