Oral Answers to Questions

Iain Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

This Government are committed to electrification, unlike the previous Labour Government that electrified less than 10 miles of track in 13 years, when the economy was booming. I gently remind the hon. Lady that this is a Government of delivery. We want to make sure that the promises we set out can be delivered. That is why it was right to look at the programmes to make sure that they could be delivered, and they will be delivered. Yesterday I was very pleased to announce one of the biggest upgrades in the modernisation of rail travel for her constituents that this country has ever seen. We are scrapping the Pacers. We are introducing new trains. We are transforming the rail network in the north—something else that her Government completely neglected to do.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend say a bit more about how the electrification project, plus the award of the new franchise for Northern Rail and TransPennine, will address the acute need to find additional rolling stock in that part of the country?

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. I can confirm that the midland main line will be electrified to Bedford and to Kettering and Corby by 2019, and to Sheffield by 2023. We will electrify to Cardiff by 2019. We will complete, we think, Liverpool to Newcastle by 2022. That means that there can then be a cascade of rolling stock right across the country. However, it is not enough for the people of the north to wait for cascaded trains—they deserve brand-new trains to replace the Pacers that have been chugging round that network for 40 years. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) chirrups away. Her Government had a chance to replace the Pacers in 2003 and 2004, and they did not. The rail passengers of the north deserve better. We get it; Labour does not.