How did the Tories do? Part 2

In the spirit of accountability in politics, yesterday we looked at how many of the Tories’ 2010 transport manifesto promises were fulfilled in the 14 years they had to deliver them.

The 2010 parliament ran for its full five year term; then we entered the six years of elections every two years.

Don’t worry: we’re not going to analyse every manifesto. The 2015 manifesto was superseded by the 2017 election and the 2017 manifesto was overruled by the 2019 election.

But the 2019 parliament also ran for a full five years.

So no excuses: how did the Tories do?

Not very Smart

On re-reading it, you get the sense that the 2019 Tory manifesto was written with a mind to the possibility someone would do precisely what I’m doing.

In many ways, it’s longer and more specific than the 2010 manifesto, but several of the commitments are hard to pin down. If they were presented to me in an objectives meeting, I would be asking for them to be a lot more Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound.

But, even if they aren’t SMART (or smart?), let’s get cracking.

As with yesterday, this isn’t selective: we’ll review every word.

The transport section opens with this statement:

A key part of our plan to level up the UK’s cities and regions is to connect them. Leeds is the largest city in Western Europe without a light rail or metro system. And European cities are often more productive than our own in large part because they have better infrastructure.

This is absolutely true. It also fails to make any commitment to resolve the situation. Five years on, it is still true and Leeds still has no light rail or metro system and is not notably closer to having one.

Trains

Then we get into the commitments. First:

We will build Northern Powerhouse Rail between Leeds and Manchester and then focus on Liverpool, Tees Valley, Hull, Sheffield and Newcastle.

I think this must count as a fail. NPR was never going to be “built” in five years, so it’s hard to know what success would have looked like with this promise. But I think it’s fair to argue that we’d have had to have made more progress than we have.

We will invest in the Midlands Rail Hub, strengthening rail links including those between Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham, Coventry, Derby, Hereford and Worcester.

Again, it’s irritatingly non-specific. There’s no indication of what was expected to have been achieved by 2024. The reality is that almost nothing has happened other than an announcement of an intention to invest made at the end of 2023. Almost nothing has actually been spent, and the money is the reallocation of HS2 borrowing, which is acutely vulnerable to future political decisions. I don’t expect it to survive the budget.

Then:

We will also invest in improving train lines to the South West and East Anglia.

Well, that happened.

I mean, it couldn’t not.

Without any indication of an amount or a project, investment in improving train lines everywhere is an automatic part of Network Rail’s capital investment allocations.

Moving on, we then have a nice, specific one:

We will extend contactless pay-as-you-go ticketing to almost 200 more stations in the South East, meaning that 50 per cent of all rail journeys and almost all London commuter journeys can be completed using a contactless bank card.

OK, this is happening! Courtesy of my former colleagues at TfL, this is being delivered - albeit the original goal of launching it before the 2024 election was not achieved.

The next is slightly vaguer:

We will give city regions the funding to upgrade their bus, tram and train services to make them as good as London’s, with more frequent, better-integrated services, more electrification, modern buses and trains and smart ticketing – such as the vision proposed by Andy Street for the West Midlands.

*A tram in the centre of Birmingham. Didn’t have them in my day…*

So the good news is that long-term funding agreements were struck with City Regions. However, if you talk to the leaders of those cities, I really don’t think you’d find much consensus that the quantum of funding provided is anything close to the amount needed to make them “as good as London’s”.

Indeed, while capital funding was provided on a long-term basis, revenue funding was not. Meaning that even while medium-sized investment projects could take place, bus networks were being cut throughout the Tory term of office. Still, the principle of the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements (CRSTSs) was sound. Well done, Tories!

Now we move onto the first unambiguous fail:

The railways need accountability, not nationalisation. So we will end the complicated franchising model and create a simpler, more effective rail system, including giving metro mayors control over services in their areas.

