TWO OUT OF THREE

The current (and also future) Welsh Government will receive less money to spend on transport for the foreseeable future, thanks to HS2 being designated as an England and Wales project - this is despite the fact that no part of the track is included in Wales. This decision has excluded Wales from receiving any of the  additional funding that will flow to Scotland and Northern Ireland over the lifespan of the HS2 project.

A report produced by Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre has noted that for life of the HSR Project, perhaps for several decades the Welsh Government will receive a much smaller share from any increase in the Department for Transport’s budget. This is part of what  has been described as a "historic under-funding" thats locked into the system for Wales. 

Wales suffers because there is no fully devolved control over transport, if this was the case then Wales would have been  £514 million better of in terms of investment in its rail infrastructure between 2011-12 and 2019-20. As well as perpetuating underinvestment in Wales’ rail infrastructure, the Cardiff researchers have also warned that the non-devolved system will also lead to a funding squeeze on the Welsh Government’s future budget.

Once you start to factor in the lost funding by way of comparison with the projected cost of several major Welsh rail infrastructure projects that have been estimated by external sources, including:

• The Carmarthen to Aberystwyth line (£620-775 million)
• Electrification of the North Wales Coast mainline (£764 million)
• Electrification of the South Wales mainline between Cardiff and Swansea (£433 million)

With the additional funding, the powers and the vision to use it for our priorities rather than Westminster priorities, people may well begin to wonder what might have been achieved over recent years. That extra £500 million (since 2011) could have enabled us to start and complete significant improvement projects. 

The half devolved cobbled set up in relation to powers over funding, transport, infrastructure and infrastructure planning is unsustainable, the ownership of this problem lies with the Labour Party in Westminster, as much as it does with the Labour Party in Wales as it does with the Conservatives. 

In relation to the lost opportunities it makes you think what might have been achieved… had we had fair funding, a government in Cardiff with the political will, and also the self belief... two out of three would have been nice.