Domestic air travel should be replaced by high-speed rail, the Transport Secretary declared yesterday.

Lord Adonis said that it was “manifestly in the public interest” for all short-haul flying to be phased out and replaced by rail links.

It is the first time that the Government has explicitly committed to the aim of ending domestic flights, although Lord Adonis has long been a supporter of the creation of a high-speed rail line.

“For reasons of carbon reduction and wider environmental benefits, it is manifestly in the public interest that we systematically replace short-haul aviation with high-speed rail,” he told The Guardian.

“But we would have to have, of course, the high-speed network before we can do it.”

Domestic flights currently carry 46 million passengers a year, but Lord Adonis hopes that they could be persuaded to switch to a 250mph north-south rail line.

He said plans for a route from London to Birmingham would be in place by the end of the year, with a framework for extending the link on to Scotland.

Lord Adonis said he hoped that all flights to Europe could eventually also be ended in favour of a better connected rail network.

“I would like to see short-haul aviation — not just domestic aviation, but short-haul aviation — progressively replaced by rail, including high-speed rail,” he said.

“If we want to see the progressive replacement of short-haul aviation by rail, then we have got to have a high-speed rail system that links our major conurbations and makes them far more accessible to Europe, too.”

Critics of the high-speed scheme have have questioned the value for money of a project that could cost almost £30 billion if extended to Glasgow.

Lord Adonis said it would have to be Britain’s leading infrastructure project. “If we make it a national priority, then it is affordable. If we don’t, then it is not. It’s as simple as that,” he said.

Roger Wiltshire, secretary-general of the British Air Transport Association, an industry body, predicted that high-speed rail “won’t make a huge impact” on the demand for air travels.

“People want a particular journey and they don’t necessarily find that rail is what they need,” he said. “Also, on all these routes, a lot of passengers are not going to London, they are going to get a plane somewhere else.”

He added that other countries with high speed rail, such as France, Germany and Japan, still had domestic air travel.

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