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Part 3 - The dispute over figures

  • Writer: Sam Knight
    Sam Knight
  • May 31, 2019
  • 3 min read

Updated: Jun 1, 2019

Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling (2019) has said that ‘it is a great shame that half a century of underinvestment means cities in the North and Midlands don’t just have poor rail connections to the rest of the UK - they have poor connections to each other. These inefficient links have meant that opportunity is less accessible for people than in other parts of the country, such as the south-east’.


Chris Grayling (2017a) had previously stated that rail investment will be used to ‘ensure this government delivers on its promises to spread wealth beyond London and the south-east’, but in the year 2016/2017 the House of Commons library (Rutherford, 2018, pp.7) found that London continues to receive the largest share of transport spending per head (see figure 1). Analysis by Luke Raikes (2018, pp.6, see figure 2), a Senior Research Fellow at the thinktank IPPR North, shows that London’s share of transport spending relative to the rest of the country has actually increased since 2014. Raikes and Corrigan (2018) report that since 2014 (when the Northern Powerhouse was launched) transport spending in London has increased by twice the amount it has increased in the North of England. Therefore, the Government has failed in its commitment to address the imbalance in rail infrastructure investment, meaning that London has powered further ahead of the rest of the country.


Figure 1 – House of Commons Library Table on Transport Spending per person 2016/2017 (Rutherford, 2018, pp.7)

Figure 2 – Luke Raikes’s (IPPR North) analysis of transport spending per person from 2012/2013 to 2016/17

(Raikes, 2018, pp.6)



The Government though disputes the accusation that London receives the greatest share. The Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling (2017b), has argued that ‘there are regional discrepancies, but they are nothing like those suggested by critics’, arguing that according to analysis by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (2017, pp.46) London no longer receives the highest transport spending per capita. These figures are however disputed.


Luke Raikes (2018, pp.1), argues that they understate spending on London. This is because spending made by Transport for London is excluded (Raikes, 2018, pp.1), as since 2017 the grant that they used to receive from central Government has now been replaced by London being able to retain business rates, this has only reinforced London’s advantage though. Having this power has given London the ability to part-finance projects like Crossrail, which other regions would have been unable to afford (O’Brien, 2018, pp.22). London is expected to gain an additional £240 million by 2018/2019, with this increasing as London continues to grow (Raikes, 2018, pp.15). This is money that would have previously been redistributed to the rest of the country.


In addition, only spending planned up to 2020/21 is included (Raikes, 2018, pp.1), this is an issue because as the Transport Select Committee highlighted ‘some of the planned spending after 2021 is very much geared towards London’ (30 April 2018, HC 582, Q400). Raikes’ (2018, pp.4, see figure 4) own analysis of planned Government infrastructure investment from 2017 onwards, shows that London continues to receive the greatest share of rail investment per person. This means that despite the promises made by the Government, an imbalance still exists in rail infrastructure investment between London and the rest of the country.


Figure 3 – Luke Raikes’s analysis of planned Government infrastructure investment

(Raikes, 2018, pp.4)


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