International Rail Services: Kent

Damian Green Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I am grateful for the chance to bring to the House an issue that is of huge importance not just to my constituents in Ashford, but to many people across the whole county of Kent, and indeed beyond: the withdrawal of the international services, which used to stop at Ashford and Ebbsfleet, but which were stopped when the pandemic meant the temporary end of international travel, and which have not subsequently been restored by Eurostar.

I know that my hon. Friend the Minister will be aware of the successful history of the service, which has been running from Ashford since 1996. It has contributed significantly to economic growth in the area, taking advantage of the geographical proximity to the European mainland to drive economic development, and particularly inward investment. It also, of course, provided a large new leisure market, with people from across Kent having easy access to Disneyland Paris and, at other times of the year, quick journeys to the ski slopes. There is demonstrably huge potential for the Kent stations.

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the international trains running from Ashford enhance connectivity, boost tourism, stimulate economic growth, promote cultural exchange and have environmental benefits for the coastal towns across Kent and east Sussex, including beautiful Hastings and Rye?

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend is completely right. As she will have heard, I made the point that this is of great interest to people not just across Kent but beyond. Certainly, she is a great champion for Hastings, and I agree that the effects of high-speed rail, in this case international rail, can spread prosperity and the opportunities that travel can bring far and wide from the station.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend makes the case very well about the opportunities for people in Sussex and the coastal towns, but does he agree that that also applies to people in the north of Kent and the south-east London area, as it is still much quicker for them to access Ashford International for those journeys?

[Damian Green]

Absolutely. I am glad that my hon. Friend has made that point, because of course travelling into central London for St Pancras is often a real pain for people from the outskirts of London, and certainly for those from the more rural parts of Kent. Access to Ashford, where it is easy to drive, and to get there by train—and it is well connected—makes it much easier to intersect with the international services. I am glad to have his constituents added to mine, and those of other colleagues across Kent, as people who wish for Eurostar to restore the service.

We have been through a minor version of the current impasse before. There was a time in 2007 when Eurostar withdrew the Brussels service from Ashford. A campaign over several years, which I was involved with alongside Ashford Borough Council and Kent County Council, and with the sympathetic support of Ministers in the Government at that time, succeeded in persuading Eurostar that a business-based service allowing a sensibly timed journey from Ashford to Brussels in the morning and back in the evening was viable. That proved so successful that in 2015 a weekend Brussels service was added, as well as a new service to the south of France.

I obviously accept that Eurostar is a private company and makes its own commercial decisions, but the UK Government have a legitimate and important role in influencing those decisions, not least in the specific case of Ashford station. In 2016 Eurostar introduced new rolling stock that demanded a whole new signalling system at Ashford station to allow the new trains to stop there. That was funded at a cost of £8.5 million through the local growth fund. In other words, that was the UK taxpayer spending specifically so that Eurostar could continue to service Ashford. So far the return on that for the taxpayer has been exactly zero. By a terrible irony of timing, the work was completed at exactly the same time as the pandemic struck in the early months of 2020 and international services were suspended, so no train has ever taken advantage of that spending.

I appreciate that £8.5 million does not seem much in the context of the quantum of money that may not have been entirely prudently spent in recent years on the railways, but the point is that this is not a wasteful investment; it is a good investment that, if utilised, would provide services that passengers want, and make better use of the existing railway infrastructure. Having spent that taxpayers’ money, it is the Government’s responsibility to see that it was well spent. I therefore hope and assume that the Minister will back my call for the Kent services to be resumed.

Eurostar’s current position has evolved—not in a helpful direction. In September 2020 it said that no Kent services would stop before 2022. In 2021 it said no services until 2023. In 2022 it said no services until 2025. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) and I have met Eurostar’s representatives, and I have met them on a number of occasions with the relevant local authorities. In every one of those meetings I would describe them as perfectly polite but completely obdurate.

Eurostar is of course a commercial company whose contract is not determined by the same kind of franchise or concession model that national services have. Its majority ownership is the French nationalised rail company SNCF, with a small stake for the Belgian state rail company and the other 40% owned by private sector companies. Eurostar has now merged with the Thalys group, and it is undoubtedly true that the pandemic dealt it a very severe financial blow. To survive that blow it took on large amounts of commercial debt that it has to repay. It says that it still has the long-term ambition to grow its services, but that for a variety of reasons it cannot do so at the moment.

There are, however, two reasons that make today’s discussion particularly timely, because that low, difficult period identified by Eurostar is coming to an end. The first reason is revealed in its own press release last June about its latest financial results. It says:

“We have turned the page on the Covid crisis and are now moving towards a new chapter of building the new Eurostar group”.

Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation—EBITDA in the jargon—were a record €332 million. Clearly it is now generating cash because it repaid €127 million of the debt that it incurred during the pandemic. It is now evidently in a position to expand if it wanted to.

The second reason it is timely to be having this discussion in public is the imminent arrival of a competitor to Eurostar in providing international services to the UK; the Evolyn consortium says that it has a billion-pound project to buy an initial 12 trains from Alstom and intends to start services in 2025. At the moment, it, like Eurostar, is planning only capital city services, but the advent of competition means that both companies will have to seek advantages, and the free offer of stations that are already built and raring to go is a potentially great advantage to either of them if they have the gumption to take it.

Obviously, as we have heard in discussions with Eurostar for a long time, stations are useful only if there are passengers who want to use them, and we know that there are. I have heard the argument that anyone in Kent who wants to travel to the continent will travel to St Pancras and start there. However, as we have heard in this debate, that argument does not wash with many people. Apart from the nonsense of having someone catch a fast train to travel 60 miles north-west so that they can get on another fast train that travels south-east under the channel, we have to consider the expense of having to do that. At the margin, some people will be discouraged from that. We know how strong this feeling is because my constituents have organised a petition along the lines of what I am saying this evening. In just a few weeks, more than 36,000 people have signed it and many more are doing so every day. There are clearly tens of thousands of people in Kent, and many thousands more beyond Kent, who would prefer to travel from their local stations, and I think it is incumbent on all of us to make that happen as soon as possible.

In the light of that, I want to ask the Minister a number of specific questions, the first of which is an overarching one: given that Eurostar profits are returning and the Government have put taxpayers’ money into the Ashford signalling so that Ashford services can return to 2016 levels, what are the Government doing to support the return of services to the Kent stations? The second relates to an environmental point. There are many studies showing that international rail travel is more sustainable than air travel. Eurostar itself claims that the carbon footprint of one flight is the equivalent of that of 13 Eurostar journeys. As the Government are looking for ways to meet their welcome net zero target by 2050, what are they doing to expand the use of international rail as a more sustainable form of transport, especially as we know that there is significant capacity available, both on the line and on the train paths through the tunnel? There is no capacity constraint in this part of the rail network, so it would be good to use it as much as possible, for the good of the environment.

[Sir Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Is it not also the case that much of the electricity used on these trains comes from French nuclear power and so is some of the greenest power available?

[Damian Green]

Yes, indeed. The rail network in our part of the world has been good at using the power that comes from the interconnector. My right hon. Friend is right to say that that adds to the greenness of the travel and, in particular, the comparative advantage of international rail travel over international air travel.

My third question is about the new customs arrangements that the EU has devised—and then delayed. I note that the French Government have so much confidence in these arrangements that they have insisted they should not be implemented before the Paris Olympics next summer, but we must expect that the new EES—entry/exit system—will eventually arrive, and Eurostar has argued that the need for more checks, and therefore more staff, is one reason why it cannot yet contemplate reopening Ashford station. So what are the Government doing to make sure that the EES system will not penalise rail travellers?

My fourth question is about the potential new entrant to the market. I appreciate that the proposal is in its early stages, but I assume that if it progresses, the UK Government will need to give some authorisation for it to proceed, and that therefore the Government will need to be in detailed talks with the operator long before any service starts running. Will the Minister agree, in those talks, to put the case for the Kent stations, not least as a way of making the new operation more viable?

My fifth and final question is about the wider issue of cross-channel traffic, which the Minister knows is not only a huge economic positive for east Kent but, far too often, a huge social negative, as blockages at the port of Dover or at the tunnel lead to motorway issues and, at their worst, the gradual coagulation of traffic flows through surprisingly large parts of Kent, some of them quite a long way from the coast. Does the Minister agree that getting more passengers on the train will help to relieve pressure at busy periods on car traffic through the port of Dover and Eurotunnel?

As a final thought, I of course appreciate that not all the levers for the decision are in the Minister’s hands, but I know that my constituents, and many others around Kent and the wider south-east, would appreciate knowing that central Government are on their side in the crusade to bring back the international rail services to Kent.

