Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what ministerial visits there have been associated with promoting the electrification of the Manchester to Leeds railway line since 2011; and what the cost of each such visit was.

Ministers visit all areas of the country to discuss transport projects and to see for themselves the transport requirements in various places. It is not possible to give the cost of each such visit. It is this Government which is committed to transport. With £70 billion of capital investment over the next five years, we will deliver the biggest transformation in our rail network since Victorian times and our road networks in a generation. As Ministers we visit various parts of the country and receive updates on this record investment as we play catch-up from falling from 7^th to 33^rd in the World Economic Forum infrastructure world rankings between 1997 and 2010.