Spending review: New stations in £445m rail plan for Wales
But the Conservatives criticised the lack of support for a new M4 relief road, while Plaid Cymru said the cash was "merely a drop in the ocean compared to the billions Wales is owed".
The spending review will set out Reeves' plans for how public services will be funded for years to come.It was not clear on Tuesday evening what the impact of the announcement might be for the Welsh government's day to day spending, with cuts to budgets other than health, schools and defence expected.What Wales gets to spend is determined by a calculation based on how England-only departments - such as health and local government - are funded.It follows weeks of rows between Welsh and Westminster Labour, as concerns grew over the next Senedd election as polling suggested the party could lose its dominant role in Welsh politics.
According to the Treasury, the £445m will be spent on fixing level crossings, building new stations and upgrading existing lines, and is a combination of direct funding and cash for the Welsh government.It said it was the "cornerstone of the UK government's plan to address decades of underinvestment in critical infrastructure that has held back the Welsh economy".Rail funding has become a totemic issue in Welsh politics, with the lack of knock-on funding for Wales from High Speed 2 repeatedly raised with the First Minister Eluned Morgan.The first minister has publicly called for more rail spending from the UK government - one of a list of calls she has made on Sir Keir Starmer in recent weeks.Politicians say if High Speed 2 had not been classified as an England and Wales project, Wales would be owed between £431m - according to finance secretary Mark Drakeford - or multiple billions, according to Plaid Cymru and previous sums used by senior Labour figures including Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens.The extra money is not connected to HS2, although Labour was keen to make a symbolic link.Party sources, and former transport minister Lee Waters, said the sum is more than Wales would have had from the high speed rail project.
Welsh Transport Secretary Ken Skates and others have lobbied the UK government figures on a range of projects recommended by transport reviews looking at north and south Wales.They include new stations at Cardiff East, near the city's Newport Road, and in the west of Newport.There are hopes for a station in the eastern Newport suburbs of Somerton and Llanwern, and one that will serve the Monmouthshire villages of Magor and Undy, along with improvements to the mainline to allow local services to run.The stations were proposed by a review to boost rail transport in a region that has seen an increase in house building in recent years, but is connected via the congested M4 motorway and has a limited local railway service.The work is estimated to cost £385m.In north Wales, the Welsh government has been pushing for work on the Wrexham to Liverpool route to enable metro-style services, and upgrades on the north Wales mainline to boost the frequency of services.It also wants to commence development work to increase capacity at Chester - a hub for trains from north Wales.
Rachel Reeves could also commit more funding to help make coal tips in Wales safer.The first minister has previously said that £25m allocated to Wales at last year's October budget was not enough.
Looking ahead to the next Senedd election, a senior Labour figure said: "Labour's delivered what the Tories wouldn't, what Plaid can't and what Reform have no interest in."Former transport minister Lee Waters said: "Civil servants calculated that we lost out £431m in Barnett formula funding by the way the high-speed rail project was categorised by the Treasury. This £445 million makes good on that."We will have to wait to see what exact schemes the Chancellor is agreeing to but that figure would allow the priority schemes that the Welsh government and the UK Department of Transport had been working on to go ahead."Taken together this is a very significant package of rail investment, much more than we ever got from the Tories, and will make a real difference to people."We now need to make sure we get a change to how funding works for rail so that this is the beginning of a pipeline of investment into the future"Another Labour source said the "historic investment" was down to the "work of the Welsh Secretary, Jo Stevens, who has delivered Labour's promise to right the chronic underfunding of Welsh rail by the Tories".
Welsh Conservative Senedd leader Darren Millar called it a "kick in the teeth", complaining of no extra cash to enable an M4 relief road or for upgrades to the A55 and A40 trunk roads."The promised rail investment falls well short of the £1bn plus in rail funding planned by the previous UK Conservative government for the electrification of the North Wales line."Plaid Cymru's finance spokesperson Heledd Fychan said: "£445m is merely a drop in the ocean compared to the billions Wales is owed on rail, and what Labour – up until they came into power – used to agree with us on."The people of Wales have seen this injustice for what it is – Wales being short-changed by successive Westminster governments. This announcement won't change that."Additional reporting by Gareth Lewis
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
29 minutes ago
- Spectator
Are you a ‘working person'?
