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Transport: High-speed Rail

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, because when I was in China a few months ago looking at the high-speed line it is building between Beijing and Shanghai—which will be completed within two years and will be a remarkable construct—I visited the company in which he has a stake. It is a joint venture company with the Chinese which is building pantographs for the high-speed trains. It does excellent work and is a great example of British engineering expertise being exported. We want to see many more companies like his flourishing in export markets. We already have a good number that do, and that number will be substantially enhanced by the programmes we have in place for Crossrail and electrification. If companies can see a supply of work coming over the next 20 years—there will be if we proceed with high-speed rail—there will be still bigger incentives to invest and our opportunities to export will be greater still. This applies not only to China, where the noble Lord has great experience; the United States is about to embark on a high-speed rail revolution. President Obama has made significant funds available for development work on a number of high-speed rail projects. In Florida and California, in particular, schemes are being developed which would bring about connectivity and capacity benefits similar to the ones I have described in respect of links between British cities. I expect to see a significant market in the US open within the next few years, and our excellent rail manufacturing, engineering and consultancy sectors are well poised to take advantage of those markets, particularly if we are ourselves committed to developing a north-south high-speed rail project.