Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am more than happy to do that. It is difficult to do these works. We tend to do them over bank holidays, when there is not so much usage on the network. I realise it inconveniences people who want to travel by train, but it is all part of a major and vital upgrade of our rail network.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

15. What additional investment the Government plan to make in rail infrastructure in the south-west during this Parliament; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman, as a fellow south-western MP, will be pleased that the Government have committed to investing about £400 million in rail infrastructure in the south-west. This includes re-signalling the main line from Totnes to Penzance; developing a strategic freight network; electrifying the Great Western main line; refurbishing the Cornwall sleeper; £35 million for the necessary repairs at Dawlish; a brand-new station at Newcourt, just outside his constituency; another station planned in his constituency at Marsh Barton; plus 29 new AT300 trains. The Government get the importance of rail investment in the south-west.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Of course, that electrification is into south Wales, not the south-west.

The people of the west country well remember the repeated promises from the Transport Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of billions of pounds of investment in rail in the south-west, but the Minister has just failed, once again, to confirm that the Government will commit a paltry half a million pounds for the feasibility study that Devon and Cornwall needs after the Dawlish disaster into improved resilience and rail transport times. Do not the people of the south-west rightly feel completely betrayed by the Government?

[Claire Perry]

Month after month, the right hon. Gentleman comes here and seems to be in complete denial about the fact that his Government did nothing for the people of the south-west and that his party wanted to cancel the vital A358 road scheme that helps people directly in his constituency. I have already set out—but I am happy to discuss it further—that I am considering ways to find the very small amount of money required to do this one technical feasibility study, which is a tiny part of the south-west peninsula taskforce study. We expect that report to come out in April and deliver the strategic uplift the region requires.