Comment: The Budget announcements hid a lack of ambition for rail by Labour

October 30’s Budget contained scant fare for rail supporters.

The best of it came when Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “We are committing the funding required to begin tunnelling work to London Euston station” for High Speed 2.

Committing to begin is not quite committing to deliver, but it’s at least a step forward from the previous government’s position of not funding anything further than Old Oak Common into London.

In other rail matters, Reeves referred to “a further electrification of services between Church Fenton and York by 2026”.

A casual listener might have taken this to be a new project with new money, but Reeves was speaking several weeks after Network Rail ran the first electric test train over this stretch of line, having spent the past few years wiring it.

Announcing this news in September, NR had said in a press release: “This is the second section of the route to be electrified as part of the Transpennine Route Upgrade, after the successful rollout of electric services between Manchester Victoria and Stalybridge this summer.”

This didn’t stop Reeves pledging electric services for Stalybridge by the end of the year.

Nevertheless, we should welcome her commitment to deliver NR’s Transpennine Route Upgrade, although her speech writers would have been better advised to perhaps mention the major remodelling work between Dewsbury and Huddersfield, which is happening right now.

Or she could have pledged to keep on wiring beyond Church Fenton to Leeds, because NR has already installed mast foundation piles, and it has recently secured Transport and Works Act Order permission to rebuild bridges on this line to allow for electrification.

Her pledge to have trains running between Oxford and Milton Keynes next year also followed a few days after the first test runs using Chiltern Railways and Great Western Railway stock.

This means it’s a project almost entirely funded and delivered by the previous government. As is the delivery of an extra platform at Bradford Forster Square and the electrification of Bolton-Wigan, both of which Reeves mentioned.

Once again, the casual listener would not realise that - particularly as Reeves prefaced her remarks on these projects by saying: “The last government made a number of promises on transport, but failed to fund them.”

In reality, the previous government funded and delivered most of her list. This all hides a distinct lack of ambition from the new Labour government.