P&O Ferries

Damian Green Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

Needless to say, I am very grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s comments on this statement. It is a serious attempt to sort out something that internationally has not been satisfactory for a very long time, because of the global nature of shipping. He is absolutely right to zero in on the tonnage tax. As he knows, there will be an opening for the tonnage tax—from 4 April, I think—for the first time in many years. If we can get this right, we can use the tonnage tax not only to improve the industry, but to drive the right kind of behaviour. With more ships flagged under the British flag, we can lead—as we do as a maritime nation—with the IMO here, and use the tonnage tax to pull those ships along.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the package of measures he has announced, and I very much hope they are effective. One of the immediate effects of P&O’s disgraceful action has been massively to reduce the capacity of freight to go across the channel, and that has had the predictable knock-on effect of emergency measures being needed on the Kent motorway network, causing disturbance and some misery to my constituents and others across Kent. As well as these measures, does the Department have any proposals to mitigate the problems with cross-channel freight and therefore to mitigate the effects on the M20 and other roads in Kent?

[Grant Shapps]

I apologise to my right hon. Friend and other Kent MPs, because I appreciate that the situation with P&O has caused considerable disruption. We have put the moveable barrier in place. I spoke to the lead of the Kent Resilience Forum yesterday, and they have been reporting to me on its level of usage, because I do not want it to be there for no reason. It is being regularly used. A benefit from having put in that moveable barrier is that it no longer takes weeks to deploy and take away, but I am cognisant of the disturbance it creates for Members in the Kent area. I will ensure that we meet regularly with my right hon. Friend and other Members to provide updates on what we expect to happen next.

Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 2) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2021

Damian Green Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 General Committees

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I will briefly make three points. First, the Minister said that Operation Brock was an alternative to Operation Stack; I would much prefer to hear him use the language that it is a replacement for Operation Stack. Operation Brock is an inconvenience in Kent. Operation Stack was a disaster for my constituents and many others in Kent, so I hope that that was merely a linguistic slip.

Two other points arise from the SI. The first is that, as the Minister said, the Government have not had to use Operation Brock since we last passed a similar, though deficient, SI. Therefore I repeat my plea that the signage on motorways, and in particular on local roads, be improved so that lorries are not encouraged by their often old-fashioned sat-nav to go through villages to reach such things as the inland border facility in Sevington in my constituency, which continues to cause distress to those who live in those villages and to my constituents.

My final point, which again I hope the Minister will take away and encourage his officials to look at, is that one benefit of keeping lorries off local roads, and of the new lorry park that was opened in my constituency on Friday by his ministerial colleague, the noble Baroness Vere, is that there is now no excuse for lorries to park overnight in either residential areas or business parks in the area, where they have been wont to park recently, claiming that there are not enough parking spaces. Kent County Council used to have enforcement powers generally across the area against those lorries, but those powers have lapsed. I strongly urge the Department to consider reintroducing them, because that would complete the circle and allow my constituents and others to feel safe from having lorries parked inappropriately in their residential or business areas overnight.

Draft Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 1) (Amendment) Order 2021 Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 2) (Amendment) Order 2021

Damian Green Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 General Committees

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and a great pleasure to welcome the Minister to her first Delegated Legislation Committee on the Front Bench. I apologise for breaking the habit of a lifetime and speaking from the Back Benches at an SI Committee.

To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Bristol East, the communities in Kent have, over the years, suffered hugely from disruption at the channel ports, particularly my own in Ashford. For my constituents and others around Kent, Operation Brock is unwelcome whenever it is imposed, frankly, but it is a lot better than Operation Stack. The phrase in the Minister’s speech that I most applauded inwardly was when she said that Operation Brock was relacing Operation Stack. I hope that means that Operation Stack will never be seen again, because closing the M20 all together caused genuine misery and economic and personal dislocation for many of my constituents.

I am pleased that we have managed to get the movable barrier and make Operation Brock possible, but it is also the case that whenever it is imposed, it causes difficulties. It is more dangerous—there are two fairly narrow lanes and a lot of lorry traffic. Domestic motorists driving their cars in that environment often feel quite threatened by it, so it should be used as sparingly as possible. My one plea to the Minister is that she use her best endeavours to ensure that it is used as infrequently as possible. There is a tendency among the authorities in charge of it to put it on as a precautionary measure—we saw that earlier this year—and then leave it on for weeks on end. That angers many constituents, quite rightly, because they see it as an unnecessary use that dislocates their daily lives and makes their journeys more difficult. They will accept it when there is genuine crisis and obstruction at the channel ports, but they do not want to see it used almost routinely, whenever there is a possibility of problems at the channel ports. The one thought I want to leave with the Minister is that Operation Brock is better than Operation Stack, but it should still be used very sparingly and only when absolutely necessary.

