Creating a north-south high-speed rail link as well as new fast cross-Pennine services could benefit the UK economy by more than £10 billion, a report from a development agency group said this afternoon.

The report envisages not only links between northern England cities and London but also a west-east Northern Crossrail connecting all of the norths cities.

The economic benefits would be £3.5 billion for the north, £3.5 billion for Greater London and £3.0 billion for the rest of the country, said the Northern Way, a group which includes three Northern Regional Development Agencies.

Professor David Begg, chairman of the Northern Ways transport compact, said: "These wider economic benefits come about through reducing travel times in city-to-city and business-to-business access.

"They appear not to have been taken into account in the (Governments) rail White Paper and are additional to those previously calculated for high-speed rail."

Northern Way wants to see: :: An eastern high-speed rail line running from London via the east of England and East Midlands to Yorkshire, the north east and on to Scotland.

:: A western line from London to the north west with connections to Heathrow and the West Midlands.

:: A trans-Pennine link.

Prof Begg, a former chairman of the Government advisory body the Commission for Integrated Transport, said: "The importance of a new high speed trans-Pennine link in addition to a line on each side of the country is very clear.

"But, a trans-Pennine link adds more than 40 per cent to the wider economic benefits that we have identified for the north.

"What a trans-Pennine link adds is better region-to-region and better city-to-city connectivity within the north, as well as better connections from the north east to the West Midlands and from the north west to the east side of the country. A trans-Pennine link would help create a new economic geography for the North of England and the country as a whole."