Tories admit Crossrail is on their list for spending ‘reassessment’

The Evening Standard revealed this week that the £16 billion rail project could be delayed if David Cameron wins power.

Tory sources sought to play down the threat to the cross-London rail scheme and shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers insisted that it was not "currently" being reviewed.

But shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Philip Hammond yesterday refused to guarantee that Crossrail would escape the Conservative cuts programme.

Labour is desperate to pin down exactly where the Tory axe will fall and Treasury minister Yvette Cooper cornered Mr Hammond in the Commons on Crossrail, urging him to make clear whether his party "supported" the new rail line which will run from Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west, under central London and out to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.

Mr Hammond insisted that the rail scheme, due to open in 2017, was a "good project" which fitted "very well" into his party's agenda of improving rail infrastructure. But he added: "Every single programme, every single project will have to be reassessed and re-evaluated.

"It will have to demonstrate its value for money, it will have to demonstrate its effectiveness in an extraordinary tight fiscal climate created by the disaster that this Government has visited upon this country."

London Mayor Boris Johnson has said that he has been assured that Crossrail is protected from cutbacks.

However, estimates are circulating about the scale of savings that the next Government will have to make to balance Britain's books after Chancellor Alistair Darling's astronomical borrowing to lessen the impact of the recession.

One report, in The Spectator, suggested that cuts of 10 per cent in the defence, Home Office and education budgets would be needed over the three years after 2011.

Mr Cameron has already admitted that a Tory government could scale down Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent.