South West Rail Resilience Programme

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The Government are always cognisant that we must provide value for money to the taxpayer. As I outlined in a previous answer, the amount of funding going into our railways is going up. We are very cognisant of the impact of that increased funding and the sorts of deliverables that we want to see out of it. I assure the noble Lord that the rail network enhancements pipeline, or RNEP, will include some of those enhancements and will be published soon.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that if we do not proceed with the fifth part of this protection, we should look again at the west Devon line going via Tavistock, because we could be left with absolutely nothing again?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I do not accept that those two issues are necessarily linked. It is very important that we have resilience on the existing line, which has been in place for many years. That is why we are very focused on improving its resilience and have invested heavily in it. As I said previously, we looked at some proposals. For example, in round 3 of the Restoring Your Railway project, Devon County Council produced a strategic outline business case for reopening the line from Bere Alston to Tavistock. There was also a proposal to open the line from Tavistock to Okehampton. Neither of those was really viable enough to take forward.