Greening: It’s possible the Tories could scrap Crossrail

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

UPDATE: Ken Livingstone says that Londoners should reject the Tories over the Crossrail risk. He said:

“The Conservatives’ manifesto failed to give a clear commitment on Crossrail and now Shadow London Minister Justine Greening has confirmed it – it is possible that under Cameron and Osborne Crossrail will be axed, and they definitely will not guarantee the scheme will go ahead. This project is about London’s future, with ten per cent more transport capacity linking up all the main centres of jobs in London . It is a measure of how badly wrong the Tories are on securing economic recovery that they cannot give a clear and unequivocal commitment to complete Crossrail. No Londoner, no one from the London business community who wants a secure economic future for the capital, and no one who wants a modernised transport system for London should vote Tory.”

Speaking on LBC Radio this morning, the Tories’ shadow representative for London, Justine Greening, confirmed it is “possible” Crossrail could be cancelled under the Conservatives, saying “I can’t give a guarantee that it will continue.”

Tessa Jowell, Labour’s transport representative, responded:

“It is now clear that Conservatives will not commit to the construction of Crossrail, which is vital for business, jobs and economic growth in London. This in stark contrast to Labour’s clear and unequivocal commitment to Crossrail which will add ten per cent to London’s transport capacity, create 14,000 jobs in the construction period alone and add an estimated £20billion to London’s economy.”

Here is a transcript of Justine Greening’s conversation with LBC’s Nick Greening:

NF: Let’s go the Conservatives first. Your stance on Crossrail?

JG: We’ve always been very supportive of Crossrail. We recognise how important it is for London as well but what we can’t do before the election is finished is write a budget when we’re not in government. And so we, we can, we’ve said that we know it’s important, we know that the tube infrastructure and investing in, that’s important, but we can’t do a line by line budget because we are in such a parlous state with public finances.

NF: So Crossrail will continue but you don’t know how?

JG: What, all I….

NF: So it won’t continue?

JG: We can’t give a line by line budget on projects across government, including Crossrail. Everything’s up for review but we think it’s important.

NF: I’m sure this is my stupidity. Will it continue or won’t it continue?

JG: I can’t give a guarantee that it will continue.

NF: So it might not, it can go the other way? The Conservatives could scrap Crossrail?

JG: It’s possible, but at the end of the day we’ve always said that we think it’s important project and, and actually the reason this is important is we want to be responsible so we can’t pretend that we can write an entire budget outside of government.

The news follows James Macintyre’s piece in the New Statesman this week:

“Despite repeated calls from that newspaper to do so, and support for the project by David Cameron’s ambitious rival, the capital’s mayor Boris Johnson, the Tory manifesto notably fails to give a clear commitment to build Crossrail.”