Business of the House

David Heath Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

It is particularly important that we ensure that regulators and the competition authorities are effective. Competition is what delivers for consumers, and regulators have access to concurrent competition powers with the competition authorities. We need to be sure that those powers are being used to deliver the benefits for consumers that competition should deliver.

[Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

I understand that we are now to call High Speed 2 the north-south railway. Will the Leader of the House find an opportunity for the Secretary of State for Transport to come to the House during the next week to announce that just a fraction of that investment could be spent on providing a barely adequate east-west railway?

[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.