Rail industry responds to Chancellor’s Statement

8 July 2020

Today the Chancellor presented his ‘Plan for Jobs’ to Parliament, setting out the Government’s strategy for an economic recovery.

Darren Caplan, Chief Executive of the Railway Industry Association, said: “Although today’s plan set out a strong strategy for job retention, many in the railway industry will be disappointed that Chancellor Rishi Sunak didn’t mention anything about new rail infrastructure in his speech.

“The Government has said it is seeking to ‘build build build’ and has recently spoken of an ‘infrastructure revolution’, calling publicly for shovel-ready projects to help reboot a green economy post-Coronavirus. Yet, we are concerned that no accelerated rail infrastructure projects were mentioned today, such as those in the Government’s own list of 58 rail enhancement schemes directly within its power to speed up.

“The Chancellor specifically unveiled a “Plan for Jobs” – yet in the current circumstances few sectors can generate jobs and GVA as quickly as rail. UK rail has kept going throughout lockdown, enabled key workers to get to workplaces, and has shown it can continue to safely maintain and build track and train – even in difficult lockdown conditions – essential to the UK’s connectivity and levelling-up agenda. So whilst we and rail supply businesses will welcome the Chancellor’s job retention measures, we will continue to campaign for the Treasury to ‘Speed Up Rail Enhancements’, benefiting not just the railway industry, but also UK plc, its communities and long-term connectivity in the difficult months ahead.”

Notes to Editors

 

  1. The Chancellor’s Plan for Jobs can be found here
  2. SURE Campaign: This week, the Railway Industry Association (RIA) launched stage two of its ‘Speed Up Rail Enhancements’ campaign, calling on the Treasury to speed up a £10 billion list of 58 projects in the Rail Network Enhancement Pipeline. More about the campaign can be found here.
  3.  About RIA: The Railway Industry Association (RIA) is the voice of the UK rail supply community. We help to grow a sustainable, high-performing, railway supply industry, and to export UK rail expertise and products. We promote and represent our members’ interests to policy makers, clients and other stakeholders in the UK and overseas. RIA has 300+ companies in membership in a sector that contributes £36 billion in economic growth and £11 billion in tax revenue each year, as well as employing 600,000 people—more than the workforce of Birmingham. It is also a growing industry with the number of rail journeys expected to double over the next 25 years and freight set to grow significantly too. RIA’s membership is active across the whole of railway supply, covering a diverse range of products and services and including both multi-national companies and SMEs (60% by number). RIA works to promote the importance of the rail system to UK plc, to help export UK expertise around the globe and to share best practice and innovation across the industry.