International Travel Rules

Damian Green Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He is right that the Government wish to see travel restart, provided it is in a safe and sustainable way. He draws attention to the reason for that: often it is not just about people going on holidays, important though that is because of the jobs the industry sustains, but because people have not seen relatives who may be ill. It is important that we do that in a globally connected country, and we will continue to do that in a safe sustainable way. If there is anything I can do to assist any particular constituents, such as those he mentions, I hope he will not hesitate to contact me and I will see if there is anything I can do to assist.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

It is unarguable that the effect of imposing quarantine on travellers to France will be significantly to reduce the numbers of those wanting to travel. With that in mind, does my hon. Friend agree that the imposition of Operation Brock on the M20 in Kent, which is designed to cope with long queues at Dover or the tunnel, was a trifle premature, and that Operation Brock should therefore be removed as soon as is humanly possible?

[Robert Courts]

I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that question. I know that it matters a great deal to his constituents and that he has been a leading voice in campaigning on it. I recognise the disruption to his constituents. At the weekend, the Kent Resilience Forum put in place the moveable barrier between junctions 8 and 9 of the M20 that enables Operation Brock to be implemented. That is a precautionary decision by the KRF in advance of the summer holidays. The KRF will keep the decision under review and will deploy Operation Brock for as short a period as possible. I entirely recognise the strength of feeling on this matter. I know that the Minister for Kent will be arranging a meeting between the KRF, my right hon. Friend and other interested MPs as soon as possible.

International Travel

Damian Green Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

As I mentioned in previous answers, billions of pounds have gone into support for the sector, and even once all those schemes have been exhausted, there is a programme run specifically by the Treasury that enables bespoke support to the industry. I cannot go into details because those are confidential arrangements, but they do already exist.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend address international rail travel? He will know that Eurostar services from Ashford and Ebbsfleet have been suspended until 2022. Can he assure me that it remains the Government’s intention that those services should be resumed as soon as possible and that the Government recognise the importance of Kent’s international rail services?

[Grant Shapps]

Absolutely. I can assure my right hon. Friend that we are very concerned to see those stations closing and the lack of activity. As with our discussions about airlines, this is entirely driven by the progress, unfortunately, of the virus. We will continue to keep it under review and work very closely with HS1 and that line to get them reopened as soon as possible.

High Speed 1: Rolling Stock

Damian Green Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered rolling stock on High Speed One.

It is always a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am pleased to see the Minister in his place. He may feel at times in his life that he spends a disproportionate amount of time dealing with the affairs of Kent, but we are always grateful for his attention. I am happy to assure him, at the start of this short debate, that this is a different kind of rail debate from those he is used to. I imagine—indeed, I know—that most debates in this Chamber about rail services are a cry of rage about unreliability, delays, strikes, and how colleagues’ constituents are at the end of their tether. By contrast, this debate is about a hugely successful service, but one that will be choked by that very success and popularity unless Ministers and the industry take decisive action very soon.

Let me start with the good news. These are facts from Southeastern, which operates the line. Since High Speed 1 started under Southeastern in 2009, it has carried more than 100 million passengers. The passenger satisfaction over that period has been higher than 90%, which, as the Minister will be painfully aware, is an extremely good figure compared with some other lines. It has been calculated that it has delivered a £1 billion boost to the Kent tourism economy, and that it indirectly supports up to 72,000 jobs. Clearly, one of the main reasons for that is the speed. It is a high-speed operation, and the journey from my constituency, Ashford, to London is now 38 minutes. It used to be routinely 81 minutes, so that is significant. Other colleagues from Kent in the Chamber will no doubt have similar stories.

The line also has a hugely positive environmental effect. It has been calculated that some 6,000 cars a year are taken off the road because of the high use of the service. If I may be parochial for a second, it has contributed hugely to economic growth. In Ashford, seven major development projects—offices, leisure, shopping and education facilities—either have been built or are being built around the station. There is a direct business benefit to that: because it is only 38 minutes, using the high-speed train, from Ashford to St Pancras International, whereas office rents are 73% lower than in London, many businesses clearly find Ashford an extremely attractive place to do business. Of course, I welcome all that.

