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Sustainable Railways

I welcome your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir Nicholas. This has been a very interesting debate. It has featured substantial contributions from many hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber—but particularly on the Government Benches—who have committed themselves to debating what is critical to our transport infrastructure. I congratulate the Select Committee, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman), on producing the report. Let me assure her and members of the Committee that it is an important contribution to the debate on our network. I have listened with interest to all the requests that have come in for various schemes. I will seek, before the conclusion of the debate, to respond to some of the requests relating to specific parts of the network. However, I want first to respond to the report and to what hon. Members have raised in the debate. I seriously believe that the 2007 rail White Paper is the most positive statement about the growth of Britain's railways for 50 years. It sets out firm, costed plans for investment for the next five years, alongside long-term consideration about meeting the challenges 30 years ahead. People have said that we have had a lack of ambition; indeed, the report indicated that. That is not reflected in what has happened since the report was produced and, indeed, over the past decade. Passenger numbers have grown by about 40 per cent. in the past 10 years. The Government are investing £15 billion between 2009 and 2014 to increase capacity for up to 183 million passengers a year. For the long term, our aim is a rail network that can carry double the current number of passengers. Between now and 2014, 1,300 extra carriages will come into service. Hon. Members referred to that. Those carriages will go to the areas with the worst overcrowding problems. About 900 of them will be for London and the south-east; 423 of those additional carriages have already been ordered and the new control period has not yet started. This is a sign of the Government's determination to press on with investment. Of the 423 carriages that have been ordered, 92 are scheduled for Southern, 217 for London Midland, eight for Chiltern and 106 for Virgin west coast. An invitation to tender is currently out for another 320. Rather than sitting and not getting on with the job, that shows that we are getting on with the job of moving forward. I recognise the points that have been made because I was before the Select Committee only yesterday. There were discussions about regional investment. It must be recognised that we have to invest immediately where there are serious crowding issues today. I will come to the longer-term plan shortly.