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Railways: Investment

My Lords, my noble friend makes several important points. I shall just touch on some of the more important ones. He talked about the future of the HST 125 trains, the possibility of refurbishing them and the possible undesirable effects of those trains staying in the market. There are uses for that rolling stock in the future. One difficulty about that rolling stock is that its operating costs would be higher, while there might be a reliability question. The noble Lord knows how damaging breakdowns are on the system. The noble Lord talked about the redoubling of the Swindon to Kemble line. That is a good scheme but it is not in CP4. I am making absolutely no commitment, but it could be a CP5 issue. He also talked about the time saving that arises from electrification. He needs to remember that that route is much more intensively used but that electric trains will give greater acceleration, so there will be a big benefit. However, we will keep the timetabling issues under review and make sure that we are not losing any benefits that we could gain.