Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con):...I listened carefully to the proposer
of the motion, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana
Johnson), and I agree that this is a national challenge. I went
through the details of this, and I warmly welcome
the Transpennine route upgrade, think it is a smart move
to make smart motorways of the M60, M62 and M6, and, burrowing into
the detail, support the £100 million being spent on the Tees Valley
A19. What will please the hon. Member for...Request free trial
(Horsham) (Con):...I
listened carefully to the proposer of the motion, the hon. Member
for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), and I agree that this
is a national challenge. I went through the details of this, and I
warmly welcome the Transpennine route upgrade, think it is a
smart move to make smart motorways of the M60, M62 and M6, and,
burrowing into the detail, support the £100 million being spent on
the Tees Valley A19. What will please the hon. Member for Brentford
and Isleworth is the £14 million being spent on cycle lanes in
Gateshead and Newcastle. These are all examples, both very small
and very large, of the Government acting to ensure we boost our
productivity and make this a better place to live across the
country...
(Kingston upon Hull North)
(Lab):...It is also astonishing that we still do not know
the future of trans-Pennine electrification. No official
announcement has been made since the Transport Secretary cast doubt
on the project during a media appearance in July 2017. I
acknowledge that the rolling stock is being upgraded, but the very
companies that are supplying it tell me that without improvements
to the tracks, they will not be able to get anywhere near their
maximum speeds. The developers at Great Western Railway have warned
that its bimodal trains will be slower in diesel mode than the ones
that they will replace. I hope that the Minister will commit
himself this evening to an urgent, independent assessment of the
impact of scrapping electrification...
(Nottingham South)
(Lab):...That is probably even more true of the rail
investment programme. The work to modernise the great western
railway has shown that the Department did not have a secure
understanding of the costs of and schedule for electrification.
That led to a reprogramming of the investment plans for control
period 5. Electrification between Maidenhead and Cardiff is now
expected to cost £2.8 billion—a 70% increase against the estimated
cost of the programme in 2014. We know what a terrible impact that
has had on the rest of the work in CP 5 that has either had to be
cancelled or rolled over into CP 6. The Department has many
questions to answer on that. What has been learned will have been
lost through the cancellation of that work and will potentially
have to be relearned all over again...
(Milton Keynes South)
(Con):...Look at Network Rail—a public body. It has
problems and has mismanaged some projects, Great Western
electrification being the prime example. However, let us also
praise it when it gets things right. The Reading and Nottingham
station upgrades have been a success and many other projects have
been delivered on time and on budget. No system is intrinsically
bad or good. My point today is that we should raise the quality of
the discussion and not get locked into this stale old debate that
too often plagues transport discourse in this country...
(Luton North)
(Ind):...The Minister and his departmental officials
may have seen the illuminating recent article in the Rail
Professional journal by Don Heath, a brilliant railway engineer who
led and masterminded the electrification from Hitchin to Edinburgh
in the late 1980s and early ’90s. In his article, he describes how
that was done and achieved so efficiently. It is a fascinating
read. He concludes by contrasting the costs of that earlier
electrification with present-day electrification costs. It is
almost beyond belief that, stripping out inflation, costs are now
seven times greater than when the east coast main line was
electrified. They have multiplied by seven times in real terms. I
urge the Minister and his officials to read Don Heath’s piece. The
modern, bloated costs of electrification have led directly to the
abandonment of the Great Western scheme to south Wales, Bristol and
Oxford, the Kettering to Sheffield electrification, as well as
electrification from Manchester to Leeds...
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