Sorry, this really did not happen. No-one can argue that the muddle of rail contracts, DfT, RDG, GBRTT, Network Rail and the wider alphabet soup of rail governance that the Tories handed over was “simpler” or “more effective”. And not only did metro mayors not get control over services in their areas, but the ambition also evaporated. The Shapps-Williams Plan for Rail didn’t promise this, even if it had been delivered. Which it wasn’t. Only now is serious attention being given to properly resolving rail governance.

Roads

OK, now it’s time to switch modes. Let’s look at the roads:

We will make a £28.8 billion investment in strategic and local roads. We will invest £1 billion in completing a fast-charging network to ensure that everyone is within 30 miles of a rapid electric vehicle charging station. We will consult on the earliest date we can phase out the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars, while minimising the impact on drivers and businesses.

Another decently SMART set of objectives.

And the £28.8bn roads investment survived better than many of the 2019 manifesto promises. Certainly it survived better than the £1 billion in rapid chargers. This was launched in 2020 as the Rapid Charging Fund and then slipped and slipped until, finally, it became a pilot project open only to Motorway Service Area operators that closed in February 2024. #epicfail And while the £28.8bn did survive, I kinda wish it hadn’t. As an advocate for sustainable travel, it’s something of a shame that one of the first unambiguous ticks in the box is for a roads expansion in direct contravention of our carbon commitments.

Strikes

For the next one, the careful draftsmanship of much of the document was dropped:

We will require that a minimum service operates during transport strikes. Rail workers deserve a fair deal, but it is not fair to let the trade unions undermine the livelihoods of others.

If only they had promised to get minimum service legislation on the statute books, it would have been a pass. Unfortunately, the actual promise was to require a minimum service actually operates - and this turned out to be harder. When train operators (including operators owned by the Government) looked at the legislation, they concluded it would make strikes harder to manage and more likely to occur. It wasn’t used.

HS2

OK, now for the big one. The single biggest transport investment of our era is HS2. What did the Tories promise in 2019?

HS2 is a great ambition, but will now cost at least £81 billion and will not reach Leeds or Manchester until as late as 2040. We will consider the findings of the Oakervee review into costs and timings and work with leaders of the Midlands and the North to decide the optimal outcome.

Hmmm. They promised to “consider”.

Well, based on all the evidence that the Government’s actual HS2 policy was cooked up by Rishi Sunak and Andrew Gilligan in private, without any involvement from HS2, Network Rail or the National Infrastructure Commission, I think we can say that they failed to deliver this one. Actually considering would have been a good idea.

They also promised to “work with leaders of the Midlands and the North to decide the optimal outcome”. Well, again, we know this didn’t happen. Even Tory Andy Street announced he’d been close to resigning and was visibly furious at the sparcity of engagement. Labour’s Andy Burnham and the other Northern Mayors weren’t consulted at all.

It’s remarkable that their promise on HS2, which committed to neither building nor cancelling HS2, could still be a failure, but there it is.

Oh Dr Beeching

So if the plan for the big, new railway was a failure, how about the tiny old ones? Indeed, the ones that are no longer railways. The Conservatives noted that…

Connectivity is not just about the UK’s great cities. To help communities across the country, we will restore many of the Beeching lines, reconnecting smaller towns such as Fleetwood and Willenhall that have suffered permanent disadvantage since they were removed from the rail network in the 1960s.

I’ll be honest, I always found this one a bit… uggy.

I don’t think the Tory Government ever had any intention of funding the restoration of ‘many’ Beeching lines; the cost of which would have run into hundreds of millions.

But it takes a long time to reopen a railway, with lots of positive headlines about progress made along the way. Look, for example, at progress towards reopening the line to Fleetwood. After funding bids and feasibility schemes (all achievable at relatively low cost), the last big milestone occurred around a year before the Tories lost power.

Paul Maynard, the subsequently-disgraced local MP, said “The Government is now looking at the finer details of a tram-train scheme and how the project can be funded.”

Well, quite. How the project can be funded is indeed quite a big question. Though, arguably, a Government with a manifesto commitment to do just that would have made that a very simple exercise by, umm… funding the project. But, of course, that never happened: though we did get a nice letter from Huw Merryman outlining the route of the potential Tram-Train scheme that the Government failed to fund.

