Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise

Julian Knight Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood]

rose—

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

rose—

[Chris Grayling]

I will take two more brief interventions, but then I must make some progress.

[Chris Grayling]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for confirming that the talk of a £2 billion bail-out that we keep hearing from Labour is absolute nonsense. The reality is that we will drive this business as hard as we can to keep the revenues as high as we can. But if this railway were going to deliver as much money as was forecast, none of this would have happened in the first place.

[Julian Knight]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way; he is being most generous. He is forensically taking apart the Opposition’s case. Was he struck, as I was, by the fact that the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) did not even mention the cost of renationalisation? Across the board, the renationalisation of the utilities and the railways would cost more than £170 billion, and that is money that we simply cannot afford to spend.

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Opposition never cost in their renationalisation plans the value of the trains that are currently privately owned, for example. That amount would be billions and billions of pounds, unless they are planning to nationalise the railways but have no trains to run on them, which is also a possibility.