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Western Telegraph
15 minutes ago
- Business
- Western Telegraph
UK Government ‘betraying Wales' over rail funding, Plaid leader says
Rhun ap Iorwerth, leader of Plaid, criticised the UK Labour Government for reclassifying the £6.6 billion Oxford to Cambridge line to an England and Wales project. The designation means Wales will not receive the additional rail funding it would get if branded an England-only project. Mr ap Iorwerth called on Eluned Morgan, the Welsh Labour First Minister, to condemn the reclassification. Baroness Morgan agreed Wales was not getting its fair share but said she was expecting to see positive changes in the UK Government's spending review on Wednesday. Mr ap Iorwerth's comments come following reports that revealed the project had originally been listed as England-only from 2020 to 2024. The Treasury told the BBC the classification was a 'publishing error' and insisted it was always considered an England and Wales development. Speaking First Minister's Questions in the Senedd on Tuesday, Mr ap Iorwerth said: 'We were getting our share until Labour actively moved the goalposts. 'Labour went out of its way to make sure Wales wouldn't get the money when the big spending really began.' He added: 'She should be joining me in condemning the UK Labour Government for betraying Wales. Will she?' Mr ap Iorwerth argued the reclassification was a 'new HS2 scandal' – a rail project that has been controversial in Wales. Despite none of the track being laid in the country, it was also designated an England and Wales project by the last UK Conservative government. Plaid has said this designation cost Wales £3.9 billion in funding. Responding to Mr Iorwerth, Baroness Morgan said: 'I've learned to expect nothing but constant negativity from the Plaid Cymru leader. 'I've been clear and I've been consistent when it comes to rail funding that we have not been getting our fair share of funding, in a position that the Tories left us with for over a decade. 'The difference between the Tories and the UK Labour Government is that they've recognised that injustice. 'I don't know what's going to be in the spending review, but the one thing I do know is that if Labour gave Wales a total land of milk and honey, Plaid Cymru would still find fault.' Baroness Morgan added they were 'expecting something positive from the spending review', but the Welsh government would have to keep on making the case for a fair share of funding. In January, the UK government admitted Welsh railways had been underfunded, with spending at 'low levels' in recent years. However, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander did not announce any additional funding at the time.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Fix system and give Wales fair funding
Wales does not get its "fair share of rail funding" and the system must be "fixed", said a former Labour minister responsible for transport. Plans for a £6.6bn Oxford-Cambridge rail line were previously classified as an England-only project, which means Wales could have been entitled to more money. But the Treasury announced there was a "publishing error" in a 2020 document and it should have been classified as an England and Wales project. Lee Waters, the Labour MS for Llanelli said the "cock-up" highlights the broader issue of how "unclear" and in need of reform the funding system is. Anger as Oxford rail line classed as England and Wales project Why does Wales not receive money from HS2? Rail plan reclassified, denying Wales funding - MP Rail in Wales is not devolved, which means funding is determined through the UK government using the Barnett formula. Speaking to BBC Radio Wales Breakfast on Monday, Waters said: "Is it cockup, is it a conspiracy? Who knows - almost always a cockup in my experience." But he said "it speaks to the broader truth" that "the system needs fixing". He said: "We have not had our fair share of funding, the formula does not work to our advantage. "It is not clear how the formula works and therefore we don't trust when things like this pop up." Waters said only a few weeks ago the Welsh government "had to dip into our own coffers" to pay for the national insurance costs, which should be covered by the UK government as per a Treasury agreement. "We need to reform the Barnett formula," Waters said. "We need to have the UK treasury acting as a UK treasury for the whole of the UK, not just for whoever happens to be in government in England at the time." He added that this is not "a party issue" because "this happened under the last government, it's happening under this government". He said it is "the government machine" which must be "changed and fixed". He said he is "confident" his London colleagues are ensuring Wales gets more funding, but is "less confident" they are trying to reform the Barnett formula. He said part of the issue is there "is not a Wales pot of money for rail, we have to fight our corner in the England and Wales pot". Waters said: "There's a UK Labour manifesto commitment to create a Wales fund for schemes so there can be transparency." But he said he is "nervous" about "wholesale devolution of rail without the extra funding", because it comes with the responsibility of repair work. He said: "You can argue we should get the extra funding, but it's back to 'do we trust the UK funding arrangements to do that?'" The UK government previously said the "error" over the Oxford-Cambridge line classification "will be amended when an update is published at the spending review". The HM Treasury has been approached for comment.
