Railways in Wales are to see a real-terms cut in funds in the next five years with the UK Government directing a "managed decline", the minister responsible for transport in Wales has said. There will be more speed restrictions, reduced reliability, more service failures, and either stagnant or worsening performance because of the funding Network Rail is planning to allocate to Wales over its next five-year spending plan, which starts next year, Welsh Government deputy minister Lee Waters said.
Mr Waters used a speech to the Rail Cymru conference in Cardiff on Thursday to launch a furious attack on the UK Government and accuse Network Rail of giving Wales the second-worst settlement in the UK between 2024 and 2029, which it calls Control Period Seven. Mr Waters said it would mean a real-terms funding cut of 0.1% in cash terms at a time costs were going up.
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He said: "The effect of this will be a managed decline of the railway in Wales... It will take the rail network 10-15 years to recover from this set-back."
Mr Waters said that the lack of funding for maintenance planned by Network Rail would be compounded by the fact Wales is missing out a population-based share, estimated as being worth up to £5bn to Wales, of the money being spent on HS2 in England. See more on that here. Mr Waters described the lack of consequential spending for Wales as "outrageous" and a "shocker".
And he said it would be "an absolute disgrace if the speculation is correct and a similar approach is to be taken when classifying the Northern Powerhouse rail schemes". There are fears Wales will miss out on a further £1bn because the cross-Pennine transport improvements in England known as Northern Powerhouse rail are also being classed as England and Wales spending.
Mr Waters told the gathering of transport professionals: "Not only have the UK Government consistently short-changed Wales when it comes to investing in the rail infrastructure they have responsibility for but by denying us a spending share of investment in England they are preventing us from delivering our own devolved responsibilities.
"It is a legitimate democratic choice for the Tory government in Westminster to underinvest in the railway. You only have to go back to the 1980s to see that they’ve got form on that. But it doesn’t recognise devolution. It doesn’t account for the specific needs of people and communities in Wales, nor the historic underinvestment in our railway, or the policy direction of the elected government of Wales."
A Department for Transport (DfT) spokesman dismissed these comments as "wide of the mark," saying: "We’re committed to improving services for rail passengers in Wales, investing a record-breaking £2bn in Welsh railways from April 2019 to March 2024."
The DfT also highlighted its figures indicating government funding of the operational railway was £2.04 per passenger mile in England and £3.85 per passenger mile in Wales and Scotland and described the Control Period Seven spending (for April 2024 to March 2029) as "a record £44.1bn".
A Network Rail spokesman said: "The government’s commitment to investing £44bn in the operations, maintenance, and renewal of England and Wales’ railway is a clear indication of the strong economic value rail brings to Britain. Our plan for Control Period Seven will be ambitious, focused on our passengers and customers, and reflects the current complexities and challenges facing the industry."
Mr Waters said that passengers would see some improvements in the coming years but that this was down to the money the Welsh Government was spending on electrification and new rolling stock. He said: "The only bright spot is that the Control Period Seven settlement will deliver a very marginal gain in Wales’ on time performance but that’s due to Welsh Government interventions – new trains, more, better-trained staff, and improvements to legacy fleet performance.
"At a time when the Welsh Government are investing almost £2bn to improve our railway decisions made in Whitehall will actively undermine that progress. By forcing Network Rail to consciously plan for a 15-year decline in rail performance in Wales the UK Government are endangering our ability to meet our legally binding climate targets and undermining their own policy of Levelling Up. It is unacceptable and rubs salt into an already open wound.
"We already have the indignity of having just 2% of our network electrified in comparison with 40% in England. And we had to swallow a U-turn on electrification to Swansea. We shouldn’t be buying new diesel trains but we’ve been forced to because of the UK Government’s failure to electrify."
In his speech Mr Waters also defended the principle underpinning the Welsh Government's decision to shelve most major road-building projects in Wales. He said that global warming was happening "here and now" and Wales needed to "start doing things very differently".
He said: "In transport we’ve been focusing on making it easier and quicker to drive than to use the bus or train. And as a result transport emissions have been the slowest to fall of any sector. Despite leaps in vehicle technology emissions have fallen by just 6% since 1990.
"If we repeat that rate of progress over the next 30 years we will fail to reach Net Zero – 17% of our carbon emissions in this country come from transport and we will not reach our overall targets unless transport plays its part in getting us onto a low-carbon trajectory. And we can't rely on technology and electrification alone, we also must achieve modal shift – the independent Committee on Climate Change is very clear about this: electric cars are necessary but not sufficient."
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