MPs offered Crossrail lifeline

The long-delayed Crossrail train scheme faces a fight for survival today as Parliament winds down for the general election. The Government will ask MPs to pass a "carry-over motion" enabling plans for the £10 billion link to be "frozen" and brought back to life in the summer.

This would prevent the need for the "hybrid" Bill authorising the high-speed route from Heathrow to the City and Canary Wharf being restarted from scratch, retaining the possibility it could open by 2013. The Bill, introduced in February, has only reached its first reading.

One of the scheme's main backers has revealed growing frustration with the lack of progress

and Government cash. Bob Kiley, London's transport commissioner, said: "We are where we have always been from the beginning, which is nowhere."

Crossrail dates from 1989 and would involve digging a twinbore tunnel between Paddington and Whitechapel, with new stations along Oxford Street.

It remains a project that everybody wants but no government will pay for. Mr Kiley said Crossrail was costed at £10.2 billion in 2002 but since then construction costs had risen two-and-a-half times faster than inflation.