Railway Electrification

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My reference earlier to integrating the electrification programme with rolling stock decisions reflects the fact that many trains on the British railway network are now capable of operating in either electric or diesel mode. That is a consequence of rolling stock purchases over the past 10 years. It enables some more choices to be made about the very expensive infrastructure cost of electrification versus electrification where it makes a real difference in both time and volume of rail traffic, and where trains that will run on electricity—when the electricity is there—will also serve parts of the network where it is not.

Some of the decisions which have been taken in rolling stock will last 35 years, like the rolling stock itself. That is true of the Great Western main line electrification, where those trains happily run on the wires as far as Cardiff and then travel by diesel not only to Swansea but further west to Carmarthen and to the south-west as well. A similar situation is true on the Midland main line, where bi-mode trains will be in operation. There is no point in investing in very expensive infrastructure if we can find another way of creating electrification for the vast majority of the network. The study being done by Network Rail, which will be completed and feed in to the department’s overall review of capital projects, will point out where that valuable public money ought to be best spent.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, the electrification of the north Wales main line, that the Conservative party committed itself to in its manifesto, was to be funded from the savings made from HS2 and the Minister should not say that it was an unfunded commitment.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

There is a report out today from Rail Partners which says that the costs of rail freight have been rising three times faster than the costs of carrying freight by road. Part of this is due to the rising cost of electricity. Has the Minister discussed with his colleagues in other departments the effect on the economic case for electrification of their pursuing policies that are giving us the highest cost and the most expensive electricity in Europe?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I will continue to claim that the Network North plan was unfunded, because it depended on money that had never been properly allocated in the future to HS2 phase 2. When this Government took office, there was no evidence of any financial plans to deliver virtually any part of that agenda. In respect of the cost of electricity, of course, it is dependent on the relative price of electricity compared with other forms of propulsion for rail, but in terms of electrification of the railway and its use for freight, other considerations are far stronger than the cost of electricity and where it is generated. I shall concentrate in answering this Question on the electrification of the railway, because that is the Question that was asked.