*It Willenhall be built (sorry, that's such a bad pun that when I read this back after writing it, it took me three attempts to even realise what the pun was. Trust me, it's there...)*

The station at Willenhall has made slightly more progress, though is not yet open. This one is made slightly easier by the fact that the railway never actually closed, so doesn’t need reopening. (The stations did close and do need reopening).

The people of Willenhall are relatively likely to get a new station. But 38 different schemes were funded for evaluation by the last Government. I’d be very surprised if any physical lines that were actually closed are actually reopened, and - very sensibly - the new Labour Government scrapped the programme.

This manifesto commitment is a complete fail and, I suspect, always intended to be so.

Is it a bird, is it a plane, no it’s superbus

We will invest in superbus networks with lower fares – flat fares in urban areas – and increased frequency. We will keep bus fares low, bring back and protect rural routes, and speed up your journeys. We will invest in electric buses, developing the UK’s first all electric-bus town.

“networks”, that’s the tricky one. There was definitely a Superbus network: in Cornwall. And. despite some teething troubles, it was genuinely transformational. But I don’t remember it being replicated everywhere.

The promise to keep bus fares low was also fulfilled, with a £2 fare cap rolled out nationwide.

The promise to bring back and protect rural routes was spectacularly not fulfilled, with routes closing rapidly across England.

The promise to develop the UK’s first all electric-bus town was not fulfilled by the time of the election, though Coventry claims to be on track.

Potholes

The Tories promised to fill in potholes, and they filled in potholes:

We will launch the biggest ever pothole-filling programme as part of our National Infrastructure Strategy – and our major investment in roads will ensure new potholes are much less likely to appear in the future.

However, it’s hard to argue that it was part of the National Infrastructure Strategy. The National Infrastructure Strategy was anchored in HS2, whereas the Tories cancelled HS2 and diverted the (borrowed) funds into filling in potholes. Hardly inspires confidence in long-term planning…

Bikes

We will support commuter cycling routes, so that more people can cycle safely to work and more families can go out together. We will create a new £350 million Cycling Infrastructure Fund with mandatory design standards for new routes. We will extend Bikeability – cycling proficiency training – to every child. And we will work with the NHS to promote cycling for healthier living.

As with so many areas of policy, the Tories’ position on cycling oscillated wildly during their time in office. Boris Johnson was never happier than when photographed on a bike: Rishi Sunak was more of a helicopter kind of guy. (he was happy on a bike saddle, but only if it was his Peloton).

The Boris Tories were ardently pro-cycling; under Rishi the Tories became the party of the motorist. But they did get many of their manifesto commitments delivered before the guillotine came down.

Planes

Parliament has voted in principle to support a third runway at Heathrow, but it is a private sector project. It is for Heathrow to demonstrate that it can meet its air quality and noise obligations, that the project can be financed and built and that the business case is realistic. The scheme will receive no new public money. More broadly, we will use new air traffic control technology to cut the time aircraft spend waiting to land, reducing delays, noise nuisance and pollution. We will also build on Britain’s pioneering work in electric and low-carbon flight.

I’m no expert on aviation, so I can’t comment on whether the new air traffic control technology promised happened. I do know that Britain’s pioneering work in electric and low-carbon flight was no more built on than many other countries’ similarly pioneering work. But the promise not to give Heathrow any more money for a third runway was kept.

In conclusion

It’s not a total failure.

The failure to either consider or consult on HS2 is a huge black mark. The cynicism of the Beeching reopenings is another one. But many of the smaller promises around bikes and buses were met. The promise for comprehensive rail reform was another major (and surprising) failure, which resulted in the Tories handing over a rail network far more dysfunctional that it needed to be and the very first line of the transport manifesto called out the productivity issues caused by the lack of a rapid transit system in Leeds. They were right, and Leeds still waits.

Tomorrow I’ll wrap up with an overall view on how the Tories did.

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