PENDLE’S Lib Dem peer Lord Tony Greaves has hit back at comments by Labour prospective candidate Azhar Ali over the high speed rail scheme.

Mr Ali said he wanted to see the HS2 project scrapped and some of the money spent instead on railway projects in Pendle, such as reinstating the Colne to Skipton line.

But Lord Greaves said: “HS2 is currently costed at around £18billion for the first section between London and Birmingham, and £42 billion in total to include extending the line in two sections to Manchester and Leeds. This is all money for major national transport infrastructure projects.

The hard facts are that if it is not used for HS2, it will be spent on Crossrail 2 in London, and on massive improvement works on the East and West Coast Main Lines. These alone are likely to cost as much as HS2 if not more.

“All over the country, politicians are making populist calls to scrap HS2 and ‘spend the money in my backyard’. It is indeed all silly populist nonsense.”