High-speed Rail

Cathy Jamieson Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

My hon. Friend is right. One of the problems that HS2 addresses in a way that no other proposals put before us will address is capacity. I very much hope that it will free up other journeys so that we can have faster journey times from cities such as Worcester.

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister will be aware that concerns have been expressed about the time for redevelopment at Euston and the potential impact on the west coast main line from Glasgow. Will he say more about that and about any impact on the Caledonian Sleeper service, which is important to the Scottish economy?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I fully accept that while huge works are going on at a station, there is disruption, so one of the questions that must be asked in the planning phase that HS2 is currently going through is how we minimise that. Inconvenience was caused at St Pancras for a number of years while redevelopment was going on, but, as I said earlier, nobody doubts that it was worth going through the pain as we have a far better station than we had previously, and I very much hope we can do the same for Euston.