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McNulty Report and West Coast Rail

I am not. I think the hon. Gentleman suffers from the disease—which I have noticed is quite widespread—of taking a rose-tinted retrospective view of British Rail. People were quick enough to criticise and complain about British Rail's performance when it was operating; now, at 15 years' distance, that era suddenly appears to have been some halcyon period of British excellence. The hon. Gentleman is right that British Rail operated the railway on a shoestring at relatively low cost, but in doing so it built up a tremendous legacy of under-investment and disregard for safety risk, the terrible consequences of which we saw only too clearly in the late 1990s and the early years of this century.