Rail Network (Disruption)
Debate between Lord McLoughlin and Douglas Carswell(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr McLoughlin
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for acknowledging some of the difficulties and the difficult conditions facing those engineers working over the Christmas period in getting, as I have said, most of the schemes they embarked on back up and running on time; so when things go wrong, it is particularly disappointing. As to his point about the East Grinstead line, I will look at that, along with the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry).
Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)
I wrote to the Secretary of State in early December suggesting that Network Rail was incompetent, responsible for serial disruptions on the line to Clacton and East Anglia and unaccountable. Rather than make excuses and justify shoddy performance, will he consider serious, grown-up reform to make sure that this public quango is properly and meaningfully accountable to the long-suffering public?
Mr McLoughlin
There is unprecedented development on the railway network. I think that is absolutely vital, and I am very keen that a lot of the first-class pieces of engineering done by Network Rail continue to be done by Network Rail, along with the huge investment that we are making in the whole system.