Everyone can agree that the delivery of HS2 has been shambolic. The high-speed line from central London (ish) to the north of England, has for a decade been rightly derided as an outrageously expensive endeavour that has already failed in its most basic aim of levelling up England. But while the betrayal of the north of England over HS2 has been well documented, chances are you don’t know this: Wales has been betrayed just as much as the disappointed regions of England, if not more.
I don’t blame you for not being aware of the Great Welsh Train Robbery. Hidden among thousands of impenetrable Treasury papers, the tale takes some unpicking. But unlike the experience on most UK train journeys, it is worth the wait.
In 2015, David Cameron’s government decided to define HS2 as an “England and Wales project”. In technical jargon this means they applied a 0% comparability factor for Wales to HS2 spending. That may seem hard to decipher, but what you need to know is this: though it sounds fairly innocuous, designating HS2 an “England and Wales project” was utterly devastating to Wales because it meant that Cymru did not receive any consequential funding from the project.
Compare this with Scotland and Northern Ireland, which were each treated to a delightful comparability factor of 100%. This meant that for every £1 spent on HS2, they both got a population-based share of all of it. It is hard to put an exact figure on how much this will add up to, because the UK government keeps axing parts of the project and the costs keep rising, but roughly, Scotland will bank in the region of £6.5bn-£7bn. If........