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Transport and the Economy

No, I think the hon. Gentleman misunderstands me. As I said, we have not opposed £6 billion of difficult cuts to the transport budget, whether that is capital or revenue funding, but we would have maintained a further £3 billion and we would have spent it in different ways, as I will set out. We would have protected £500 million for road schemes vital to economic growth, providing a much-needed boost to our construction industry. We would have made sure the £435 million needed for essential road maintenance went ahead, saving the taxpayer money in the long term, according to the National Audit Office. Labour would not have cut £759 million from the rail budget; we would have put passengers first and tackled affordability. We would not have allowed the private train operating companies to boost their profits with eye-watering fare rises of up to 11% this January, 5% more than the RPI plus 1% that the Government told passengers they could expect, which means that some people are spending more on their fare to work than they do on their mortgage or rent. That is not helping to make work pay; it is just adding to the cost-of-living crisis that households are already facing. Labour would put working people first by taking on the vested interests. We would not have given back to train companies the right to fiddle the fare cap, so that when we said that fare rises would be limited to inflation plus 1%, the public would know that that was the maximum rise they would face at the ticket office. We would also have been able to bring forward the much-needed electrification of the midland main line that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) and my neighbour, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), who is no longer in her place, pointed out, is so important to improving connectivity between London, Northamptonshire and four of the largest cities in the country: Derby, Leicester, Sheffield and, of course, my own city of Nottingham. We would have started the electrification of the great western main line, but we would have gone right through to Swansea, rather than stop at Cardiff.