My last bit of positivity, if I can keep the Minister cheerful for a few more minutes, is about a study of what has become an increasingly key industry for the whole of Kent—tourism. HS1 Ltd did a tourism impact study a couple of years ago, and the figures are stark and very encouraging. The value of tourism and the visitor economy to Kent grew by more than £1 billion over the past decade, from £2.4 billion to £3.6 billion, supporting the 72,000 jobs I mentioned. To put that in perspective, that is 10% of all the jobs in Kent. It is a really significant industry.

Sustained investment in not just the tourism industry but transport links, of which High Speed 1 is one of the most important, has led to that significant increase. The study determined the perceived impact that HS1 has had on the sector. More than half the respondents in the tourism industry in Kent believe that HS1 has had a positive impact on their business. The most obvious reason for that is the speed to reach the destination. Perhaps more subtly, there is also the ability to attract visitors from further afield—it increases Kent’s range of attraction.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate. There is no doubt in my mind that HS1 has been good for the county, but does he agree that, before proceeding further with HS2, we need to tackle the challenges of HS1, which has, in many respects, become synonymous with costs and overcrowding?

[Damian Green]

I am about to come to the issue of overcrowding, as my hon. Friend would expect, as that was my principal reason for securing this debate. He says “before proceeding further with HS2”, but I should say that I am in favour of HS2, partly because I have observed the benefits of HS1 on Kent, and I would not want to deprive other parts of the country of the benefits that high-speed rail services can bring. To some extent, the two debates need to be separated. HS1 has been hugely good for Kent, and I wish that to continue, so I therefore urge the Government to address what will be a looming and imminent problem if they do not. The HS2 debate is rather a different one.

Some 71% of respondents in the tourism industry believe that leisure tourism in Kent has increased as a result of HS1. It has been a particular influencing factor in attracting couples and family groups—young families, those with older children and extended families—and that has contributed to a widening and deepening of the Kent tourism economy. I emphasise tourism because, although HS1 is by and large regarded, reasonably enough, as a commuter network—it clearly is of huge benefit to commuters, because it gives them many hours, days and weeks of their lives back through reduced journey times—it actually has a measurable and direct economic impact beyond that.

Overall, HS1 is one of the success stories of the rail network. It provides travel that is not only fast but more reliable than most lines, as reflected in passenger satisfaction surveys. But that, as I reach the halfway point, is the limit of the positive news that I wish to bring the Minister. Now for the bad news.

The bad news is that the service has become too popular for its own good. Overcrowding is a serious and growing problem throughout the line. The operator, Southeastern, has tried to compensate by changing the number of carriages on the most popular peak-hour services and improving the repairs and maintenance programme so that more of the rolling stock is available at any one time, but that is not enough. Essentially, we need more rolling stock on the line. Passenger numbers have grown by an average of 11.7% every year since 2010, and there is no evidence that that increase in demand will slow down in the future. Indeed, given that major housing developments are planned in not just Ashford but other towns in Kent along the line, we can expect the opposite.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Although I agree with everything he says about the benefits of HS1 to Kent from an economic perspective, constituents from Snodland and Chatham who pay £5,500 for their annual ticket to use HS1 should at least expect a seat and working toilet on their train into London. Does he agree that, given the growth in house building across the area, communities such as Snodland are being built specifically around the services from HS1?

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend is exactly right and she makes a good point about season ticket prices. Obviously, season tickets are slightly more expensive for my constituents and, the further towards the coast, the more expensive they get. As the inability to sit down spreads along the line, the difficulties she rightly pointed out will no doubt get worse for people. The need for extra train services and longer trains is clear.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. The service goes through Gravesend. Why on earth are the people who pay most for their tickets standing up for 23 minutes from Gravesend, or indeed for 38 minutes from Ashford? That is completely wrong, and something needs to be done about it.

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend makes a good point.

On current projections, 31 high-speed services a day will be full to capacity by 2025, meaning that those passengers who have paid for expensive season tickets and rightly complain about having to stand every day might not even be able to get on the train. Things as they stand will get worse rather than better and, on top of the 31 inaccessible services, another 25 trains a day will be standing room only. The scale of the problem is becoming clear.

