Press watchdog rejects Welsh Tory leader’s Manchester HS2 report complaint

The press watchdog, IPSO, has rejected Welsh Tory leader Andrew RT Davies’ complaint against a news website over its coverage of the Manchester HS2 cancellation announcement.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision last October to cancel the Birmingham to Manchester leg of the high-speed railway meant a £5bn funding loss for Wales, which could have benefitted from a proportional increase in soending under the controversial Barnett Formula.

Davies had complained to IPSO over a story on independent website Nation.Cymru headlined “£5bn rail funding loss for Wales ‘above my pay grade’, says Andrew RT Davies.”

It reported on a BBC Radio Wales interview which Mr Davies had carried out, in which he was asked about the possible loss of funding.

In the interview, Davies was asked: “You as Conservatives in the Senedd are already calling for Wales to get what people say is a fair share of spending on HS2 because it’s an England project in terms of the track being laid but classified as England and Wales by the Treasury. So, no extra cash for Wales because of that. If that leg doesn’t go ahead, it makes that argument even stronger doesn’t it that Wales should be getting some money from HS2?”

Davies replied: “Well we have made the case time and time again that Wales should get the consequentials from HS2. It’s above my pay grade whether the second leg of HS2 should go to Manchester.”

Davies argued that the decision to go ahead, or scale back HS2, was the prerogative of the Prime Minister, Chancellor, and the wider UK Cabinet; and that it was this decision he described as being “above [his] pay grade.”

The Welsh politician also said the article was inaccurate to report that he had retreated from his Welsh Conservative conference stance in May 2022, when he said his party was “making the case that Wales should receive its fair share of HS2 spending.”

Davies had claimed the article was inaccurate, and in breach of Clause 1 of the Editor’s Code, due to being “significantly different” from what he said during the BBC Radio Wales interview.

IPSO disagreed, however, and concluded the report was neither misleading nor inaccurate.

In its ruling, the code committee said Davies did not dispute that he said that whether the second leg of HS2 should go to Manchester was “above his pay grade” during the BBC Radio Wales interview.

The committee noted that he had made the comment following a question from the interviewer in which the interviewer had made the point that the argument that Wales should be getting money from HS2 was made even stronger if the HS2 leg to Manchester did not go ahead.

In these circumstances, the committee did not consider it was misleading for the publication to report that the complainant’s answer was also his response to the question about funding, which he had just been asked, and that he had said that the issue of Wales losing £5bn in rail funding was above his pay grade.

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