GB Rail Bill: for Wales, see England!

A quick, partly positive blog re: the achievement of Welsh Government (WG) & Transport for Wales (TfW) in delivering the new Taffs Well tram-train depot and South Wales Metro; a hark back to earlier WG calls for devolution of rail; and a quick reflection on the Great British Railway (GBR)Bill submitted to parliament at Westminster this week.

I submitted a more formal version of this blog to the Westminster Transport Committee’s review of the draft GB Railways Bill in November 2025...

…and this on the currently “unfundable” £4Bn “Wales Rail Enhancement Pipeline“!!

On the latter, in short, “for Wales, see England!” The bill, which is good on overall rail industry ecosystem simplification, vertical integration, etc. does not address the fundamental issues impacting the rail network in Wales. Spoiler alert, it’s not the need for vertical integration and simplification (which is self-evident), it’s:

#1 lack of Welsh Government control over its own network AND

#2 decades of relative underfunding that can be counted in the £Bns vs the rest of the UK.

A dysfunction locked into the current constitutional arrangements and specifically the lack of devolved powers over rail.

I am going to be brief here, as I have covered much of this elsewhere. So, for further data and evidence in support of my case, please see the references at the end of this article, and certainly take time to read these first two if you are interested:

The rail industry, Wales & HS2 – and the Barnett Formula (Oct 2024)

Post CSR, Rail Investment and Wales (updated!) – Mark Barry’s blog site

#1 A new tram-train depot and a Metro – Well done WG & TfW

On Friday 14^th November I attended an event in Taffs Well to formally mark and celebrate the opening of the South Wales Metro tram-train depot. From my spark of an idea in 2011 to a fully flamed metro by the end of next year is a testament to senior WG officials and Ministers (especially: Carwyn Jones, Mark Drakeford, Ken Skates, Eluned Morgan, Edwina Hart, Rebecca Evans, Lee Waters, Julie Morgan) who held their nerve on this challenging and potentially transformative project. One also has to applaud the efforts of the team at TfW led by James Price in delivering this programme.

The circa £1Bn plus of capital investment, mainly by WG (I estimate circa £150~200m each from UK Gov and European funding) makes the case for properly and fully devolving rail. There is no doubt in my mind that this project would not be happening without the existence of a Welsh Government and Senedd. The UK Government had no interest in such, often seeing Wales as a peripheral distraction from more important and bigger shiny projects in England.

Starker still, as rail is not devolved, the WG funding for the Metro has to come out of a block grant that has no provision for such expenditure, and so has to come from funds intended for devolved areas like health and education. When you add this often-unnoticed feature to the long-term UK Gov underspend, one has to ask why Westminster/Whitehall has allowed this funding double whammy to persist. Surely, the advent of GBR would see this constitutional and funding anomaly addressed?

#2 Calls for devolution – long standing and fully evidenced

The calls to address this dysfunction are not new; I first raised it in my evidence and presentation to the Westminster Transport committee for the Cardiff Business Partnership in 2011 – at the same time I highlighted the likely impact of HS2 in that regard.

In 2019, the Transport Minister, Ken Skates published, “A Railway for Wales Meeting the needs of future generations” (which I helped prepare).

Its opening statement by the Minister was…

“Our vision for full rail devolution will enable us to deliver a transformative railway development programme across Wales that meets the needs of future generations.”

Roll on a few years and this was Ken Skate’s quote in the November 2025 Department for Transport (DfT) Press Release, Journey to Great British Railways gathers steam with landmark legislation – GOV.UK…

…. “I very much welcome the introduction of the UK Railways Bill, which will improve rail services and deliver a more integrated, accountable and passenger-focused railway across the UK. It is also a significant step forward in our collaborative approach to rail reform, and I am confident that our continued joint working with the UK government will ensure the delivery of a modern, integrated railway that works for passengers in Wales and throughout the United Kingdom.

Today, the Minster seems a little less overt in his views. I suspect because those views have had the edges knocked of them by dealing with Labour HQ in London and a general distain of Whitehall bureaucracy toward this festering Welsh issue.

