Latest news with #railprojects
The Independent
3 days ago
- Business
- The Independent
Government's £445m for railways in Wales branded ‘peanuts' by Tories
The Government's £445 million funding for rail projects in Wales has been branded 'peanuts' by Shadow Wales Secretary Mims Davies. The investment in Welsh rail announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her spending review on Wednesday will be spent on new stations and upgraded railway lines, and delivered through both direct funding and additional money for the Welsh Government. However, Ms Davies branded the sum 'paltry' and said the Government was 'short-changing' Wales. The Conservative frontbencher asked Wales Secretary Jo Stevens: 'Does the minister prefer peanuts, cashew nuts, or simply scraps for Wales? 'The fabled two Labour governments in lockstep is simply a myth for voters. 'Changing rail classifications and short-changing Welsh communities is a true reality. 'Is the minister concerned by today's reported peanuts, because when did she become aware of just over £400 million, the paltry settlement to come to Wales? 'How will it be split to Welsh Government? How does she think it compares to our Government's £740 million on rail alone?' Responding, Ms Stevens said: 'Her party was in government for 14 years when Wales got 1% of the rail enhancement budget, when it has 11% of the whole UK network. 'Her party are responsible for the historic underfunding of the Welsh rail and we'll hear from the Chancellor this afternoon about what this Government is going to do about it.' Liz Saville-Roberts, Plaid Cymru's leader in Westminster, also accused the Government of reclassifying the Oxford- Cambridge line as an England and Wales project, rather than England only. She said: 'The Secretary of State for Wales joined Plaid Cymru in condemning the Conservatives for denying Wales £4.6 billion in rail funding. 'Now she's in government, she's waxing lyrical about 10% of that, and content with moving the goalpost to deny Wales a further £300 million by recently classifying the Oxford-Cambridge line as benefiting Wales. I don't know how they make this up. 'Does she oppose this new injustice? Or was she ignored? Or is it her mission to see Wales short-changed?' Ms Stevens reiterated her previous response to this accusation that the Government had only been correcting a publishing error and that the Oxford-Cambridge line was always considered an England and Wales development. She said: 'I listened very carefully to the question, and I'm sure she would not wish to unintentionally mislead the House. 'This was an error on the Oxford-Cambridge line. This was an error by the Conservative government in the 2021 spending review. 'And as she knows, heavy rail infrastructure is reserved, not devolved. Like every heavy rail project in England, Barnet consequentials do not apply. 'The UK Government fund from which East West Rail is being funded is also directing funding projects in Wales, like the redevelopment of Wales's busiest station, Cardiff central, improvements to level crossings in north Wales and upgrading the South Wales Relief Link.'
BBC News
4 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Spending review: New stations in £445m rail plan for Wales
Chancellor Rachel Reeves will use her spending review on Wednesday to announce £445m for new rail projects in north and south details are expected on Wednesday, but plans for five new stations in Cardiff, Newport and Monmouthshire, as well as upgrades in north Wales, are on the follows years of complaints of underinvestment in the Welsh railway Treasury said the package had "the potential to be truly transformative". But the Conservatives criticised the lack of support for a new M4 relief road, while Plaid Cymru said the cash was "merely a drop in the ocean compared to the billions Wales is owed". The spending review will set out Reeves' plans for how public services will be funded for years to was not clear on Tuesday evening what the impact of the announcement might be for the Welsh government's day to day spending, with cuts to budgets other than health, schools and defence Wales gets to spend is determined by a calculation based on how England-only departments - such as health and local government - are follows weeks of rows between Welsh and Westminster Labour, as concerns grew over the next Senedd election as polling suggested the party could lose its dominant role in Welsh politics. According to the Treasury, the £445m will be spent on fixing level crossings, building new stations and upgrading existing lines, and is a combination of direct funding and cash for the Welsh said it was the "cornerstone of the UK government's plan to address decades of underinvestment in critical infrastructure that has held back the Welsh economy".Rail funding has become a totemic issue in Welsh politics, with the lack of knock-on funding for Wales from High Speed 2 repeatedly raised with the First Minister Eluned first minister has publicly called for more rail spending from the UK government - one of a list of calls she has made on Sir Keir Starmer in recent say if High Speed 2 had not been classified as an England and Wales project, Wales would be owed between £431m - according to finance secretary Mark Drakeford - or multiple billions, according to Plaid Cymru and previous sums