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Sustainable Railways

I understand that, but it is obviously easier for my hon. Friend to say that when we spend billions of pounds in London. My constituents have no option but to catch the bus. He is right about the money that is going into the private rail companies, and I will come to that in a moment. We have to think carefully about the issue. It is all too easy to say, ““Fares are too high; we should increase the subsidy.”” However, if we do not increase the subsidy, the effect will be a decline in the railway, which is what happened over 30 years on the West Coast Railways. That is why it cost nearly £9 billion to put things right—although a lot of it was just renewal work. We have to come to a conclusion about how we are going to deal with the matter.