Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what comparative assessment he has made of public spending per capita on transport infrastructure in (a) Tyne and Wear, (b) the North East, (c) London and (d) the South East.

Figures on public sector spend per head of population at a regional level are part of the government’s Country and Regional Analysis (CRA) statistics. However, there are significant caveats around the interpretation of these figures for transport spending.

The CRA attempts to allocate expenditure on the basis of which region benefits from the spend, rather than where it is made. However, this can be challenging as expenditure in one part of the country may actually benefit a different area, and this is particularly a problem for spending on the motorway, trunk roads, and the railway. For example, whilst spending on a local hospital is likely to predominantly benefit those who live in that area, spending on a motorway or railway line will benefit not just those living nearby but also those travelling from and to other areas across the country. Whilst the Department does try to record rail funding across the regions based on which passengers benefit, allocations are inevitably fairly imprecise.

In terms of the calculation of this regional spending on a per capita basis (i.e. per head of resident population), the calculation for London doesn’t account for the substantial number of daily commuters and visitors, both domestically and internationally, who will be using and benefitting from the roads and public transport networks but who aren’t London residents. In particular, as the main international gateway into the country, London will be the location for transport investments which look to serve passengers well beyond the local resident population.

The above caveats should be taken into account when looking at the CRA figures for regional Government expenditure on transport. The figures for 2015-16 relating to locations (b), (c) and (d) from the above request are shown in the table below. This information is published for government office regions only, and therefore is unavailable for (a) Tyne & Wear.

Table 1. Government expenditure on transport per head of population by region

Source:

HM Treasury Country and Regional Analysis (CRA) 2016