PLANS for high-speed rail lines from London to the North have been thrown into jeopardy by a Tory decision to draw up alternative proposals, the Transport Secretary warned yesterday.

Lord Adonis turned his fire on the Conservatives for refusing to put the issue above politics by instead employing their own rail experts to draw up an alternative route to Birmingham and beyond.

The decision suggests the detailed year-long study by High Speed Two (HS2) – due to be published within weeks – will be ripped up if the Tories win the General Election, putting the project on hold.

Lord Adonis used the example of the £16bn Crossrail scheme, which would cross the capital, as the type of giant infrastructure project that “could have collapsed”

without a political consensus.

He said: “Myself and my Tory opposite number got into a bit of a spat about whether she was, or wasn’t, going to talk to me about these plans.

“Simply taking the first instalment of high-speed rail forward will take a number of years of planning before we are able to start construction – the best part of a parliament.

The experience of big infrastructure projects is that, where they do have cross-party political support, they are much more likely to survive the political ups and downs that inevitably afflict them.”

Lord Adonis said he was still confident that the Conservatives would return to the table and praised the Liberal Democrats for “agreeing the principles”. The comments will infuriate the Conservatives, who backed a 250mph line to the North long before Labour, which once ruled it out as too expensive.

Much of the dispute centres on the Tory belief that the line should go directly to Heathrow Airport, rather than simply have a spur to the airport – believed to be the Government’s preference.

However, the Conservatives have also been accused of running scared of voters in the Home Counties and West Midlands, who may protest at a route running close to their homes.

Last week, a consultants’ study found that a high-speed line would create 95,000 jobs across the North-East and Yorkshire by 2040, doing more than perhaps any other project to narrow the North- South divide.

Although, under the HS2 plans, the line would not reach Newcastle until the late 2020s, the use of through trains would slash journey times as soon as it reached Birmingham.

There is also a split over the route north of Birmingham, with the HS2 team study arguing for a “Y-shaped” route, with twin West and East lines, while the Conservatives back an “S-shaped” line, through Birmingham and Manchester to Leeds.