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Railways

My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt the Minister while he is doing his little historical thing about Serpell, Sherman and others. A report on electrification was also produced in 1983, which was agreed with the Department of Transport, but it was decided that its proposals would be discontinued—or rather we were ordered to discontinue them. If they had gone through, we would now have an electrified railway system for almost the whole country. Professor Alan Walters was the person who persuaded Mrs Thatcher that the report should be binned.