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Sustainable Railways

I was preparing myself to congratulate the hon. Lady on her wisdom, but I do not think that her comments will have much resonance with the public if she says that the success of the railway was somehow to do with privatisation, rather than recognising the fact that Railtrack lost control of costs altogether and that it was ultimately the taxpayer who ended up footing the bill of an additional £1.25 billion a year before we had to introduce Network Rail to regain control of costs and to start to make improvements in our railway system.