Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said axing the extension of HS2 risked creating a "North-South chasm".
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00:00 God, it's honestly so frustrating. On the day when it should all be about positivity,
00:04 you know, Greater Manchester, levelling ourselves up, improving our public transport, yellow
00:09 buses on the streets, you know, a great story you would say, and yet Westminster does its
00:15 usual thing and kind of pulls the rug from underneath us. You know, buses are important
00:21 but so are rail services and what people here have had to put up with is Victorian rail
00:26 infrastructure which leads to chaos on the tracks on a daily basis. And now to have the
00:32 government saying, "Oh well, we can't fund it in the north." The question I will put
00:37 back to the government on behalf of people here in Bolton and across Greater Manchester,
00:41 why is it that my residents here in Greater Manchester are always treated as second class
00:45 citizens when it comes to transport? Why does the money always run out in the north but
00:49 not in the south? That's the question that they need to answer. This was a parliament
00:54 when they were meant to be levelling us up. In the end, they're going to level us down.
00:58 If they leave us with Victorian infrastructure but the southern half of the country with
01:02 those modern lines, the north-south divide will in the end become a north-south chasm.