RMT welcomes high speed rail 2, but warns that it mustn't be at the expense of jobs or services elsewhere in the rail system and should be built, run and owned by the public sector.

Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary, said: “No one has fought harder for the investment and modernisation required to drag the UK’s railways out of the slow lane than RMT and development of high speed links must be a key component of our rail plans.

However, any attempt by the Government to pay for these developments by cutting jobs, services and investment elsewhere in the system, along the lines set out in the McNulty rail review, will meet with the stiffest resistance from RMT.

RMT is also demanding that High Speed Two be built, owned and operated in the public sector free from the greed and profiteering of the private rail companies whose exploitation of the travelling public has dragged our railways down for a generation.”