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Sustainable Railways

It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Nicholas. Like other hon. Members, I wish to extend my congratulations to the Chairman of the Select Committee and to her predecessor, the late Gwyneth Dunwoody, on the part that they played in chairing the Select Committee during examination of the White Paper and in producing the report. I am sure I cannot be the only person who has been wondering why we are here today. The White Paper, ““Delivering a sustainable railway””, was announced in July 2007, the Select Committee report was published in July 2008, and the Government response was published in October 2008. It has taken a long time to get here. We had the statement today by the Secretary of State for Transport. I suspect it was made so that the Minister can talk a little more about it this afternoon and avoid some of the issues that have been raised. It was noticeable again this morning that the Secretary of State failed to answer any of the difficult and detailed questions about the number of extra carriages. We will come to them later, but let us now turn to the White Paper itself. As many other hon. Members have noted, it is unfortunate, to say the least, for the Government that, less than two years after its publication, the so-called 30-year strategy is basically out of date and has fallen apart. It is no wonder that the Select Committee concluded that the Government should seek to develop a genuine 30-year strategy. At the time the document was produced, it was rightly lambasted by several industry experts as over-hyped and visionless. Several people said that within the high level output statement itself there were many good things, but, like so much from this Government, the good is recycled and the new is bad. The HLOS and the 30-year statement talked about three things: Birmingham New street and Reading—in reality, a re-announcement; £100 million for all new station improvements outside London; and, again, the much-vaunted 1,300 carriages. In fact, in that document we went from 1,300 new to 1,300 extra carriages, and we should not forget that previous Secretaries of State announced them as well. So when the Select Committee concluded that"““the level of ambition in the White Paper is too modest…we urge the Government to be bolder””," that it was"““disappointing that the White Paper dodged the decision””," that"““hesitation…will mean years of avoidable misery””," and that"““the White Paper dismisses electrification too easily””," it clearly agrees with the view of many in the railway industry that, in reality, the document was nothing more than an expensive waste of paper and ink. Now, two years on, in the short period since the publication of the document, the White Paper's dismissal of high-speed rail and electrification has been deemed obsolete by the new Minister of State and a Government U-turn. The new Minister has reversed the catastrophic opposition to high-speed rail. It is a shame that, so far, those plans are uncosted and we do not know where they are going to start or where they will go to. One hopes that they will not have the fantasy train to accompany Heathrow's fantasy plane. Now, two years on, in the short period since the publication of the document, the White Paper's dismissal of high-speed rail and electrification has been deemed obsolete by the new Minister of State and a Government U-turn. The new Minister has reversed the catastrophic opposition to high-speed rail, but it is a shame that, so far, those plans are uncosted and we do not know where they are going to start or where they will go to. One hopes that there will not be a fantasy train to accompany Heathrow's fantasy plane. The analysis in the White Paper of the procurement system has been blown out of the water by the Competition Commission; its refusal to reform Network Rail demonstrates that the Government are not concerned with the serious criticisms of the governance issues relating to Network Rail; and its fares policy has been criticised by a number of hon. Members this afternoon. So it is not surprising that the words of the Select Committee—