Tomorrow Rachel Reeves will deliver her big speech in the City. The annual Mansion House address is a chance for the Chancellor to set out her vision for the British economy. But amid a gloomy set of economic indicators (including two consecutive monthly GDP contractions) it is difficult to see what good news she can offer. Westminster would be alive with speculation about what she might announce – initially, there was talk of reforms to cash ISAs; now, attention has turned to the prospect of Reeves promising a 'new Big Bang' by slashing regulation on financial services – however everyone is busy trying to work out who are the 'working people' the Labour government has pledged not to raise taxes for? Are they – as Heida Alexander argued over the weekend – 'people on modest incomes'? Or, as Darren Jones suggested today, 'anyone that gets a payslip, basically'? That is quite a difference in definition – so who exactly is a 'working person'? James Heale speaks to Tim Shipman and Michael Simmons. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
Telegraph
40 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Shard flats left empty after Reeves's non-dom tax raid
Luxury flats at the top of The Shard have been left empty after Rachel Reeves's non-dom tax raid drove away wealthy buyers, the property's Qatari backers say. Real Estate Management (Rem), which is owned by the State of Qatar, said that it was 'very disappointed' with lack of progress made on letting out 10 luxury flats on the 72-storey skyscraper's upper levels, which are priced at between £30m and £50m each. Rem said Ms Reeves's tax changes for wealthy individuals was 'driving many such investors away' from Britain and hammering demand for ultra-expensive property. 'The long-heralded change in UK tax rules applied to overseas residents, which were accelerated by the current UK administration to apply from April 2025, [has] had the feared impact of driving many such investors away from the UK to escape double taxation of their worldwide income,' it said in accounts. 'This group of wealthy overseas investors has been the core constituency for super-prime lettings in the UK.' Ms Reeves abolished the non-dom status in April this year, while also bringing in sweeping inheritance tax changes. Those changes have been blamed for driving some of Britain's wealthiest people away from the country. The flats, on floors 53 to 65 of The Shard, were thought to have been priced between £30m and £50m after the skyscraper opened in 2012. They have been empty ever since, amid speculation that Qatar's royal family kept the flats for their own use while visiting London. Rem is an investment adviser tasked with letting out the flats. The properties are owned by another Qatar-backed entity, LBQ Four. The flats were made available for occupation in late 2023 after undergoing construction works, but despite 'every effort' to let them their availability coincided with a 'severe contraction' in the ultra-prime property market, Rem said. Rem's portfolio includes the Shard Quarter, The News Building and Park House on Oxford Street. It also owns The Shard's viewing gallery, which has reported 'difficult trading'. Qatari Diar, the property division of the state's sovereign wealth fund, bought 80pc of the skyscraper in 2008 after the project ran into financial difficulties. It later increased its stake to 95pc, with developer Sellar Property Group owning the remainder. The difficulties at The Shard capped off a difficult period for Rem, with pre-tax profit falling from £8.1m to £7.5m in the year ending December 2024. Rem also said it was struggling with recruiting and keeping skilled managerial and building staff, as well as the workforces of business partners contracted to undertake services across its property portfolio. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, Donald Trump's tariffs and falling commercial property values had created a 'brew of uncertainty, investor hesitancy and a lack of stability', it said.
ITV News
42 minutes ago
- ITV News
What's in the government's £500m plan to tackle child poverty?
The government has announced a new £500 million fund aimed at improving the life chances of vulnerable children facing poverty. The money will be used to tackle issues faced by children and their families, such as school absence, mental health and criminal behaviour. The government has described it as the "world's largest fund of its kind", but how will it be paid for, and how will it work? What is the Better Futures Fund? The fund announced by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves aims to help up to 200,000 children facing poverty by funding local projects that tackle things like addiction and school absence. ITV News understands the money will be invested in "social impact bonds", a system where private investors are encouraged to put money into certain schemes and recoup their costs from the government when a particular target is met. The announcement has also received cross-party support, with Conservative ministers saying this builds on the "Life Chances Fund" they implemented while in government - a scheme that received £70 million of funding at the time. The scheme also bears some resemblance to the previous Labour government's "Sure Start" support, aimed similarly at early years assistance. Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown had recently called for further investment of this sort, to the tune of £1 billion. While the government is putting in half of this amount, it hopes councils, investors and philanthropists will match this. The fund will run for ten years and be overseen by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, with more operational details due to be set out in time. What sort of projects are being invested in? The money will be used to fund a wide variety of projects targeting specific issues facing vulnerable children. These fall into categories like: school absence, addiction, mental health, education, and criminal activity. The Skill Mill is one project which received funding under the Conservatives' "Life Chances Fund" - the precursor to Labour's Better Futures Fund. The Skill Mill provides support to more than 243 young ex-offenders across eight local authorities by offering them paid real work experience, recognised qualifications, and advice. The reconviction rate of people they have supported is just 8% compared to 63% for young offenders outside of the scheme with 11+ convictions. The founder of The Skill Mill, David Parks, offered his backing to The Better Futures Fund, saying it represented a "real shift" in the support for to vulnerable children and their families. "By moving the focus from inputs and activities to meaningful person-centred outcomes, we create more impact for individuals and better value for society," he said. "At The Skill Mill, we've seen the transformation in the young people who have offended and how much they value the second chances they have been given. "Partnering for outcomes holds the key to creating support and programmes that really work, solving some of society's biggest challenges. Everyone wins.' How will Rachel Reeves pay for it? The announcement comes against a backdrop of tight finances, a weak global economic picture, and a blackhole in the chancellor's budget after the government's welfare reform climbdown. Furthermore, many MPs, as well as voters, are urging the government to lift the two-child cap on support currently in place. Supporters of lifting this cap claim it would be the single biggest thing the government could do to lift children out of poverty, but it would come with a roughly £3.5 billion price tag. The £500 million being invested in the Better Futures Fund is significantly cheaper, but still only half of that recommended by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Speaking on Monday, Reeves claimed previous projects of this nature have drawn in at least as much money in private investment, and they hope to achieve the same in this instance. The chancellor hopes that, as well as this additional investment, the positive effects of this scheme will be felt for "many years to come", ultimately saving the public money in the long term. What has the chancellor said? Trailing the announcement, Reeves said: 'I got into politics to help children facing the toughest challenges. This fund will give hundreds of thousands of children, young people and their families a better chance. For too long, these children have been overlooked.' Speaking on Monday from a school in Wigan, the chancellor said she could already see the impact of programmes operating but that the benefits would be felt "for many years to come" in better jobs, wages and educational attainment. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, whose department will oversee this scheme and accompanied the chancellor to make this announcement, said: 'This groundbreaking Better Futures Fund represents a major step in partnering with the impact economy, which has long played an important role in strengthening communities and driving inclusive growth. 'As part of the plan for change, we're bringing together Government, local authorities, charities, social enterprises and philanthropists to create a powerful alliance that will transform the lives of vulnerable children and young people. 'We owe them the best start in life. 'Together we will break down barriers to opportunity, ensuring those who need support most aren't left behind and have the chance to reach their potential.'