Nor is this new, as long ago as 2010, the Senedd Enterprise and Learning Committee found….

This inquiry has left us with the distinct impression that Wales is not getting its fair share of investment in rail infrastructure or getting it fast enough: programmes to electrify track, to improve stations and to upgrade rolling stock seem destined to reach Wales well behind other parts of the UK.

This is not a new issue – and over the decades it costs Wales £Bns in capital investment in its rail network relative to the rest of the UK

**#3 GBR, “for Wales, see England”, it does not address the fundamental issue**

So, what of the GBR Bill – does it address Wales key issues. Well, as I have written before, much of the bill is to be welcomed. The industry simplification and vertical integration is long overdue. But for me, it’s still very much in keeping with the Victorian Encyclopedia Britannica entry “for Wales, see England”. The fundamental funding issue is unresolved and there is a limited provision for Welsh Government to control its own rail network and services.

I have pulled out some excerpts from the bill to exemplify the difference between the powers and influence of the Scottish Ministers Vs Welsh Minister. Whereas Scottish Ministers have their statutory powers laid out in the bill, Welsh Ministers and Welsh Government have none, and are just consultees – their “powers of direction” are subsumed into those deployed by the London Westminster Secretary State for Transport. We know, after 30 years of underfunding, what that looks like!

The following from A railway fit for Britain’s future: government response – executive summary – GOV.UK, exemplifies the differences in treatment between Wales and Scotland.

GBR will be steered by the objectives and outcomes set by the Transport Secretary via a new long-term rail strategy (LTRS) and by Scottish ministers within the Scottish Government’s rail strategy. The Railways Bill will set out a new Periodic Review (PR) funding process, under which the Transport Secretary and Scottish ministers will set a statement of objectives and will sign off GBR’s integrated business plans. The Transport Secretary (as the funder of GBR’s infrastructure in Wales) will be required to consult Welsh ministers in the preparation of both the LTRS and her statement of objectives to ensure Welsh ministers have an opportunity to influence GBR’s objectives in Wales and promote alignment with their objectives for Transport for Wales (TfW).

The bill is in reality limited to requiring the Uk Government and DfT Minsters to consult Wales (we have had 30 years of that to little effect). However, without substantive statutory underpinning, this is just empty and leaves Wales short changed and without sufficient levers to fund and implement its own transport policy.

Whereas Scottish Ministers can prepare their own version of a Long Term Rail Strategy (LTRS) and produce a statutory High-Level Output (HLOS) specification for Network Rail (as they have since rail powers were devolved to Scotland in 2005), Welsh Ministers can have a chat with the London Transport Minister to request he/she considers Wales’s requirements in an “England and Wales” LTRS and HLOS.

This frankly is not good enough.

More alarming it leaves Wales exposed to the real possibility of a 2029 Secretary of State for Transport in Westminster from a party that has little interest in Wales and even less in public transport. This is an unacceptable risk that can only be mitigated by a more substantive constitutional change!

A further piece of PR from DfT sets out some welcome tinkering re: the role of Welsh Government, the Wales Rail Board, and it oversight of enhancements in Wales. These will be set out in a Memorandum of Understanding(MoU) between WG and DfT, and a partnership agreement that will be developed between Great British Railways (GBR) and Transport for Wales (TfW) for the Wales and Borders area.

Whilst this manifests a welcome recognition of some of the issues we face in Wales, it is not, as I stated above, an effective statutory basis to progress. Anything in an MOU or a partnership agreement can be ignored and does not address the long-term funding issue. Furthermore, we don’t want a GBR in Wales that is just a small business unit lost and marginalised in a much bigger England focussed organisation.

According to the timelines set out in Accessible railways roadmap – GOV.UK, this bill may receive Royal assent next summer. For Wales, much needs to change and I hope this becomes a political issue in advance of the Senedd elections in May 2026.

