Labour
will invest to transform the economy of the North – McDonnell commits Labour to
delivering Crossrail for the North

Today the
Shadow Chancellor has committed Labour to delivering on “Crossrail for the
North”, a series of major rail improvements across existing west-east links in
the North of England.

Labour
will commit to reversing decades of underinvestment in Northern transport
infrastructure that has undermined the economic potential of the north of
England and help deliver 850,000 new jobs by 2050.

The
current Tory Government has failed to invest in essential electrification of
Hull to Selby and other lines, and delayed electrification of the critical
Manchester-Leeds Transpennine route, which is not now due for completion until
at least 2022. Labour will commit to fight alongside its mayoral candidates and
local authorities to demand that the Westminster Government brings forward the
resources needed to help unlock the £97bn of economic potential in the North.

John
McDonnell MP, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, is expected to say:

“Labour
is absolutely committed to delivering HS3, a Crossrail for the North, starting
right here in Liverpool and connecting the great cities of the north of
England.

“There is
so much potential here currently squandered by underinvestment, delays and a
lack of real commitment from Whitehall.

“So with
our mayoral candidates in Manchester and Liverpool, and councils across the
north, Labour will be pushing for this government to deliver.

“It’s at
least a £10bn commitment from Labour to invest in the north.

“It means
the journey from Manchester to Leeds will take just 25 minutes, instead of
close to an hour.

“Or you
could get from Liverpool to Manchester in 25 minutes.

“Crossrail
for the North will become the foundations for a transformed Northern economy.”

Ends

Border police in a prefecture in southwest China’s Yunnan Province seized 1.6 tonnes of narcotics in 2016, the police announced Saturday.

Police in Dehong Dai-Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture completed investigations into 668 drug-related crimes and arrested 662 suspects in 2016.

The prefecture is near the opium-growing Golden Triangle.

Seven people were killed when a car crashed into a wall in a county road in north China’s Hebei Province, local authorities said Saturday.

The accident occurred at about 10:36 p.m. Friday in Anzhou town, Hebei.

Six people died at the scene and one died in hospital.

The cause of the accident is under investigation.

Central China’s Henan Province has planned to build four nuclear power stations to ease the populous province’s pressing demand for electricity and to continue optimizing the structure of local energy consumption during the country’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20).

The four nuclear power stations will be set up in Nanyang, Xinyang, Luoyang and Pingdingshan. But construction can only start when the country lifts the ban on new inland nuclear power facilities due to safety concerns.

Under the province’s plan for energy development (2016-20), nuclear power, wind power and distributed solar power will join natural gas and non-fossil energies to reduce the percentage of coal in the local energy consumption structure.

As per the plan’s requirements, by 2020 consumption of non-fossil energies will account for at least 7 percent and natural gas for 7.5 percent in the province’s total energy consumption.

While urging the continued optimization of the local energy structure, the plan also requires the total installed capacity for power generation to increase to 87,000 megawatts by 2020, a 30 percent increase over that of 2015.