3. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Climate Change: Update on the Metro

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:40 pm on 20 October 2021.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 3:40, 20 October 2021

Well, we genuinely do want to work with them, and we do our very best to have constructive dialogue with them, but it's a bit of a one-way street at the moment, I've got to say. I did have a good meeting with, as I said, the chair of Network Rail recently, and I've met with some of the junior transport Ministers, but not with Grant Shapps himself. And their view is that we should be doing piecemeal bids to the UK Government to compete with all other parts of the UK for rail schemes. Our counter argument is: we have a share of the rail network, and we have a significantly smaller share of the investment that that share of the network requires. And, so, we think, we should, as of right, as from the population share and the track share as well, be getting a larger slice of the pie. They simply don't agree, and they simply will not act. So, I think that makes the levelling-up rhetoric hollow when it comes to Wales, and, in fact, they're making things worse by developing the high speed 2 line without giving us our population share; we do not get a Barnett share for that. So, not only, according to their own business plan, is that going to suck money out of Wales, high speed 2—let's be clear—is going to damage the Welsh economy. So, we get a negative effect to our economy; we don't get the population share that normally rail spend on an England basis would mean that we do get, so we're being short-changed, and they're not addressing their historic under investment in the Welsh rail network. So, I think it's a shameful story, and I would hope the Welsh Conservatives in this Senedd, instead of singing the old songs, would focus on being constructive and trying to get their own Government to stand up for Wales.