A reminder of the funding issue

For me, Wales voted for devolution in 1997…. why has rail stubbornly resisted this democratic mandate (yes I know about 2005). The funding issue is inextricably linked to this democratic deficit. You can follow my links to see evidence of £Bns of underfunding by UK Government of Wales rail network that has resulted (Including WGs 2021 analysis of historical underspend); I also devoted a whole chapter of my book setting out the issues and evidence.

To focus and just looking ahead from the recent Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) and reviewing documents like Statement of Funding Policy etc, one can see the persistence of the problem. For example:

In June, the CSR set out to 2029/30 commitments to rail enhancements in England of over £34Bn. In contrast, Wales is getting circa £300M for enhancements to the NR asset on the Wales Route over the same period (which I welcome). That’s a circa 100:1 ratio, despite the best efforts of Jo Stevens, Eluned Morgan, Mark Drakeford and Ken Skates, as well as some sympathetic Whitehall officials
To 2040 there will likely be £80BN of rail enhancement in England (finish HS2, TRU, East-West Rail, etc). However, Wales (despite TfW having circa £4Bn of enhancement in development) has only circa £500M on the DfT To Do list. A population share should be more like £4Bn. Scotland and NI benefit appropriately given their block grants reflect the fact that rail is devolved with the Barnet formula providing ongoing adjustment).

If, as it should, rail was devolved, then out of the DfT annual budget of ~£37Bn, of which circa £23Bn is for rail (with NR costs of ~£16Bn pa and HS2 ~£7Bn pa), then I estimate this should trigger a block grant adjustment to Wales of circa £1.1Bn pa, and leave the DfT Barnett comparability factor for Wales back at a healthy 90+% (like Scotland and Northern Ireland )

Whilst this figure would have to cover the circa £400M for NRs Wales Route OMR, Core Valley Lines (CVL) etc, it still leaves plenty of headroom to invest much more in Wales rail network than is the case under the current arrangements. This is the issue that needs resolving.

What needs to happen?

Time has long since passed for debate, but sadly, evidenced argument presented to Whitehall and Westminster continue to fall on deaf ears. Wales needs nothing less than full devolution of rail, the statutory right to prepare and issue its own LTRS and HLOS, and an appropriate block grant adjustment.

Furthermore, delivering coherent Welsh Government (WG) transport policy (which unlike in England is much more focussed on multi-modal integration – especial rail and bus) is almost impossible given a major component of transport service delivery (the Network Rail asset) is the responsibility of the UK Government.

In Wales, GBR needs to be a separate corporate entity responsible to Welsh Government working much more closely with TfW (in fact it should probably merge to deliver vertical integration in Wales as is the case via GBR and TOCs in England!) and with appropriate cross border arrangements (see below – as is common around the world!).

With these constitutional and organisational changes in place, a cross-border MoU and partnership agreement can work…but not without.

It seems to me that only a robust political intervention can address this issue.

Finally, a metaphor for the “foot dragging” in addressing these issues

If anyone one raises the naïve, “but the border” reason to argue against devolving rail powers to Welsh Government, please don’t accept it; it reflects poorly on that person’s knowledge of the issue and especially their ignorance of how other countries manage cross border rail infrastructure and services. Such an argument suggests that person has not been on a train service in Europe which only work with sophisticated and equitable cross border arrangements for managing infrastructure and services! PS the Basel tram-system straddle three countries – one of which is not even in the EU. How on earth do they manage!? But of course, we can’t do that here! Such patronising and clearly ill-informed hand waving dismissal of Wales’s issues reflects poorly on Westminster and Whitehall.

As an example, let’s look at the Marches line (which straddles the England and Wales border), which those resisting change often quote. This is a vital connection for Wales and supports, even in its current constrained status, TfWs most profitable services. However, from a London/Whitehall perspective (who are responsible for the asset and enhancement thereof) it is at best of marginal interest and probably invisible to many Whitehall officials and Westminster politicians. This line has some of the oldest signalling in the UK, which at Shrewsbury are over 100-year-old! If I was in Hereford or Shrewsbury, I would much prefer WG to be responsible for this vital rail asset, as they are far more likely to invests/enhance it (because of its strategic importance to north-south rail connectivity in Wales) than the DfT/Uk Government.

