Sustainable Railways

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to Thameslink, which serves my constituency and is the line on which I have commuted for 38 years—perhaps I should declare an interest. The £5.5 billion for Thameslink contrasts rather markedly with the £200 million committed to rail freight. Will she give further thought to more substantial investment in rail freight, particularly on strategic routes? That would not just take traffic off our road, but might take freight traffic off fast main line passenger routes and free them up for faster and more frequent passenger trains.