Wales Online
4 days ago
- Politics
- Wales Online
The £6bn rail line argument that masks what you should be really angry about
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info Over the last few days, there has been one hot topic in the world of Welsh politics - a train line which will run between Oxford and Cambridge. Given these two cities are roughly 200 miles from Wales, you can be forgiven for asking why. East West Rail is a railway project which will link Oxford and Cambridge at an estimated cost of £6.6bn. Any money spent on it will trigger extra payments to Scotland and Northern Ireland so they can spend it on their transport systems. But, just as has been the case throughout the HS2 debacle, there won't be any extra money for the Welsh Government. The reason for this is both incredibly simple and reasonable on the surface but devillishly complicated and truly unfair beneath it. It may not necessarily be a scandal in itself. But it symbolises everything that is wrong with how rail funding is allocated in England and Wales. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here On the face of it, this issue isn't linked to the spending review that has been happening in Westminster for the last six months or more and of which chancellor Rachel Reeves will stand up in the Commons on Wednesday and deliver the conclusion. Yet it helps shed a light on why that will be enormously complex to understand and why the real story may not be the one you read in headlines that evening. So bear with us while we go through it. The fury from politicians Opposition politicians in Wales have been fulminating about East West rail. They say that the rail line should have been classified as an England-only project like Crossrail so that the Welsh Government would get a guaranteed share. Lib Dem MP David Chadwick said Wales will lose out to the tune of between £306m and £363m as a result. Describing it as another HS2, he said: "Labour expects people across Wales to believe the ridiculous idea that this project will benefit them, and they are justified in not giving Wales the money it needs to improve our own public transport systems. 'It's a disgrace, and it shows there has been no meaningful change since in the way Wales is treated since Labour took power compared to the Conservatives." Plaid Cymru's leader Mr ap Iorwerth took a similar tack, telling plenary: "For all the talk of the UK Government acknowledging somehow that Welsh rail has been historically underfunded, this is some partnership in power." Yet, while there's a lot of truth to what they're saying, it's also much more complicated. Which is where the spending review comes in. Comparability factors There will be so many numbers in the paperwork that accompanies Wednesday's spending review that finding the most important ones isn't straightforward. Yet if you want to know just how much of the England and Wales transport pot is going to be sucked into paying for massive rail projects in England like HS2 (£66bn) or East West rail (£6bn) or all the tram/train projects being promised in England outside London (£15bn), then look out for the overall transport comparability factor for Wales. Very simply, this is the number that the Treasury uses to work out how much the Welsh Government should get for every £1 it spends on transport in England. The reason everyone has been so, so angry about HS2 and the massive billions being poured is that back in 2015, Wales used to get a comparability factor of 80.9%. Yet when the number crunchers in Horse Guards Road sat down to work out how much the Welsh Government should get at the last spending review in 2021, that comparability factor fell to just 33.5%. Ouch. For every £1 spent on transport by Westminster, since the last spending review the Welsh Government has received a population adjusted share (5%) of 33.5%. Or about 1.6p. For context, it used to be around 4p. If Mr Chadwick and Mr Iorwerth are right and the UK government plans to plough even more money into rail in England in the coming years on projects like HS2, East Coast and what the Tories used to call Northern Powerhouse rail, then the new comparability factor that the Treasury mathematicians will conjure up this time could be even lower. But even that is massively misleading. Because if the UK government also promises to plough vast sums into rail in Wales then the comparability factor for the Welsh Government would not rise - it would fall further still. Is your mind boggling yet? We said it was complex. What the Welsh Government wants Because the Welsh Government isn't responsible for rail infrastructure spending, the transport comparability factor really just reflects how much money is going on rail. The less that's spent on rail, the higher a share of the overall transport pot the Welsh Government gets. The more that goes on rail, the lower a share of the overall transport spot the Welsh Government gets. The real problem for Cardiff Bay then is not the comparability factor. Neither is it the fact that East West rail isn't classified as England-only. The problem, as far as the Welsh Government is concerned, is the fact that the England and Wales rail pot itself isn't shared fairly. HS2 and East Coast rail are the symbols of a system that is broken that pours vast sums into English rail projects while Wales misses out. Even if they were classified as England-only, the money would go to the Welsh Government which isn't responsible for rail infrastructure spending. "The way that the system operates at the moment—for years I've been saying—is redundant," Wales' transport minister Ken Skates has said. "The east-west line, which has been in development, I believe, for around about 20 years now, is part of the rail network enhancements pipeline, where everything in a large footprint, a substantial footprint, including Wales, is packaged together. "Where you have all schemes in England and Wales packaged together in what's called the regional network enhancement pipeline it means that projects in Wales are always going to be competing on the business case with projects in affluent areas of the south-east, of London. That means that we are at a disadvantage. "I want to see it change. I've been saying it for years. There's nothing new in this story. I've been saying that we need reform for years and suddenly people have woken up to it." Wales' First Minister Eluned Morgan has said the same. "What we have is a situation where there is a pipeline of projects for England and Wales. Are we getting our fair share? Absolutely not. Are we making the case? Absolutely." "I've made the case very, very clearly that, when it comes to rail, we have been short-changed, and I do hope that we will get some movement on that in the next week from the spending review," she said. What does this mean for the spending review When Rachel Reeves stands up in the Commons on Wednesday, we fully expect she will announce some funding for rail in Wales, as you can see in our piece here, and our expectation is that will be about the rail stations earmarked in the work by Lord Burns after the M4 relief road was axed. They would be in Cardiff East, Parkway, Newport West, Maindy, Llanwern and Magor. But what matters is how much and when - and how that compares to the money being spent in England. Imagine the chancellor announces a few hundred million pounds for those rail stations in Wales in the spending review, what we do not - and will likely not know for many years - is whether that amount is a fair reflection of the mass spending she has announced in England because we know she has also touted £15bn of improvements in England. It will likely take years for academics to assess what kind of share of the rail pot has been spent in Wales. In the past, it certainly has not been fair. In 2018, a Welsh Government commissioned report by Professor Mark Barry estimated that the Network Rail Wales route, which covers 11% of the UK network, received just over 1% of the enhancement budget for the 2011-2016 period. In 2021, the Wales Governance Centre told MPs on the Welsh affairs select committee that had rail been fully devolved to the Welsh Government, Wales would have received an additional £514m for enhancements via Network Rail had rail infrastructure been devolved as it is in Scotland. So when Leeds West and Pudsey MP Ms Reeves gets to her feet in the Commons on Wednesday, you can pretty much guarantee there will at least one or two headlines relevant Wales. But we may not understand what they really mean for a while yet and East West rail won't help us understand either.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Why is there a row about the railway line between Oxford and Cambridge?