In preparing for this debate, I spoke to the rail industry. Hitachi made the interesting point that the trains on the HS1 line are specifically designed for it and for the Southeastern conventional network. The trains use two different power sources and have three different signalling systems on board, so standard UK network trains cannot be used. How to extend or replace the rolling stock on this particular line is a special issue. Hitachi itself advises planning for a lead time in the order of four years before new train sets could come into service on the line—consider the design time, procurement, testing and approvals for a specialist product. For that timescale to be achieved, clarity on the future of the franchise at the earliest opportunity is vital.

The Minister is of course aware of the history of the franchise, its difficulties and the succession of relatively short-term solutions brought into being to keep the franchise operating. I appreciate the problems that he, the operator and the industry more widely have faced with the franchise—this debate is not the time to discuss those—but I plead for some long-term thinking to be introduced now, instead of our continuing simply to apply short-term patches to franchising or to whatever succeeds it after the review is published. Now is the time, on this specific issue, to impose some long-term thinking and to say, “We need to start planning now”, if we are to avoid something that would be tragic for the rail industry, turning a success into a failure in the future.

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend mentioned tourism in his opening remarks. He knows, because I have bored for England on the subject, that I am looking forward to the reopening of Manston as an airport, with the synergy between Manston, Ramsgate and the port of Dover, which is a highly successful cruise-liner port. If we are to attract tourism, it is vital that we have reliable train services with a swift connection to London. In terms of connectivity, does he agree that we must urge the Minister to recognise that we need those trains now and not in 10 years’ time?

[Damian Green]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend in all but one particular: he never bores for Britain on any subject, so I disagree with him about that, but completely agree with him otherwise.

To conclude, this morning I have two requests of the Minister: first, to acknowledge not just that this is a problem but that it is one that needs to be addressed now—it cannot be kicked into the long grass any longer—and, secondly, to commit to devising a solution that will allow passengers to continue to enjoy the many benefits of high-speed rail. We need decisions very soon to prevent one of the great successes of the rail industry over the past 10 or 20 years from being tarnished by short-term decision making. I would urge the Minister to make those commitments this morning, and I am grateful to colleagues who contributed to the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I guess my hon. Friend is slightly unlucky to have the Rail Minister in front of him; had the Minister of State for the future of transport responded to this debate, my hon. Friend would get a good 15 minutes about the wonderful new technologies becoming available on our rail network. My job is to try to ensure that the existing rail network works for the people who use it. I understand his enthusiasm for what could come this way, but I want to improve things for passengers on our railways now and, in this debate, to talk about what we can do to improve the journeys of passengers who use HS1 in the next few years, as improvements will be required.

The Williams review, which will be published very soon, will not just be parked by Government as in the normal process of reviews—we have had a few rail reviews that have reported like that in the past—but will come out in the form of a White Paper. There will be proper consultation. The Select Committee on Transport and Members will obviously take their views, and we will have a Bill in this Session—as mentioned in the Queen’s Speech—that will take the review into legislation. There will be a relatively short-term pitch for my hon. Friend to get involved in.

[Damian Green]

I am heartened by the Minister’s words. He said that, traditionally, reports have often been shelved. Even more traditionally, they have been an excuse for delay because people say, “We have to look at the big picture; therefore, we cannot take individual decisions.” I gently emphasise again that the decision on rolling stock for HS1 needs to be taken in the coming months if we are to avoid the problems that we know will hit in the middle part of this decade. I urge him again that the early decision-making process will be vital post the White Paper publication.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

The White Paper will come out shortly. It had a good mention in the Queen’s Speech—it will be legislation and it will be the framework by which the problem he outlined for the future can be solved, because it is intended to put the railway on a long-term, sustainable footing, where the passenger is put first. It is important that the next Southeastern franchise award reflects that and fits into whatever the Williams review might suggest. I am completely aware of my right hon. Friend’s point. Any options will fit directly into the Williams review’s conclusions.

Let me conclude by thanking everyone who took part in this debate, and my right hon. Friend for securing this debate on an important part of the railway in our country. We discussed a range of issues on High Speed 1. The popularity of Southeastern’s high-speed service has led to significant growth in passenger numbers, with a compound annual growth rate of over 11%. It is a very successful, normally very good and reliable railway. Options considered for the future of the Southeastern franchise will be developed and informed in a matter that puts passengers at the heart of the process. I guarantee to my right hon. Friend that we understand the time that it takes to get new rolling stock on our network. His words will have been taken to heart.

Question put and agreed to.