The cancellation of the West Midlands to Manchester leg of HS2 has been the worst kept secret in politics. 

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But the Prime Minister assured the Tory Conference he knew 'what the North really needs' instead - namely a host of other transport projects there and across the Midlands. 

Speculation about the decision has dominated the Conservative party conference in Manchester. This morning Rishi Sunak summoned his Cabinet to an emergency meeting to sign off the plans, before announcing them in his closing speech.   

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The drumroll moment had arrived for their leader, or so the members thought.

Instead, Akshata Murthy, the Prime Minister's wife, emerged from the shadows.

A bit of a surprise edition, shall we say.

And a surprise for my husband too, who has no idea what I'm going to say.

The last partner deployed to introduce a party leader at conference was Gordon Brown's wife 15 years ago.

My best friend and your Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.

The Tory's own polling shows a massive appetite amongst voters for change.

Rishi Sunak, even though his party has been in power for 13 years, wants to convince voters he can give them that change.

It isn't anger, it is an exhaustion with politics.

In particular, politicians saying things and then nothing ever changing.

We have had 30 years of a political system which incentivises the easy decision, not the right 1.

The Tories have been in power for more than half of those 30 years.

It is only a year since the party grassroots voted for Liz Truss instead of him, and for what he called at the time, fairy tale economics.

As I did last summer, I will tell it as it is.

You can't borrow your way out of inflation.

The Prime Minister then announced the cancellation of phase 2 of HS2.

Some works have already begun as on this leg of the extension near Lichfield.

Rishi Sunak said the cost-benefit analysis had changed radically and there were better things to do with the £36 billion allocated to finish the project.

I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project.

In its place, we will reinvest every single penny, £36 billion, in hundreds of new transport projects in the north and the Midlands across the country.

3 of his Conservative predecessors in number 10 backed what he is halting.

The party that cheered them in the past today cheered his reallocation of HST spending.

We will build the Midlands rail hub, connecting 50 different stations, we will help Andy Street extend the West Midlands Metro, we will build the Leeds tram, we will electrify the North Wales mainline, upgrade the A1, A2, A5, M6.

The Cabinet barely had time to read the plan before an emergency meeting giving formal sign-off this morning.

Multi-billion pound policy-making at breakneck speed.

David Cameron tweeted it was the wrong decision and would fuel concern we are heading in the wrong direction as a country.

Future generations would wonder how such an opportunity was lost.

The Prime Minister then unveiled a plan to raise the legal age for buying cigarettes every year.

This trust let it be known, should vote against the law change.

I know not everyone in this hall will agree with me on this, but I've spent a long time weighing up this decision.

Simply put, unlike all other legal products, there is no safe level of smoking.

And what has ultimately swayed me is that none of us, not even those who smoke, want our children to grow up to be smokers.

His final big policy reveal, he wanted to phase out A-levels and T-levels over 10 years.

Students would study 5 subjects in sixth form, including some form of maths and English course.

We will introduce the new rigorous, knowledge-rich, advanced British standard, which will bring together A-levels and T-levels into a new single qualification for our school leavers.

Rishi Sunak compared himself as a pharmacist's son to Margaret Thatcher, the grocer's daughter.

And he said his background proved Britain was not a racist country.

I am proud to be the first British Asian Prime Minister, but you know what?

I am even prouder that it is just not a big deal.

The final message, a tough sell for a party long in power.

Rishi Sunak hopes his big policy moves will give a sense of change voters don't get from Keir Starmer's policy caution.

But much of what Rishi Sunak is doing is ripping up some of the proudest achievements of recent Tory leaders.

It is a political stretch that would challenge a contortionist.

But Rishi Sunak thinks it's his best chance of staying in power.

Gary Gibbon, Channel 4 News, at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.

Well just after the speech I spoke to the Rail Minister Hugh Merriman and I put it to him that given the government used to say it would deliver HS2, these new transport pledges face a credibility problem.

Well of course with the HS2 budget it has increased and it's meant that other things we'd like to do we're unable to do.

So a difficult decision has had to be made and the Prime Minister has taken that decision.

So it is about spreading it across other parts of the North in particular, with the new network North that we are focused on now.

But I recognise we now need to get on with the job and demonstrate to people that we are doing it and it is the right thing to do.

But he listed off a load of things that you're going to do.

The bulk of that will be spent up in the north to add improvements.

I'll give you 1 as an example, Christian.

Bradford, a city that has lost out in some of the recent changes that have been announced, now gets £2 billion towards the station and reduced journey times to Manchester from 55 minutes to 30 minutes.

That is a real game changer for Bradford.

Right, so you've taken 36 billion out of the HS2 cancellation and you're spreading it around, so how much is the A1 going to cost?

Well so that all falls within the almost 20 billion pounds that's been allocated towards the north.

So the A1 costings will have to be calculated out from part that we've dedicated towards roads funding and the budget for it.

We've obviously already had it in the road investment strategies, but it's not been funded to be delivered because in the transport budget we keep losing out because HS2 budgets go up and we have to remove other things.

