Rhun Ap Iorwerth
Leader of Plaid CymruThe new Leader of Plaid Cymru looks to the future of Welsh rail ownership.
August 2023 marked 140 years since the first electric railway in the UK was opened on the Brighton seafront.
Still functioning to this day, Volk’s Electric Railway may have only been a modest mile-and-a-quarter-long pleasure railway when it opened in August 1883, but it was a testament to the ingenuity of its age and was followed by the rollout of main line electrification across England many decades later.
The West Coast Main Line was electrified between London and Crewe during the 1950s and 1960s. This was then extended to Glasgow in 1974, and the southern section of the Midland Main Line between London and Bedford was electrified in the early 1980s.
It wasn’t until 2009, however, that Wales’s hopes of leaving the slow lane were raised when Secretary of State for Transport Lord Adonis announced the plans to electrify the Great Western Main Line from London to Swansea, more than a century after the concept first emerged in the UK. The decade and more since have seen more promises made and broken, more muddled excuses from Westminster, and more pain for Welsh passengers as our railway infrastructure creaks under the burden of decades of underinvestment and neglect.
This very brief chronology is important for two reasons.
Firstly, it shows that when it comes to the UK Government, Wales barely meets the threshold of being an afterthought. Secondly, it reminds us that for as long as Wales remains part of this broken United Kingdom, things will be dictated not by the art of the possible but by the art of the palatable. History tells us that the notion of granting Wales its fair share does not sit comfortably with either Tory or Labour governments in Westminster.
Previous Failures
When Labour had the chance under Blair and Brown, they failed to electrify a single mile of railway in Wales during their thirteen years in power, and when the Tory-Lib Dem coalition of 2010 brought forward new proposals for a new high-speed rail link HS2, Wales was nowhere to be seen on the map.
Whilst the failure to begin the work of electrifying the Welsh railways until this decade is a scandal in itself, particularly Tory Transport Minister Chris Grayling’s decision to scrap plans to electrify the line west of Cardiff towards Swansea on cost grounds, it pales in comparison to arguably the biggest infrastructure white elephant in recent UK memory – HS2.
HS2 is an issue on which Plaid Cymru has campaigned for over a decade. It epitomises the relationship between Westminster and Wales in its simplest form – economic injustice and a complete lack of political accountability.
Whilst transport is fully devolved in Scotland and the Scottish Government has had the autonomy to press ahead with its own plans for improving the nation’s rail infrastructure, Wales is not afforded the same rights. It is no coincidence that whilst just 2 per cent of our railways are now electrified, the same figure for Scotland is around 25 per cent.
This also means that when David Cameron’s Government applied a 0 per cent comparability factor for Wales to HS2 spending back in 2015, Wales was denied any additional funding at all whilst Scotland and Northern Ireland received a considerable sum.
With the latest projections telling us that the entire HS2 project could end up costing an eye-watering £100 billion or more, this means that Wales is missing out on its population-based share of at least £5 billion – equivalent to around a quarter of the existing Welsh budget.
Negative Impacts
The real-term implications of this economic injustice are that Welsh taxpayers will be expected to foot part of the bill for a project set to be built entirely outside Wales, whilst enduring snail-paced journeys on our existing network. Pwllheli to Bangor, a distance of 30 miles, takes roughly 55 minutes by car but six and a half hours by train. It is around 40 miles from Aberystwyth to Carmarthen – taking between an hour and an hour and a half by car depending on traffic, but a staggering six hours by train. In both these cases, previous railway infrastructure was removed. Common sense and national infrastructure needs suggest they should be reinstated. These are just two examples of where decisions taken outside Wales are costing us dearly.
Of course, Plaid Cymru is not opposed to the Westminster Government investing in modern, fit-for-purpose rail infrastructure in all parts of the UK. I’m sure that passengers from Newquay to Newcastle have had similar experiences to me, setting off just after dusk and getting home nearer to dawn after hours of delays, diversions, and dire communications on the part of the service provider.
There is no disputing that creaking infrastructure can be found in all corners of these isles, but it is the sheer scale of the economic injustice experienced by Wales that sets us apart in the worst way possible. A change of government in Westminster offers little hope. During the Welsh Labour conference in Llandudno back in March, Keir Starmer refused to commit to giving Wales a fair share of HS2 funding should he become Prime Minister after the next General Election – and remember, as HS2 spending in England goes up, not only does Wales not receive consequential funding but the money available for rail investment in Wales goes down. Do Labour just not recognise this injustice?
The Future of Welsh Rail Ownership: Looking Forwards
As the buck is passed from one end of the M4 to the other, one thing is clear; Wales’s economy and infrastructure have been at the mercy of bad decisions taken in Westminster for far too long. As Plaid Cymru has argued for decades, we need full control over our railways, as well as greater fiscal levers in order to shape our economy in a manner that benefits communities in all parts of Wales. If they are to have any semblance of credibility as a true alternative, that is exactly what Labour will be offering when people go to the polls in 2024. Time will tell whether they choose to side with the Tory Prime Minister or with the people of Wales.
