Rail Investment

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

As I have said, there are complex legal and commercial issues to consider. The hon. Gentleman will understand as well as anyone the process of negotiating with Agility trains as the preferred bidder and that everything we do has to be within the constraints of the European procurement directive.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

I, too, welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement. Will he outline in more detail the benefit that will come from the 650 new carriages that he has announced for 2010 to 2014 and how the investment in Network Rail will benefit the east coast main line?

[Mr Hammond]

Network Rail is making significant investments on the east coast main line, which explains to some extent the less than exceptional service performance on the line in the past few months as that work has been carried out. It will bring benefits in due course in terms of greater line speed and reliability. The 650 additional carriages will be distributed across the network. Some of them have already been contracted with individual franchisees and some of them will be the subject of further negotiations, which we will now commence, but there will be benefits for all parts of the country.