Integrated Rail Plan: North and Midlands

Lord Snape Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, if the Minister believes that this solution of hers is so elegant, why have she and fellow Ministers been advocating something different for so many years? That is the first and obvious question. The second one is that she talks about capacity. Is she aware that any student of the railways will tell you that capacity on a stretch of line is governed by the speed of the slowest train? Taking fast trains away and running them on their own infrastructure enables capacity to be increased on other lines too. The mixture of freight trains, slow passenger trains and fast passenger trains, as well as HS2, will not increase capacity; indeed, rather the reverse.

Finally, what the Government propose will mean years of delay, dislocation and bus substitution because, as we proved as far back as the 1960s, it is impossible to run an intensive service on a railway while you are improving it and electrifying it. It just cannot be done.