It is great to serve under your chairpersonship, Mrs Cummins, and a big congratulations to the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees). If, in the aftermath of the King’s coronation, the Government are serious about the Union, they should stop starving Wales of its resources and making it relatively poorer, year after year. The average wage in Wales is 72.7% of the UK level; it was £21,000 in 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics. By comparison, in Scotland, the average wage is 92% of the UK level, or £26,572. The driving force behind that is the fact that over the past 20 years, Scotland has had 8% of rail infrastructure investment and Wales has had 1.5%.
As my hon. Friends have pointed out, the Tory Government have decided to classify HS2 as applying to England and Wales, even though it does not go through Wales at all. In fact, while it will reduce journey times from London to Manchester from 2 hours and 10 minutes to 1 hour and 10 minutes, the journey time from London to Swansea will remain at 3 hours. We will therefore see a distribution of investment and jobs out of Wales. Despite that, we will not get a penny piece from HS2. Scotland will get an 8% investment, or £8 billion, in line with its population figures. Wales is being robbed of £5 billion, which works out at £3,700 per household.
At a time when the poorest nation in the Union is on its back, and receives 73% of average wages, we are to get even less. That is completely unacceptable and disgraceful. That is why the all-party Welsh Affairs Committee, on which I serve, unanimously agreed that HS2 would not make up for the history of starvation that we have suffered under the Tories, and indeed before this Government, but we thought that at least we would get our fair share in the future. The Committee unanimously agreed that the project should be classified as England only, so we would get our Barnett consequentials, as Northern Ireland and Scotland do. As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter), the Senedd unanimously—the Tories, Plaid and Labour—agreed that we should get our fair share. I have had meetings with Professor Mark Berry and the Minister who, to be fair, has been friendly and accommodating in those meetings, but the bottom line is that he needs to persuade the Government to provide the resources that we need to build a stronger, fairer and greener Union, in which Wales gets its fair share.
Even ignoring the rail situation, Scotland earns much more per head than Wales, yet it gets a higher Barnett consequential. For every £1.20 spent in Wales, £1.26 is spent in Scotland. That is not right; we need our fair share.