used by senior Labour figures including Welsh Secretary Jo extra money is not connected to HS2, although Labour was keen to make a symbolic sources, and former transport minister Lee Waters, said the sum is more than Wales would have had from the high speed rail project. Welsh Transport Secretary Ken Skates and others have lobbied the UK government figures on a range of projects recommended by transport reviews looking at north and south include new stations at Cardiff East, near the city's Newport Road, and in the west of are hopes for a station in the eastern Newport suburbs of Somerton and Llanwern, and one that will serve the Monmouthshire villages of Magor and Undy, along with improvements to the mainline to allow local services to stations were proposed by a review to boost rail transport in a region that has seen an increase in house building in recent years, but is connected via the congested M4 motorway and has a limited local railway work is estimated to cost £ north Wales, the Welsh government has been pushing for work on the Wrexham to Liverpool route to enable metro-style services, and upgrades on the north Wales mainline to boost the frequency of also wants to commence development work to increase capacity at Chester - a hub for trains from north Wales. Rachel Reeves could also commit more funding to help make coal tips in Wales first minister has previously said that £25m allocated to Wales at last year's October budget was not enough. Looking ahead to the next Senedd election, a senior Labour figure said: "Labour's delivered what the Tories wouldn't, what Plaid can't and what Reform have no interest in."Former transport minister Lee Waters said: "Civil servants calculated that we lost out £431m in Barnett formula funding by the way the high-speed rail project was categorised by the Treasury. This £445 million makes good on that."We will have to wait to see what exact schemes the Chancellor is agreeing to but that figure would allow the priority schemes that the Welsh government and the UK Department of Transport had been working on to go ahead."Taken together this is a very significant package of rail investment, much more than we ever got from the Tories, and will make a real difference to people."We now need to make sure we get a change to how funding works for rail so that this is the beginning of a pipeline of investment into the future"Another Labour source said the "historic investment" was down to the "work of the Welsh Secretary, Jo Stevens, who has delivered Labour's promise to right the chronic underfunding of Welsh rail by the Tories". Welsh Conservative Senedd leader Darren Millar called it a "kick in the teeth", complaining of no extra cash to enable an M4 relief road or for upgrades to the A55 and A40 trunk roads."The promised rail investment falls well short of the £1bn plus in rail funding planned by the previous UK Conservative government for the electrification of the North Wales line."Plaid Cymru's finance spokesperson Heledd Fychan said: "£445m is merely a drop in the ocean compared to the billions Wales is owed on rail, and what Labour – up until they came into power – used to agree with us on."The people of Wales have seen this injustice for what it is – Wales being short-changed by successive Westminster governments. This announcement won't change that."Additional reporting by Gareth Lewis
Telegraph
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Labour will lose the North without rail links, Andy Burnham warns Starmer
Sir Keir Starmer must approve big-ticket rail projects in the North if he is to avoid an exodus of voters, Andy Burnham has warned. Appearing at a high-profile rally at Westminster, the former Cabinet minister turned Mayor of Greater Manchester said the Labour Government risks alienating its core support if it continues to overlook transport upgrades outside London. Mr Burnham said Northern voters were rightly angry after watching multibillion-pound projects such as the Elizabeth Line come to fruition in London while schemes promised to them a decade ago remain in limbo. He told The Telegraph: 'They look around the country and they see different standards here in terms of transport. And they see what they have to put up with every day. 'That feeds an alienation that some people feel. My argument starts to deal directly with some of the root causes of the frustration that people feel when they see a country that they don't sense is working properly at the moment and doesn't feel fair to them.' 'Unifying story' Mr Burnham, viewed as one of the few figures within Labour able to garner support from the Left and Right of the party, issued the warning after claiming that excessive spending in the South East was partly to blame for Reform UK's recent success in the local elections. The event, staged just yards from the House of Commons, marked a high-profile return to Westminster for Mr Burnham, who spent 15 years as an MP and held three ministerial roles under Gordon Brown. He quit the Commons for Manchester after coming second to Jeremy Corbyn in the 2015 Labour leadership vote, and he has since sought to reinvent himself as a champion of the North. This persona was on full display last week, as he was in London to launch plans for a new Liverpool-to-Manchester railway that he claimed would contribute £90bn to the economy. In