Oral Answers to Questions

Marcus Jones Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

The Task and Finish Group was established as a result of the ingenious foresight of a previous Transport Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). Its report was made public only in the summer, but I am evaluating all its recommendations and will make a statement shortly.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

HS2 will bring significant extra capacity and resilience to our railways. What more will it do to help and support places such as Nuneaton on the existing west coast main line?

[Chris Grayling]

There is a lot of discussion about HS2 and I simply wish to state again today the Government’s commitment to the project; it is, I think, supported across the House and I welcome that support. The point about HS2 is that we have a rail system that is bursting at the seams and we have to create extra capacity on it. By creating the extra capacity on HS2 and taking the express trains off the conventional lines and putting them on to HS2, we will free space for more commuter services into the cities affected and to places such as Nuneaton.