Meg Munn
Main Page: Meg Munn (Labour (Co-op) - Sheffield, Heeley)Department Debates - View all Meg Munn's debates with the Department for Transport
(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
I, too, welcome the electrification of the midland main line. [Hon. Members: “Hooray!”] But a letter from the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers), arrived in my inbox shortly before this statement. It says:
“Completion of Midland Mainline electrification is proposed for 2019.”
That is seven years away. Given the increasing north-south divide, I urge the Secretary of State to bring it forward so that we get the benefits more quickly.
Justine Greening
To reassure the hon. Lady, I should say that we are looking at whether we can commence some of the investment earlier. We have had to set out our basic proposals, of course, but let us be clear: today we are setting out a statement of output—what we want to get out of the railway system. It is now for the industry to go away and look at how it can achieve the outcomes that we are specifying. The midland main line electrification is one of the key, explicit schemes that we have said we want to bring forward. If the industry has a proposal to do it faster than the timeline that we have mentioned, I have no doubt that we will be very interested in looking at it.