A row has broken out about the railway line between Oxford and Cambridge. The East West Rail Project is set to make travel across Britain easier, according to Network Rail, by re-establishing a link between the two university towns. But it is classed as an England and Wales project, meaning that Wales does not get a share of funding, unlike in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Opposition parties have called for the project to be changed to England-only. Rail infrastructure in Wales is a reserved matter, which means it is the responsibility of the UK government rather than the Welsh government. The Liberal Democrats said Wales would get more than £300m if the government changed the project to England-only. Wales would get that money through the Barnett Formula - the population-based method which decides how much money devolved governments get to spend. Politicians have similarly called on Wales to get "up to £5bn" of consequential funding from the HS2 project, which has also been classed as England and Wales. Wales's first minister, Eluned Morgan, told Sky News earlier this year she was expecting an "uplift" in money for Welsh railways and branded the HS2 funding "unfair". In a landmark speech last month, Baroness Morgan called for a "fair deal" for Wales as she sought to reset the relationship between the Welsh and UK governments. David Chadwick, Liberal Democrat MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, said it was "HS2 all over again". "All we want is Wales to be treated fairly, to receive the same treatment as Scotland and Northern Ireland," he said. Ben Lake, Plaid Cymru's MP for Ceredigion Preseli, said neither the East West Rail Project or HS2 have been "designed to deliver benefits to communities in Wales". "The UK government has previously designated large rail projects in England, such as Cross Rail in London, as projects benefitting England alone, and if it were to reclassify HS2 and the Oxford to Cambridge projects in the same way, Wales could stand to gain billions in consequential funding," he added. Sam Rowlands, the Welsh Conservatives' shadow transport secretary, said the project highlighted "further unfairness in funding". "The Welsh Conservatives have consistently called for Wales's fair share of HS2 funding and maintain that this new project must also deliver fair consequential funding," he added. Sky News has asked the Treasury for its response.
ITV News
03-06-2025
- Business
- ITV News
Anger as Oxford-Cambridge railway line classified as England and Wales project
Politicians have expressed frustration as upgrades to a railway line between Oxford and Cambridge have been classified by the Treasury as an England and Wales project, despite no work taking place in Wales. The £6.6billion project will connect communities between Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford and Cambridge. Usually, under the Barnett Formula - the system used to fund the devolved nations - Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland get extra money when more cash is spent on devolved issues like education in England. But because the railways are not fully devolved to Wales, the Welsh Government doesn't receive this money when it comes to rail infrastructure, unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland. The issue hit the headlines when HS2 was also classified as an England and Wales project. This has left some MPs feeling Wales is being shortchanged. David Chadwick, Liberal Democrat MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, said on X: "There can be no justification for this whatsoever. The UK government has decided to deliberately shortchange Wales." Speaking to BBC Radio Wales, he said: "I don't think anybody seriously believes that a railway from Oxford to Cambridge benefits rail users in Swansea or Bangor. "The Treasury is just using these classifications to avoid paying Wales what it's owed, and that's the real point - somebody in the UK Government has decided to shortchange Wales again by deliberately labelling this as an England and Wales project to avoid giving Wales any money, and that's why I'm calling for this to be re-classified as an England-only project." In the Senedd, Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth challenged First Minister Eluned Morgan on the issue, saying it was "confirmation that we have another HS2 on our hands. You could not make this up." The first minister responded: "Rail infrastructure is not devolved to Wales, you might want it to be, but that is the situation it is in. "There is a pipeline of projects for England and Wales. Are we getting our fair share? Absolutely not. Am I making the case? Absolutely. And I'm hoping we'll see some acknowledgment of that through the spending review. "The Oxford- Cambridge line is part of that broader rail infrastructure, HS2 is an exception to that which is why we're making the case in a separate way. " In a written answer to David Chadwick MP, the Department for Transport said: "East West Rail is set to cover the route from Oxford to Cambridge and is therefore part of the RNEP portfolio which covers funding for projects in England and Wales. The RNEP portfolio can be distributed to any scheme across England and Wales."
