Rail Investment

Debate between Baroness Beckett and Louise Ellman

Thursday 17th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I am delighted to have the opportunity to discuss rail investment in this Westminster Hall debate. I welcome the Minister to her place; I shall be listening carefully to what she has to say.

The Transport Committee published its report on priorities for rail investment in February 2010, during the previous Parliament. The Committee wanted to assess the value of investing in Britain’s rail network and to identify essential rail priorities for the future. We emphasised the importance of protecting Government funding of £16 billion committed to rail projects between 2009 and 2014. We also identified some of the emerging priorities for the next control period, from 2014 to 2019.

We should remember that rail is a great success story; 1.2 billion passenger journeys were made last year, and 100 million tonnes of freight, or 9%, was carried by rail. The Committee emphasised in its report the importance of rail to the economy, as well as to the environment. There have been many changes since the report was published last year. We have had a change of Government and a comprehensive spending review, but the questions raised by the Committee and the priorities that we identified remain highly relevant. I shall focus on two broad areas this afternoon. First, I shall deal with the Government’s more immediate rail priorities during this Parliament. Secondly, I shall look ahead to some of the important rail schemes that will require investment during control period 5 and beyond.

Following the comprehensive spending review, I am pleased to say that many major rail investment commitments have continued. Indeed, £18.2 billion was committed for that period. Although I welcome that commitment and that scale of investment, we should recognise that much of that money was already contractually committed, and works on the ground for many projects were well under way prior to the spending review. Setting out priorities and committing spending in that way was done to ensure that the rail industry had some certainty about investment, and I am glad that that could be achieved even in the current financial situation. The Government have confirmed their commitment to Crossrail and to Thameslink, although there are delays and reductions in funding.

[Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend not only on her Committee’s report but on securing today’s debate. I am particularly glad to hear her mention Thameslink. The report mentions investment in the north, but she will be well aware that it is the order of new trains for Thameslink that will release the existing fleet to newly electrified projects in the north-west. She spoke a moment ago about the need for certainty in the rail industry. I am sure that she—and, I hope, the House—will sympathise with the concerns of the thousands of my constituents who work for Bombardier and in the supply chain, who are anxiously awaiting the go-ahead for the Thameslink project.

[Mrs Ellman]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her comments and I agree with her sentiments. The delay is problematic in its own right, and it certainly has consequences for what is termed the cascading of rolling stock to the north, among other places. The major redevelopment of Birmingham New Street and Reading stations is proceeding.