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Sustainable Railways

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. He is thinking of the enormous public investment that has gone into west coast mainline and east coast mainline and all the other infrastructure developments. That should be seen not as dead money but a good investment in creating both jobs and work and a good transport infrastructure. If such transport infrastructures then run profitably, the public should benefit from the profit, which is the whole issue about public investment and public development. The report mentions the new north-south high speed line, which I strongly support. Although it will require a huge amount of investment, it should not stop in the Midlands; it needs to go much further and include a link to Scotland because that will help to improve rail links throughout the country. I also want the Minister to address the issue of the reopening of various lines. The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly have a very good record of successfully reopening a number of branch lines, such as Bathgate and part of the Waverley line in Scotland and a number of links in south Wales. They are very welcome, and well done to them for doing it. In most cases, they have been successful. When campaigns in England to preserve and reopen lines have been successful, the lines have by and large been very profitable and brought a lot more people into rail usage. I remember the great campaigns to prevent the closure of lines in England that eventually became successful. However, some short bits of line could be reopened to improve east-west freight and passenger usage, and thereby the development of an east-west corridor. Railfuture mounted a campaign for the reopening of various sections of the east-west line to provide a good link from the east coast to Oxford, and from there to the west country. That mainly requires the reopening of the disused Bletchley to Bicester link, which would not be particularly expensive. The track bed is there and, indeed, the line has never been closed. I hope that the Minister tells us that the idea is further forward and that there is a plan to develop an east-west link, and that he will not simply say that he is looking at the potential of another business case. Reopening the line will help to bypass London, improve cross-country rail links, and take a lot more freight off the roads and on to the railways where it ought to be. It would not be particularly difficult, and I hope that we get some good news about it. I am a bit nervous about raising the issue of London's railway systems in this company, but I am prepared to be bold on this occasion. There seems to be some difficulties in the relationship between Network Rail and Transport for London on the development of London Overground. In some cases, much needed investment does not happen because it is not clear who is ultimately responsible for it. I hope the Minister will give us some good news on that. On the operation of the franchise companies, First Capital Connect, which essentially runs commuter services in and out of London, has just announced that it is going to close a lot of ticket offices and take staff out of stations. It will cut opening hours altogether at 47 ticket offices and, according to the TSSA, reduce opening time by 500 hours between Monday and Friday. That means that my constituents who use Finsbury Park or Drayton Park stations, for example, will find that there is a shortage of ticket sellers—presumably, there will be less inspection too—so they will be totally reliant on machinery to buy tickets, enter and leave the station. Consequently, they will confront the very serious safety issue of unstaffed stations, particularly in the evenings. I recognise that staffing stations incurs a cost, but there are two very big costs incurred by not staffing stations: first, increased crime; secondly, fewer people will use the trains because they do not feel safe on them.