Railways

My Lords, the noble Earl is drawing too much from silence on the issue. We have not necessarily ruled out a north-south high-speed line. I do not admit to the charge of not being ambitious. I think that we are being ambitious, but politics is all about the order of priorities. We are trying to deal with those capacity issues and we anticipate considerable growth in network use over the next five to 15 years. We do not rule this out. It will have to be looked at again, perhaps at the time of the next strategy and including the option of reopening the Great Central route between London and Birmingham, for which I know some noble Lords have great affection. I would argue, however, that passenger priorities are currently to see investment in quality and capacity network-wide and to see that investment soon. That is why we have put the money where we have. We do not believe that our priority should be to commit tens of billions of pounds to a distant promise of a project that might need to be in place only in 20 years’ time. As for rail/air competition, the improvements in both the west coast and parts of the east coast line in the past few years have begun to demonstrate that there is genuine competition. There is certainly competition in relative travel cost, particularly if one makes intelligent use of the ability to indulge in advance purchases. So that is the position. I think that we have our priorities about right, although we will rule nothing out in terms of the possible need in the future for a high-speed north-south link.