MPs to quiz UK Government minister on improving Welsh rail Infrastructure
MPs on the Welsh Affairs Committee will question Minister for Rail, Lord Hendy, on the future of Wales’s rail infrastructure on Wednesday (5 March).
The session will explore how the UK Government plans to improve the rail network and what funding is available to deliver improvements.
In a letter to the Welsh Government in January, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander admitted Wales has had “low levels of enhancement spending in recent years”.
The HS2 project is at the heart of tensions over funding since it was first announced, with the scheme having been designated an England and Wales project despite no track being laid outside England.
If it had been labelled an England-only project, Wales would benefit from additional funding, which Plaid Cymru estimates to be worth around £4 billion.
Due to this classification, the Welsh Government does not receive additional funding as a result of spending on the multi-billion-pound project, unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland.
‘Scandalous’
After First Minister Eluned Morgan labelled the classification of the HS2 project ‘scandalous’, MPs are expected to ask Lord Hendy why the UK Government has maintained HS2’s classification as a Wales-England project.
Appearing before the committee last month, The First Minister said: “We’ve had a recognition of historic underfunding – an important first step.
“I’m not sure if they’ll go as far as to say they’ll reclassify HS2, but we’ll keep on making the case.
“The important thing for me is that we get the investment. So, we will keep pushing.”
Spending Review
Secretary of State for Wales Jo Stevens also recently told the Committee that rail was her “number one priority” going into the UK Government’s next Spending Review.
The Committee is expected to ask the minister to clarify whether the UK Government’s priority infrastructure projects for Wales will go ahead as planned.
It has indicated that it would prioritise proposals around the North and South Wales Mainlines and the Wrexham to Liverpool line, but did not confirm how, when and if these will be delivered.
MPs on the Committee are also expected to ask about the process of delivering new stations on the South Wales Main Line, including what lessons can be learnt from the planning delays of the controversial Cardiff Parkway station.
Other topics likely to be raised could include whether there are sufficient funds for Network Rail to maintain the ageing railway network, and any damaged caused by severe weather events which are becoming more frequent.
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So the Neo-Tory McSweeney/Starmer Regime are keen to push the North Coast and South Coast upgrades onto the people of Cymru in the traditional exploitative colonialist manner that we see so often. The North Coast investment is to make it easier to extract labour out of Cymru and similarly the South Coast investment. That residents of Cymru would like better north-south rail links is ignored because England gains nothing from such investment.
I do hope that the Welsh Affairs Committe will bat for Cymru rather than concede for England.
Curious to know why investment in north coast line ‘extracts labour’- what do you mean? That they are able to access better paid jobs in Cheshire? Is that a good thing?
As an aside, at the last census Flintshire has less than 0.5% of the working population using trains for commuting . This has reasonable transport links and has largest private sector compared to rest of Wales.
That is interesting to know. The North Coast line in its current form had good services when I last used it. So if it is not to extract labour by providing faster trains to England, just what is the benefit to Cymru? It seems daft to spend more on that line when the rest of the country has an urgent need for extension of and upgrades of its railway routes. Obviously it would be good to have all of the lines in Cymru electrified, but Westminster will never fund that. There is a whole discussion to be had on whether… Read more »
It could certainly do with improvements, it still take 90 mins to get to Manc airport from say Llandudno; but it just it isn’t as heavily used as it should be. In fact, right across Wales, the number of railway users is low compared to other parts other UK, which in turn, makes infrastructure investment harder to justify. I don’t understand this ‘extractive’ argument you make. If you go to Europe, regions such as Bratislava-Vienna, they run cross border ticketing systems. If you get a better paid job in Vienna and live in Slovakia, you bring that money back to… Read more »