The confirmation that HS2 could cost up to £102.7 billion and may not fully open until the 2040s has triggered a fresh wave of anger in Wales — with politicians from Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Liberal Democrats and the Welsh Government all demanding the country receives the consequential funding it has been denied since the project was classified as an “England and Wales” scheme in 2015.
The classification has cost Wales dearly. Scotland and Northern Ireland both receive Barnett consequentials linked to HS2 spending. Wales does not — despite not a single mile of the railway crossing the border.
Plaid Cymru’s Westminster transport spokesperson Ann Davies MS was among the first to respond, describing HS2 as “shambolic from the outset” and warning that the latest cost increases would make Wales’s funding shortfall even worse.
“People are right to be angry at the severe lack of leadership and planning that has led us to this point,” she said. “But in Wales, we have an additional reason to be angry. HS2, a rail line connecting London and Birmingham, continues to be wrongly classified as an ‘England and Wales’ project.”
Davies said Wales was already owed around £4 billion because of the project’s classification — and warned that figure would rise as HS2 costs continued to spiral. “Every increase in HS2 spending further skews transport funding away from Wales, reducing the share we receive across the wider UK Transport Department budget and baking the underfunding of Welsh rail infrastructure into future spending decisions,” she said.
Welsh transport minister Mark Hooper MS said the figures confirmed Wales was being treated unfairly. “The latest figures showing HS2 will cost up to £102.7 billion make it clearer than ever Wales is being short-changed by the UK Government’s approach,” he said. “HS2 has been classified as an ‘England and Wales’ project — despite not a single centimetre of track being laid in Wales. This is not acceptable.”
Hooper said securing Wales’s fair share of funding was now a “central priority” of the Welsh Government’s relationship with Westminster — and that he would be pressing the case directly with UK ministers.
Welsh Liberal Democrat Westminster spokesperson David Chadwick MP accused the UK Government of compounding years of mismanagement with continued underfunding of Wales. “HS2 has become a textbook example of Government mismanagement,” he said. “At the very least, Wales must now receive the consequential funding it is owed so we can invest in desperately needed transport infrastructure here at home.”
Calls for HS2 consequential funding for Wales have previously been made by Welsh Labour politicians and the Welsh Conservatives. Reform UK Wales has been contacted for their reaction.
The classification of HS2 as an “England and Wales” project dates to 2015, when David Cameron’s Conservative government made the designation despite the line running nowhere near the Welsh border. The decision has been contested ever since — and with the project’s costs now almost double early estimates, the argument over what Wales is owed has never been more urgent.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs on Tuesday that she accepted the project had suffered an “obscene increase in time and costs” — blaming “the failures of successive Conservative governments.” She confirmed the maximum train speed had also been cut from 224mph to 199mph in an effort to reduce costs.
Ann Davies said she would meet Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport Keir Mather to press for the “funding and powers that Wales is owed.”
