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Thameslink

I am sure that the Minister will hear what the hon. Gentleman has said. The final point made by the hon. Member for Bedford, quite rightly, is that this programme should not be cut. The hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) strongly supported that, and it is certainly uppermost in our minds. This programme should not be cut and we should be committed to it. Unfortunately, I must point out to the hon. Member for Bedford that his Government have presided over an economic crisis that has led to the spending of billions of pounds that could otherwise go towards this sort of infrastructure. Equally, they have squandered public funds on a heroic—perhaps I should say unheroic—scale, as a result of which, productivity in the public sector has gone down. There is a problem that we must face realistically. The sort of solution we need was set out on 26 January in the Financial Times, which pointed out that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has already announced cuts in capital expenditure of about one half over the next four or five years. Our worry is that the project under discussion could be included in that sort of cut. It was pointed out that we could match up the funds of the pensions industry, for example, which need long-term revenue to service, with the income flows from such transport infrastructure. That could provide an alternative source of financing for these big projects, apart from public sector funds. Unfortunately, we have a rather unhappy history with the private finance initiative, which, again, has not been handled well by the Government. If we are to save such projects, alternative ways of financing the transport infrastructure must be taken into account and used imaginatively. It is vital that such projects go ahead. Recently, I was on a trip with the Foreign Affairs Committee to Madrid and Lisbon, and I saw for myself the effect on a capital city of modern transport services and roads—of course, in those cases there was access to large amounts of European Union funds. One can see the galvanising effect that that sort of infrastructure has on quality of life, as well as on the economic performance of those cities. London desperately needs that sort of spending on such schemes. That is why I am an enthusiastic member of the all-party group on the Thameslink route, and I hope that the scheme will go ahead in its entirety.