PS I also address the “but the liability” foot dragging in my book “How to build a Metro”.

In summary, the UK needs a fair method of dealing with the historic liabilities associated with economic infrastructure, including the rail network (and coal tips!), which pre-date devolution and go back decades, if not centuries and which are therefore a UK Government issue. Treatment of historic liabilities should not be conflated with discussion of where powers and funding over rail enhancement investment reside.

To conclude…

I think the above can be summed up in a few quotes from Lauren McEvatt, Lee Waters and Laura McAllister, in their recent Wales Politics Podcast .

Wales is small and poor and seen as largely irrelevant in Whitehall. It’s simply exposed the reality of the union, that it is focussed on England. It is not interested in Wales and that hasn’t changed.

Fundamentally there is a lack of respect, Wales is not taken seriously (by Westminster) as a nation, as a national unit and it is derided in various different ways.

There’s a real thoughtlessness (in Westminster) and it is thoughtlessness that will cause Wales to one day turn around and say “I can think of myself better than you ever think of me, and therefore there is no point in me staying here”

It seems to me that Welsh Labour is stuck between a rock and hard place and has no leverage to address this ongoing constitutional dysfunction. The Conservatives are even less interested, and I am pretty sure Reform are not even aware there is a problem!

This persistent and festering issue, and Westminster indifference to it, will ensure that Wales continues to be sub optimally treated and funded in respect of rail. This can’t continue, can it?

What was a trickle in Caerphilly will become a Tsunami at next May’s Senedd election….and this is one the reasons why!

PS – The wider UK capital funding issue

As many others have found, the UK’s major city regions are undercapitalised in terms of Public Transport when compared to their European counterparts? This impacts the economic performance of places like Leeds, Bristol Manchester, etc as well as the Cardiff Capital Region, Swansea Bay, etc.

The reason seems fairly clear to me. UK Governance, powers, funding decisions and accountability thereof, are far too centralised in and around Whitehall and the Treasury. I am sure the decision to value-engineer the Portishead line project down to 1tph was made not in Bristol, but in London. And yet had Bristol been in France it would have had a tram network 30 years ago.

UK spending per capita 2014-2019

This reason is manifest when one looks at capital investment per capita across the UK (see figure below – which also overstates Welsh number given HMT allocate some capital investment in HS2 to Wales!). It is clear that London has been in receipt of far more capital investment per capita than anywhere else in the UK – at least double in most cases. So, it’s no surprise that higher GDP/capita has followed that investment, with everywhere else in the UK appearing to lag behind, so exacerbating national and regional imbalances in the UK economy.

The UKs economic problems are at their root, constitutional and need to be addressed if we want to see a more equitable and balanced economy. You can’t level up (or whatever we are calling it now) through a little more cash being dispensed through politically compromised Westminster largesse. A handout economy and a handout constitution based entirely around Westminster and Whitehall, has not and can never really work for everyone and every place on this island, especially in Wales. We have to formulaically invest equitably in economic infrastructure across the UKs major urban areas.

This assertion is consistent with the key findings of the Eddington Report, commissioned by the UK Government in 2006, which was that:

“there is clear evidence that a comprehensive and high-performing transport system is an important enabler of sustained economic prosperity”
“transport networks support the productivity and success of urban areas and their catchments, by getting people to work, supporting productive labour markets and allowing businesses within the area to reap the benefits of agglomeration.”

The over centralised nature of UK government bureaucracy and the power of the Treasury in London is part of the problem. The current arrangements have resulted in the devolved governments, especially in Wales with more limited responsibilities, being generally more administrative rather than strategic. They have responsibility for spending functions (like Health, Education, etc which generally have a higher per capita need than the UK average), rather than having full access to the more fundamental levers of power, especially fiscal, and for Wales, economic infrastructure like rail, energy, water, The Crown Estate, etc. Whilst Scotland has a little more freedom and leverage, the regions and major cities of England are even more constrained than Wales.

PS Just had this (the English Rail devolution process) pointed out to me….Westminster/Whitehall are just trolling Wales now aren’t they!