The Minister of State, Department for Transport ():...The real
catalyst for the revival of the route was the Government’s
investment in 2012, which reinstated sections of double-track
railway that had previously been cut back—my hon. Friend the Member
for The Cotswolds was vociferous in campaigning for that to happen.
The increase in capacity was made to improve performance on the
route. However, it also enabled Great Western Railway to gradually
introduce progressive enhancement of train services.
Fast forward to 2019 and we have seen more investment from the
Government in the North Cotswold route and across the whole Great
Western Railway network. We are investing over £5 billion to
deliver better services and new trains, with thousands more
seats, improving over 100 million rail journeys each year and
stimulating—as all my hon. Friends have alluded to—economic
growth from London through the Thames valley to the Cotswolds, as
well as to the west country and south Wales. Our investment has
provided 4,900 extra seats into London in the peak hour, which is
a 40% increase in capacity.
(Reading East) (Lab): I am extremely grateful to the Minister for
giving way on that point. Can he update us on the wider plans
across the Great Western Railway region for reusing old
infrastructure that was, sadly, taken out of operation in the
Beeching era, because it seems that a number of lines will be
affected? My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East () highlighted the Cowley branch line. I believe there
are a number of other branch lines, and other sections of track,
that are currently single track that might be worth reopening,
and we should consider them.
: I am sorry—I did
not answer the point the hon. Gentleman made about Beeching in
his speech. We have a £500 million fund. We are now setting out
the rules for it. Obviously, Members would expect us to want to
get the best value for money out of the schemes that are being
brought forward thick and fast to reopen lines or to strengthen
lines, so that instead of a line just having freight services it
could also have passenger services, which would require the
provision of carriages and so on.
Actually, there is way more demand for investment than the
initial £500 million that we, as a political party, put in our
manifesto and thought would be required. We will be able to pick
some amazingly excellent and viable schemes, which are
deliverable in short order, to reopen Beeching lines, and
obviously there will be a geographical spread across the whole
country. I very much hope to announce more details on that in the
near future, but I hope that, for now, that answer will suffice
for the hon. Gentleman.
The modernisation of the Great Western Railway enabled last
month’s introduction of a new timetable, which most hon. Members
here today would have noticed. It was a big timetable change for
the Great Western Railway. I was not the Rail Minister in May
2018, but I was a Whip at the time, and we had debate after
debate about the May 2018 timetable changes. There were so many
words used to describe them in the Chamber, but they all meant
that the changes had been pretty much disastrous in some parts of
the country, where things absolutely did not work...
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