Railways: Expenditure
(asked on 18th October 2016) - View Source
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much has been spent from the public purse on rail services per capita in (a) Birmingham, (b) the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority, formerly Centro and (c) each region of England from 2009-10 to the most recent financial year for which information is available.
The series for government expenditure on rail per head of population from 2009/10 to 2014/15 for English regions is shown in the table below, as per part (c) of the request.
Government expenditure on railways1 per head of population | ||||||
Region | 2009/10 | 2010/11 | 2011/12 | 2012/13 | 2013/14 | 2014/15 |
North East | £59 | £57 | £54 | £55 | £53 | £52 |
North West | £97 | £98 | £89 | £92 | £91 | £93 |
Yorkshire & Humber | £95 | £93 | £103 | £107 | £110 | £98 |
East Midlands | £45 | £39 | £36 | £42 | £40 | £34 |
West Midlands | £61 | £52 | £49 | £53 | £54 | £68 |
East of England | £58 | £52 | £59 | £56 | £52 | £71 |
London | £386 | £371 | £331 | £281 | £268 | £353 |
South East | £85 | £84 | £70 | £68 | £66 | £69 |
South West | £49 | £44 | £39 | £40 | £37 | £35 |
England | £120 | £115 | £106 | £100 | £97 | £113 |
1 Includes expenditure on all types of railway | ||||||
Source: HMT, ONS | ||||||
The step change seen in London spending last year is due to increased spending on London Underground and HS2 plus some increase in the Network Grant. This investment is needed to meet the ever increasing demand for passenger journeys into London, of which there are currently about 4 billion every year.
More widely, care needs to be taken in interpreting regional spend figures. Expenditure is usually allocated between regions on the basis of which regions benefit from the expenditure rather than on the basis of where the expenditure is made. However, it is not always possible to put the value of spending down to certain parts of the country and this is particularly a problem for spending on the rail network. Though the Department does try to distribute rail funding across the regions, allocations are inevitably fairly imprecise.
It is also important to note that expenditure comparisons on a ‘per-head’ basis (using resident populations) can present a skewed picture of the distribution of benefits for transport generally, and for transport in London particularly. This is because the transport networks in London are routinely used by a very large number of other regions’ residents.
Even allowing for these points, one would also expect London’s ‘per head’ transport expenditure to be higher than the national average. London provides key international travel gateways for the whole of the country. London is also densely populated with different public transport and infrastructure demands – for example London residents comprise around 15% of the population of England, but London accounts for almost two-thirds of rail journeys in Great Britain.
The equivalent information is unavailable at a sub-region level, therefore cannot be provided as per parts (a) and (b) of the request.