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Rishi Sunak will seek to deflect criticism of his plan to axe the northern leg of the HS2 high-speed rail project by using his speech to the Conservative conference in Manchester next week to woo motorists instead.
Sunak spent a large part of Thursday facing tough questioning from local radio and television stations over his refusal to guarantee that the HS2 line will be built from Birmingham to Manchester.
The question mark over the future of HS2 looks set to dog Sunak during his conference in Manchester and the prime minister is determined to change the subject to his “Plan for Motorists”.
Asked by BBC Radio Manchester whether he would build the new rail line to the north, Sunak replied that “priority number one” raised by voters was fixing potholes in roads.
Campaigners hope that Sunak will announce a new ringfence around some local authority funding to ensure it is only spent on road maintenance, such as filling potholes.
The prime minister will highlight pro-car policies including a pushback on low-traffic neighbourhood schemes and a crackdown on parking charges, according to government officials.
The pro-motoring political offensive is being drawn up on the heels of the prime minister’s pivot on green policies, which included delaying a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035.
On Thursday, ministers also watered down new targets for the number of zero-emission vans to be sold in 2025, and cut in half the fines for vanmakers that miss new targets that come in next year.
Parts of Sunak’s motorist-focused strategy have been seen in recent months as the Conservatives have attacked car-related policies introduced by regional Labour leaders.
The Conservatives have led opposition in Wales to the Labour administration’s controversial introduction of 20mph zones in most built-up areas and are expected to tighten rules around their introduction in England. The government declined to comment.
Sunak has ordered a review of the creation of “low-traffic neighbourhoods” and will also seize on the practice of private operators imposing parking charges on drivers with a pledge to strengthen the code of practice that governs the sector.
The prime minister is also expected to highlight how he recently cancelled the building of new smart motorways in the UK, a promise he first made in the Conservative leadership race last year.
Smart motorways have no permanent emergency hard shoulder for drivers to stop and instead rely on cameras and sensors to close lanes as needed. Their use has been linked to serious crashes and deaths.
In April the government announced that 14 planned smart motorways were being removed from its road-building plans.
On HS2 the prime minister suggested in one interview on Thursday that the southern leg of the line from Birmingham to London would be built as far as Euston station, rather than terminating six miles away at a new station at Old Oak Common in the north-west of the capital.
“There are spades in the ground right now at the moment making sure that we complete the first part of this line from Birmingham to central London, and we are absolutely getting on with that, that is important,” he told BBC West Midlands.
Sunak however later spoke highly of the connections available at Old Oak Common to the rest of London via the new Elizabeth Line, suggesting he thought terminating the line there would be acceptable. “Everyone has different interpretations of “central London”, said one Sunak aide.
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