Business of the House

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

It is a great pleasure to have my hon. Friend here to ask a question. He was a distinguished occupant of the post of Deputy Leader of the House, and we thank him for that and for his work in his subsequent responsibilities related to farming.

Over the next few years, up to about 2020, there will be much larger investment elsewhere in Network Rail than in HS2. It is not absorbing resources that would otherwise be available for the rest of the network. On the contrary, we have among the largest ever investment programmes elsewhere in the rail system, and rightly so. Just as HS2 will meet clear north-south capacity requirements, we need other investment to meet capacity needs elsewhere.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Now that we are back in operation, may I ask the Leader of the House if we can reflect on something that troubles me—the growth of monopolies in almost every sector of life? Whether we are talking about the energy sector, the supermarkets or transport, there are organisations with a monopolistic tendency to do down the consumer. May we have a full debate on monopolies and how we regulate them?

[Mr Lansley]

I think that is exactly the same point that the hon. Member for St Helens North (Mr Watts) made, and in a sense I think we agree about it. We need competition if we are to deliver benefits to consumers, and we need it to be robust. That competition is not driven naturally in markets; it has to be regulated for by authorities. We should not have a free-for-all in markets, because of the tendency towards monopoly. We must have effective competition regulation to make competition happen, and this Government have been keen to ensure that it is in place. To be fair to the previous Government, they also did that under competition and enterprise Acts. This country has established what is regarded as one of the more effective competition regimes, but we must continuously be vigilant and use the competition authorities to deliver it.