It is a delight to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) on securing this important debate on rail infrastructure in Wales. Like her, I am a keen speaker on rail issues in this House, because they are so important for my constituency. I am pleased to be a vice-chair of the APPG for rail in Wales, which my hon. Friend chairs with great enthusiasm.
I look forward to seeing the global centre of rail excellence up and running in my hon. Friend’s constituency in 2025. The expertise of CAF, a Spanish-owned train manufacturer in Newport East, will feed into the work of the centre. Will the Minister look at that company’s work in manufacturing trains and trams? It is an excellent company that builds great trains in my constituency. Our Welsh Labour Government deserve huge credit for
co-ordinating and financing, alongside private sector partners, this very exciting project in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
I share my hon. Friend’s frustrations with the UK Tory Government’s chronic underfunding of our rail network. It is important to note that, as she says, much of Welsh rail infrastructure is not devolved. The buck stops with the UK Government, and Tory mismanagement has deliberately held back fair rail funding for Wales. It is often mentioned but worth repeating that Wales accounts for a significant 11% of the route network in England and Wales combined, but receives just 1.6% of rail enhancement funding. A conservative estimate of the underfunding of Welsh railways by 2029 is £2.4 billion, but it could be as high as £5.1 billion. That is shocking. Welsh taxpayers and rail passengers have been totally short-changed by this Government, who have wilfully had their eye off the ball when it comes to Wales.
We have seen the same with HS2, as my hon. Friend said very well. The HS2 project is wholly in England and will provide little benefit, if any, to any area of Wales. Indeed, by the UK Government’s own reckoning, HS2 is likely to cause economic detriment to areas of south Wales. Like my hon. Friend—and others, I am sure—I would be grateful if the Minister spelled out once and for all why HS2 continues to be classed as an England and Wales project, which deprives Wales of consequential funding through the Barnett formula. As my hon. Friends the Members for Neath and for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) have said, it is not just Labour Members who are querying that discrepancy. The Minister will be aware of the Welsh Affairs Committee’s report on Welsh rail, overseen by the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), which states:
“Using the Barnett formula, Wales’ funding settlement should be recalculated to apply an additional allocation based on the funding for HS2 in England.”
The Committee suggested that such a reclassification
“would help to ensure that Welsh rail passengers receive the same advantage from investment in HS2 as those in Scotland and Northern Ireland.”
It would be interesting to know which part of that the Minister disagrees with.
On the theme of deliberate political choices, it is worth emphasising that the Department for Transport continues to restrict the Welsh Government and Transport for Wales from providing additional cross-border services under the terms of the Wales and Borders franchise. Extra services between south-east Wales and south-west England would help to alleviate some of the pressure for my constituents, particularly those who commute between Newport, Severn Tunnel Junction and Bristol Temple Meads on services with a history of severe overcrowding. When I have flagged this issue with previous Rail Ministers, they have brushed it under the carpet. I do not understand why extra services cannot happen, so I would be grateful if the Minister explained.
I am a big supporter of the campaign for a new railway station—a walkway station—for Magor in my constituency. The campaign was spearheaded by the brilliant volunteers at the Magor action group on rail, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary and will visit Parliament again later this month. The fast-growing villages of Magor and Undy in my constituency have been without a station since the Beeching cuts of the ’60s, and there is huge local support for a station in the
area to support commuters travelling west to Newport and Cardiff, and east to Bristol. A new station for Magor would help to reduce congestion on local roads and relieve pressure on Severn Tunnel Junction in Rogiet, which has experienced an estimated 300% increase in station entries and exits over the past two decades.
The campaign for a new station for Magor is supported by Monmouthshire County Council and the Welsh Government, who have included it in plans for the South Wales Metro, as one of six new stations between Cardiff and Severn Tunnel Junction, alongside new stations in Somerton and Llanwern in Newport East. The Burns review, produced by the South East Wales Transport Commission, recommended these new stations, and the Burns delivery unit’s annual report sets out a timetable for the delivery of the stations by 2029. The new stations were also endorsed by the UK Government’s Union connectivity review as a means of improving cross-border transport links, and have the full backing of the Western Gateway regional partnership.
The Western Gateway 2050 rail vision document, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Neath, had its formal launch in Bristol earlier this year and highlighted that the new stations are eminently deliverable; related schemes and business cases are already in planning. The stations could have transformative benefits for the communities they serve, while helping to unlock the huge economic potential of the wider region. It is important to note that the rail vision document was endorsed by train operating companies including Great Western Railway, Transport for Wales and CrossCountry, as well as my neighbour, the Secretary of State for Wales, who welcomed the “ambition” of the report and acknowledged:
“Connectivity within South Wales and South West England is vital to growing our regional economy .”
Another issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Neath raised was an upgrade to the relief lines in south Wales, which is badly needed, and is an important enabling investment for the proposed new stations. The Department for Transport has yet to make funding available to Network Rail for that work. I am sure that there will be frustration about this in the Wales Office, too. In 2020, the Secretary of State outlined his support for an upgrade in his regular column for the Abergavenny Chronicle and the Monmouthshire Beacon. If he and his colleagues in the Wales Office want to join me and Labour Members in lobbying his Government colleagues on this, I would be grateful to have them on board. We need that upgrade to happen, and that funding to come forward.
I asked about the south Wales relief lines in Transport questions last month and the Secretary of State told me that the upgrade was
“being progressed to a full business case”—[Official Report, 20 April 2023; Vol. 731, c. 347.]
and will be subject to “careful consideration” by the Department. If the Minister could give us an update today, it would be appreciated, because the upgrade unlocks lots of other things.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Neath, I will finish on some good news. I am reliably informed that, from a week on Monday, an additional 65 new GWR services will run between London, Newport and Carmarthen each week on nice green, quick trains. That
is a good thing that we should focus on. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate, and I will listen to the Minister’s response with great interest. These are issues that Labour has raised for many years, and railway infrastructure in Wales has been neglected for too long by this Government. If they will not take action to address the legacy of neglect, a future Labour Government will be happy to step in. Passengers in Newport East and all of Wales deserve better than they have had over the past 13 years.
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