Labour abandons HS2 legal claims

AFTER huffing, puffing, and posing for years, the Welsh Government has quietly decided to drop the idea of issuing legal proceedings to secure a share of HS2 funding.

Labour ministers threatened to sue the UK Government for billions of pounds they claimed should have come to Wales. However, the Welsh Government has dropped the idea despite a determined campaign of empty sabre rattling.

Faced with the embarrassment of a UK Labour Government not delivering the demands of Labour in Wales and the Welsh Parliament, the Welsh Government quietly killed their long- threatened legal proceedings.

The UK Government denied Cardiff Bay consequential funding, claiming HS2 was an England and Wales project despite the railroad not entering Wales.

The Welsh Parliament unanimously backed calls for Wales to receive the funding. Although Plaid and Labour endorsed legal action, the Conservative Group stressed the need for negotiation instead of litigation.

In answer to a written question from Plaid Leader Rhun ap Iortwerth, Wales’s Counsel- General, Mick Antoniw, said: “Further consideration has been given and it has been concluded that the wide discretion the Treasury has would make any challenge unlikely to succeed.”

That is the legal position explained repeatedly to the Welsh Government by UK ministers over the last eighteen months.

The question now is why it took Labour ministers in Cardiff Bay so long to back down.

It’s not difficult to guess the answer.

Labour in Wales was content to stamp its feet and sulk with a Conservative Government in Westminster. However, the next General Election is likely to return Labour to power.

Despite Labour in Wales’s “commitment” to getting HS2 funding, Kier Starmer has pointedly ignored demands for a future UK Labour Government to deliver it.

In the last few months under Mark Drakeford, Wales’s Labour ministers carefully changed their language about pursuing a legal remedy to get a share of HS2 funding. Their angry demands for fairness and demonstrative fingerpointing continued. However, absent a pledge by Kier Starmer to deliver the money, the rhetoric about legal action disappeared into the meaninglessness of “exploring all options” and “making the case”.

In the meantime, Wales’s chances of gaining from the billions blown on HS2 vanished into ministerial hot air without a Cabinet member mentioning it.

Ahead of a Plaid Cymru amendment in the Senedd calling for the Labour Welsh Government to reverse its decision, Rhun ap Iorwerth said: “We would have expected better from Labour, a party that purports to be ‘ standing up for Wales’.

“Despite Labour Ministers’ claims about the unfairness of the lack of HS2 consequentials, it now seems that they are no more than weasel words when we see their ambivalence towards pursuing the matter.

“This is a worrying signal of things to come should Keir Starmer become the next Prime Minister. Giving Wales the silent treatment on HS2 speaks volumes about Labour’s attitude to fair funding.

“The absence of resolve shown by the Counsel General is tantamount to waving the white flag.

“If the Vaughan Gething premiership is going to be something other thanA the same old, the First Minister must reconsider his government’s decision to let the UK Government off the hook.”