‘On devolution, Labour is on the wrong lines’

When you are elected on a pledge of “change”, however vague the term, and then carry on trotting out the same policies of the previous government, you have a credibility problem. When those policies have already manifestly failed to deliver any improvements, are contrary to other parts of your manifesto, and make the party delivering them an unelectable disaster, then you have a much more profound problem. 

A case in point is the Leeds and Bradford tram. After four years of studies and consultations, the opening of the long-awaited Leeds tram system has been pushed back by at least two to three years, following (yet another) government review of the £2.5bn project. Another business case to be prepared. Another delay of two, three or more years. More opportunities lost. 

It’s difficult to describe just how pathetic this decision is when it comes to improving public transport and delivering the “change” it promised.

READ MORE: ‘Time is running out for HS2 in the North’

In an interview with the BBC last week, Mayor Tracy Brabin said: “We have the money. We have the political will. Everybody wants a mass transit system for West Yorkshire. We’re going to look at how to sharpen the process to do this in the devolved world…. this commitment to spades in the ground by 2028 – I still stand by that.”

Nevertheless, it increasingly looks as if trams will now not run in Leeds or Bradford before the late 2030s. Although the government has promised that this is a delay and not a cancellation, this has been said many times before. 

Leeds is the largest city in Europe without a light rail or metro public transport network, as the Conservative manifesto of 2019 pointed out, when it promised a “transport revolution” to address this (they must have forgotten that they had been in power since 2010). 

Like almost every other British city, trams were axed in the 1950s and early 1960s. Since then there have been various attempts to resurrect a mass rapid transit project in Leeds, including tram-trains, trolleybuses, very light rail, and more bus routes. And, following the cancellation of the eastern leg of HS2 in the Integrated Rail Plan published in 2021, the West Yorkshire region was promised funding for a mass transit system as a consolation.

There are parliamentary reports going back to 1987, and every few years since. All make the same recommendations for developing light rail schemes affordably and quickly. Nothing ever happens.

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In June last year Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced billions of pounds of investment in transport infrastructure in England. This included £2.1bn to start building the West Yorkshire Mass Transit programme by 2028 

Two years ago, former Transport minister Louise Haigh went to Dijon to learn lessons from there on how to build trams affordably and quickly. Clearly those lessons were too much for the government. In the UK we carry out more consultations and more business cases. We’re world leaders in both. But we don’t actually build any better transport systems.

The delay to the tram scheme is not just going against Labour’s promise to deliver growth, or to make the economy greener. It’s politically stupid. The West Yorkshire Built-up Area, which also includes Wakefield, Huddersfield and Halifax, is home to approximately two million people.

And the region is, or has been, a Labour stronghold. Tracy Brabin won the West Yorkshire mayoralty with over 50% of the vote in 2024. There are 24 parliamentary constituencies in West Yorkshire. All but three of them are Labour. Cabinet ministers including Rachel Reeves and Yvette Cooper hold seats in or near Leeds. Are they aware of the risks of letting the people of West Yorkshire down again?

Keir Starmer said recently, “My experience now as Prime Minister is of frustration. Every time I go to pull a lever there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, arms length bodies, that mean the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be, which is among the reasons I want to cut down on regulation generally and within government.”

Spot on Keir. 

So, here are some suggestions for ‘delivery’. 

If the government is serious about devolution, localism and ‘levelling up the North’, it should give local authorities more freedom to develop funding packages and new sources of local revenue. Give them more revenue raising powers, including French style transport taxes and allow local authorities to issue bonds so that they can invest in transport infrastructure.

Give regional mayors the powers to sign off on new tram projects, not the Secretary of State. This would speed up the delivery of projects and allow local elected leaders to champion a project throughout its planning. As Keir Starmer put it, ‘those with skin in the game know what’s best for their communities, and that does require us to be bold about pushing power and resource out of Whitehall.’

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And learn lessons from our neighbours. Danish immigration policy is of great interest to the Home Office at the moment, apparently. So send UK ministers and officials to France more regularly and ask why every French city with a population of 150,000 now has a tram or metro whereas 30 British cities of 150,000 or more have nothing. 

It’s time for Keir to deliver by devolving.

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