So again Christian there's a whole package of measures which we will be spreading across I'm not going to sit and stand here today and actually say here's every single

point don't you, that you don't know how much any of these things are going to cost in reality.

You've reeled off a list of things and you don't in truth know what they will cost because just as HS2's costs spiralled, these costs could spiral and then 1 day further down the road you'd end up cancelling them.

So if you look for example at Euston, what we're looking to do there, again by saving money, is to actually do it differently.

Build it in the way that the Canary Wharf Development Corporation built Canary Wharf and get the private sector to actually deliver that.

What he's set out is the intention to do things differently and to take bold and tough decisions.

So why do you get the chance to do things differently when you've been in power for 13 years?

What he's setting out is saying we could just carry on as we are but it's not working so therefore we're going to take the decision and make the call that we can spend that money from HS2 better across the north the Midlands and that will be for the voters to judge if they think that's the right thing to do if they're in Hull where all of a sudden they will get the change be brought into the connection to Liverpool they will see that as a benefit whereas HS2 they wouldn't.

But he's talking about way beyond transport.

He's talking about the whole way government works and he's saying government doesn't work.

He's not been in government 13 years, him and I only got elected in 2015.

He's been in government for the last few years.

Is it not good, Christian, that he's honest and says that people in this country don't feel that politics or politicians works for them and it hasn't for the last 30 years?

You're the ones under whom everything has been going wrong and then you turn around and go, actually, we just worked out that everything's been going wrong, and you expect everyone to give you another chance.

He's saying for the last 30 years, people have felt let down, but I tell you, he is a man when he was chancellor, he stood by people,

You know, what you're admitting is you have let people down.

He's stood up and said, the last 13 years of Conservative government has let people down.

And then he's standing up and saying, but I've just decided I want to change everything, with no democratic mandate, and go into the next election asking you to trust me again.

He's unleashed as far as his reformist zeal is concerned.

And this is the platform he's setting out for the country.

And it's a choice for them, and that's the beauty of democracy.

And that is the other point about this, isn't it?

That this is really the beginning of the election campaign.

You've laid out your stall, you've doled out a load of sweeties, you're challenging Labour to cancel those projects.

If that was the case, he would say I am doing HS2 and all these other things.

He is saying there is a choice and we have to be clear about it.

And the choice is either carry on with a project that has gone over budget and has caused big challenges, or actually reverse it, make a bold call, and spread that money across to the towns and cities in other parts of the country that hadn't benefited, and will be benefiting by regeneration if that occurs and he said he will.

So it's not cynical, it's a question of him saying it's 1 thing or the other and my view is we do it this way and I think people appreciate that kind of bold honesty in that situation rather than saying you can have it all.

Well for a decade now, plans for HS2 have been in progress, with many people along the proposed route required to sell land and property.

Now the second leg has been cancelled, many will be asking whether they'll be compensated for the years of disruption and uncertainty.

Let's go now to our communities correspondent, Darshna Soni, who's in the village of Maidley in Staffordshire, close to where the tracts of the now defunct West Midlands to Manchester leg would have been laid.

The work that has been done so far on HS2 has caused a lot of heartache here, Cathy.

People have had to leave their homes, farmers have seen swathes of their land dug up.

This is a beautiful picturesque village in Staffordshire.

It's not far from Crewe, where HS2 would have run to.

Now it has to be said, that station is looking a bit grubby.

It could have done with the investment, as many commuters there said to me today.

Rishi Sunak did offer sweeteners for towns like Crewe and others across the Midlands in the north but for his critics those sweeteners weren't enough.

This is what the mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham had to say.

So what has been announced today is not a solution to the East West bottleneck that we face on the railways in the north.

It involves patching up existing lines and leaving us with a problem that still has not been fixed.

But for many others in villages including Maidley, today's announcement was welcome.

They say their lives have been ruined over the last few years.

Bernard Kettle has farmed this land for 50 years.

For the last 2, this muddy track has been churned through the middle by HS2 contractors.

The tunnel comes through here, through the field and across those other fields through round to Crewe.

Where the white buildings are the station's over there.

The farm is around 100 acres and around 40 of those acres were compulsory purchased for HS2.

I always had an ambition to have my own farm and this was the first 1 that I bought.

How do you feel when you see what they've done to your land, all the churned up fields?

The imbeciles I've been dealing with who've got no common sense and don't understand farming.

A plethora of experts or an expert in nothing.

Even the driveway leading up to Mr Kettle's front door was purchased meaning he had to get a license to get access to his own home.

The farm is in the picturesque village of Maidley in Staffordshire.

Residents have long campaigned against plans to build a twin bore tunnel here for the line, arguing that even the initial work has had a huge impact on their community.

Some of the houses here are sitting empty because they had already been compulsory purchased.

Families who had lived here for decades had to pack up and leave to make way for a railway line that has just been cancelled.

No wonder then that in the village hall we found today's announcement got this reaction.

And so I am ending this long running saga.

I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 award.

