Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:57 pm on 25 May 2022.
It was fascinating at the weekend to see a little evidence of blue water appearing in the leader of the Conservatives' speech—it wasn't so much an ocean or even a river, nor a stream; it was more a rivulet, or perhaps a rill, a tiny little trickle—in terms of HS2 funding. But, of course, we've also seen the announcements on Crossrail in recent years, and the Victoria line this weekend, and, you know, it's fantastic to see all that investment going into the south-east, but this has an effect in Wales; we've been starved of funding for levelling up in our railways over decades. I can actually say that we're finally getting the Tondu signalling getting done—15 to 20 years after it should have been, because it was taken away to the south-east of England to do investment there, but we're finally getting it done.
So, Minister, do you have any idea what sort of figure you could hand to the Conservative leader to say, 'In addition to HS2, here's the sum of money we need to level up investment in the railways in Wales'?