a joint presentation with Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City region, and Huw Merriman, a former Tory rail minister, he called on Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, to commit to funding preparatory work that would allow construction to begin early next decade. Mr Burnham said that would provide the certainty needed to attract investment along the route, while also providing a pipeline of work for the rail industry once the High Speed 2 (HS2) project begins to wind down. The Manchester and Liverpool mayoral authorities, together with one to be formed in Cheshire next year, would help manage the scheme and ensure that it had cross-party support, he said, avoiding much of the controversy that dogged HS2. He said: 'Where we can come in is to provide a kind of unifying story around where we are going from here. 'This is about giving equivalent infrastructure across the country, to start to rebalance it in a fair way. And I think that is an answer to some of the feelings that people have at this time.' The railway would be far shorter than the new Oxford-to-Cambridge line already approved by the Government, but offer twice the economic return, according to its backers. The scheme is central to the recently unveiled Northern Arc project, which aims to revitalise plans for a rail-led development zone stretching from Liverpool to Leeds. Dating back to the launch of George Osborne's Northern Powerhouse blueprint in 2014 and once ambitiously dubbed High Speed 3, those plans have yet to advance beyond an upgrade of the route between Manchester and Leeds. The Liverpool-Manchester line would slash journey times on the world's first intercity route, which opened in 1830, a decade after the world's first passenger trains began running on the Stockton & Darlington Railway. The new line would connect the two city centres via Liverpool and Manchester airports and a new super-station at the junction with the West Coast Main Line in Warrington. It would also include options for a connection to HS2 should the route be extended north beyond the Midlands. Challenge to Starmer Mr Burnham, a Cambridge graduate born in Liverpool but who grew up in Newton-le-Willows on the borders of Merseyside and Greater Manchester, met with the Chancellor during his visit to Westminster and said the response was encouraging. However, he said 'a tangible and concrete commitment' to the line was still required. Mr Burnham, a former health secretary and chief secretary to the Treasury, added that he was hopeful that Ms Reeves's spending review – expected in June – would confirm changes to the Treasury's Green Book investment rules 'to allow a more long-term approach'. That should address concerns that the current requirements favour projects in the South East, he said. However, Mr Burnham, 55, also used the project launch to issue a wide-ranging critique of the Government. Asked about Sir Keir's strategy for cutting benefits to force more people into work, he said he sympathised with Labour MPs threatening to rebel against the proposals. 'When it comes to disability benefits and their impact on people who perhaps have no other means of making up the loss in their income, I do think it's an issue a Labour government should look at,' he said. The remark drew cheers from onlookers on College Green, the small area of public parkland opposite the Palace of Westminster chosen for the launch. Mr Burnham also revealed that he had pitched an initiative to ministers aimed at making benefits reform fairer by having local agencies work with claimants to help them get back into the jobs market. He is understood to be seeking tens of millions of pounds in the spending review to roll out the plan, on which he has consulted with Alan Milburn, a Labour moderniser under Tony Blair who last year was appointed to a key advisory role at the Department of Health. Mr Burnham stopped short of criticising the Prime Minister directly and diplomatically dodged questions about Sir Keir's 'island of strangers' immigration speech, which has drawn parallels with Enoch Powell. The appearance of a Labour 'big beast' holding court outside Westminster, meeting with ministers and proposing a slew of proposals aimed at addressing Labour's shortfalls may nevertheless have sounded the alarm for Sir Keir. On the one hand, giving in to Mr Burnham's demands for increased regional investment would keep him within Labour's leadership tent. On the other, it would hand further prominence to a potential rival. While Mr Burnham won a third term as Mayor of Greater Manchester a year ago, he has said repeatedly over the years that he would not rule out a further tilt at the Labour leadership. While Sir Keir's leadership ratings have plummeted, in a Survation survey of Labour members published in March 57pc of respondents who did not back the Prime Minister named Mr Burnham as their favoured successor, despite him not being an MP. Overall, Sir Keir was preferred by 43pc of respondents and Mr Burnham by 21pc. As Mr Burnham left College Green on Wednesday for discussions with Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, one man shouted that he was 'the best prime minister we never had'. Mr Burnham smiled and said that he was 'too kind', signalling that perhaps his long-term ambitions lie in Westminster and not just the North.