What's the stress been like on the village whilst all of this has been going on?

I think the main thing is the compulsory purchase of land and housing.

People who've lived in these houses for years, that have been basically kicked out of their own homes.

What about people who are saying it's really disappointing and this isn't what levelling up is supposed to be about?

I think it is going to be difficult for some areas who are expecting a huge economic impact to come from it, but I think you've got to look at the bigger picture and I think 1 of the things that he did say in the speech, which I think is right, is that it isn't really the London to Manchester links that were the problem.

It's always been getting across the country.

The line would have gone on to nearby Crewe and then up to Manchester.

Some commuters here told us it's in desperate need of an upgrade.

Crewe's an old town, needs new railways, it needs new infrastructure.

There's disappointment on what we could have had but again I've learned not to expect what we're promised.

So what will happen now to those whose land and homes have been compulsory purchased?

They're removing the welfare unit that's been here for the workmen.

The portable toilet was delivered just this morning for the HS2 contractors, but not long after Rishi Sunak's speech, it was driven away again.

Mr Kettle hasn't been told if and when he'll be able to buy his land back.

I'm just a number and a name on a chart, a statistic.

I'm a farmer who owns some land in the middle of the train, in the way of the trainway.

The Department of Transport told us any property no longer required will be sold and they'll engage fully with those communities affected.

So let's have a look at the ditched HS2 plans.

What's being shelved, what will remain and how much has it all cost?

Our data correspondent Kieran Jenkins has been looking at some of the numbers.

It was supposed to look like this, a bold Y-shaped statement of great British ambition.

A new high-speed rail line connecting London to Birmingham with Leeds in the east and Manchester in the northwest.

And crucially, these high-speed trains, the idea was that they would go on their own line and that would free up space on our creaking Victorian train lines, increasing capacity and reducing congestion across the existing network.

Now that concept came from Gordon Brown's government in 2010 with the projected cost of around £30 billion.

It was approved by David Cameron's coalition government although by then the cost was more like £37.5 billion.

In 2020, work on the London to Birmingham section began.

In 2021, under Boris Johnson, The levelling up Prime Minister HS2 to Leeds was scrapped.

And the costs, the latest estimates last month show the total cost that was left of HS2 then at about £71 billion, up to £45 billion, the most expensive bit on the London to Birmingham section, up to 7 billion on Birmingham to Crewe, up to 19 billion on Crewe to Manchester.

Those costs all in 2019 money, so before the rampant inflation, which means they would actually have been far higher.

So what's left of HS2 after Rishi Sunak's speech?

Well, new high-speed rail in the south will switch onto non-high-speed rail on existing lines in the north.

What was intended to be a Y-shaped statement of British boldness will instead end up as a relatively short section of very expensive track.

Now, Rishi Sunak says he'll spend 36 billion pounds, no longer earmarked for HS2, on new transport schemes instead.

Much of that will go on filling in potholes in England.

£8.3 billion in fact, almost a quarter of the so-called HS2 money for new projects.

Well, Rishi Sunak says he would upgrade the A1, a promise made by former Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010.

Rishi Sunak says Bradford will have a new station, a station that was scrapped by Boris Johnson in 2021, reinstated by Liz Truss in 2022, scrapped again by Richard Sunak himself last year, which he's now reinstated.

He's also promising £12 billion more connecting Liverpool and Manchester, and full electrification between Manchester and Hull, which sounds awfully familiar to plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail, first announced in 2014.

There are many more projects, including a new tram system, long mooted here in Leeds.

Rishi Sunak says they will happen and they will be funded but that's what they said about HS2.

We're joining me now in Leeds the Mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Braben and the Chief Executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, Henry Murrison.

Tracey Braben, first, let's just zoom in on some of the £36 billion that's now going to be spent on local transport projects in the north of England.

£3.3 billion for potholes, £2.5 billion for trams here in Leeds, train lines electrified and so on.

Rishi Sunak said today, I challenge anyone to tell me with a straight face that all of that isn't what the North really needs.

Well, it's great that he's saying it's what the North needs.

Not 1 leader in the North has been in that room when they've come up with this plan.

So you didn't have a single call from the Prime Minister or his staff?

No, we're not involved at all and actually we could be helpful.

We could help solve a lot of these problems.

And what we're seeing in this plan is a decade of rail replacement buses with electrification.

Do you not believe you're going to get some of this 36 billion in on these local projects you know trams in Leeds sounds great.

Well part of the problem is there's no time frames for the money and certainly none of the work is going to happen until the next election And let's not forget we're slightly cynical because we've been promised so much by a Conservative government.

Northern powerhouse rail for example has been promised by by Prime Ministers, has been in manifestos, has pulled.

We actually are struggling to trust these figures.

Obviously, it's all going to be the devil's in the detail.

But fundamentally, it feels like just pure electioneering.

Do you think that Network North, as it's being called, you know, East West Links, for example, Bradford to Manchester in 30 minutes, sounds good.

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Sunak scraps HS2 leg - saying he knows what 'north really needs'