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Kent Coast Railway Line

I have some sympathy with that remark. My experience of the Department for Transport is that it takes an awful lot of shouting, booing and pushing to make anything happen. It is the Department's inertia that may need to be addressed; I do not think that it is down to individuals. I raised the issue of Deal and the high-speed rail deficiency, as I called it at the time, with Lord Adonis, who came to Dover with two colleagues to celebrate the high-speed train. He got off at Dover Priory a month or so ago. He wanted to ram home the advantages of regeneration—the boost that high-speed trains give to regenerating places such as Dover. We have very ambitious regeneration plans on the table. I pay tribute to our local rail campaigning group, which is called Trains4Deal, and to the East Kent Mercury, for the work that they have done together to promote Deal's interests. Trains4Deal has produced a detailed document, which made a well-argued business case for including Deal on the high-speed network and improving connection times. I shall not burden the House by going through all those issues, except to say that on Monday, further to our discussions and meetings, I met the Minister, along with a member of Trains4Deal, and we discussed the paper in detail. It is right to complain when there are complaints to be made, and it is right to raise the question of the deficiencies of the service, but my group is more concerned with suggesting practical solutions that will give us the advantage of the high-speed trains without the present disadvantages for the domestic services. I am looking forward to the Minister's response to our detailed document, when he has had time to look at it, and perhaps to another meeting and finding some practical solutions to the situation in Dover and Deal. It would be tragic if the tenor of this debate gave the impression that High Speed 1 is a waste of time, that High Speed 1 has brought no advantages to Dover or other parts of east Kent, and that High Speed 1 is not recoverable and cannot be made into a first-class service without affecting our domestic lines.