New money for old

I’m not sure what has left me more gobsmacked – the smoke and mirrors in the government’s claim of an extra £15bn for local transport in the North and Midlands or the credulity of the hacks for falling for it.

Lets start with some basic facts. City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements (CRSTS) have already been announced (by the Tories) for both 2022-27 and 2027-32. But the government has scrapped the second phase of CRSTS and rebranded it Transport for Cities (TCR)

This document, which was withdrawn today in a rewriting of history of which Stalin would be proud, set out £13.8bn of CRSTS from 2027-32, boosted by £5bn in October 2023 by the addition of cash that the Tories said they were saving by not taking HS2 beyond the midlands.

The BBC tamely points out that:

Sunak had also announced some of these same projects, including the development of a mass transit network in West Yorkshire, in his Network North plan, intended to compensate for the decision to scrap the HS2 line north of Birmingham.

Labour reviewed these projects when they came to power in July, arguing they had not been fully funded.

So the gist of the story is that the Tories had announced £14bn, Labour queried it, and came back and said was now £15bn. But it's the same money.

I was as sceptical as anyone about the “Network North” nonsense, where the Tories promised money nine years ahead based on savings from cutting something they didn’t have the money for in the first place – but is Labour any different?

Only two years (2027-28 and 2028-29) are likely to fall within next week’s spending review and the three subsequent years are in the next Parliament. Labour probably won’t set out its total spending envelope for those years for a good while yet.

According to the detailed spending profiles released by the Departmentfor Transport today, £10.2bn (two thirds) will fall in those last three years.

So, basically, Labour is doing exactly what it accused the Tories of doing – making what can only be described as “unfunded” announcements of billions of pounds for transport beyond its time in office or its spending plans.

And, interestingly, while the document claims that “Over £500 million of TCR funding has been brought forward into 2025-26 and 2026-27”, it also says that “Funding allocations for the final year of the CRSTS programme will be confirmed in due course”. 

This means not only that half a billion of the “extra” money depends on the CRSTS programme staying at existing levels last two years, but that it might actually be cut by more than the £500m that has allegedly been “brought forward”.