Transport Funding: Wales and HS2
Debate between Jonathan Edwards and Geraint Davies(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Jonathan Edwards
As always, my right hon. Friend makes a pertinent point. It does not make any sense that the responsibility for operating the railways in Wales is devolved to the Welsh Government but the responsibility for the infrastructure remains in the hands of another Government.
To return to my point, the Silk commission recognised that the devolution of those powers and the equalisation of powers for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, was right not only for operational reasons, but because of the financial implications and the historical underfunding of the Welsh railways that resulted from the powers being retained in Westminster.
Geraint Davies
The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. Does he agree that one has to differentiate, as I do not think the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams) did, between the amount of money we get for Wales and who spends it? There was a lot of talk about UK money—“The Government spends this. Don’t give the money to the Welsh Government.”—but the basic point is that we should get our fair share. Of the £48 billion that Network Rail spends, about £1 billion is spent in Wales, which certainly is not the 5% that we deserve.
Jonathan Edwards
Absolutely; that is the financial reality. We do not even get a population share, which would be 5% of rail investment. People might argue that 11% of the rail network is in Wales, so we should be getting more than our population share. Historical underfunding is a huge problem for us in Wales in terms of developing our economy and moving our country forward. I will return to some of those themes later.
Jonathan Edwards
That is a very interesting intervention. I am not defending the Welsh Government’s policy in its totality, but they want to move away from road and towards public transport. If we will not be using road, we have to invest in rail. This is the fundamental question facing us as Welsh representatives: given that the UK Government have shown clearly that they have no intention of investing in Welsh rail transport infrastructure, what are we going to do about it? The only way to address that is to take responsibility for ourselves.
Geraint Davies
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Welsh Government are not abandoning all investment in roads? They are doing a roads review, looking at how they can balance transport between road, rail and active transport in a sustainable way, which will inevitably—hopefully—lead to a bit more public transport and rail, including electrified buses and public transport on roads. We will have more roads, but we will not necessarily need the M4 relief road if on one in five days people are on a Zoom call instead of sitting in their car.
Jonathan Edwards
My understanding of the Welsh Government’s policy is no new extra roads. That does not mean that there will not be investment in road maintenance. However, the reality is that, if we are going down that road, there has to be investment in alternative modes of transport, which again furthers the case for us in Wales to receive the powers, so that we can get investment and make the decisions ourselves. That is fundamentally at the heart of this debate.
On one side of the argument are those of us who argue that Westminster will never invest in Wales, so we need rail powers in Wales that will bring the investment and allow the Welsh Government to make decisions on investing in our own country. On the other side are those arguing that the UK Government will eventually come good and start investing in Wales. That will not happen, so the only solution is for rail powers to be devolved to Wales and for the Barnett consequentials to flow to Wales from England-only projects, as happens in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which will enable Welsh Government Ministers to pursue the transport priorities of our own country.
Welsh Affairs
Debate between Jonathan Edwards and Geraint Davies(4 years, 2 months ago)
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