Debate on the Address

My Lords, last night I visited St Pancras station. I congratulate the Government on building that most magnificent station. I pay tribute to the people at Butterley who made the structure 140 years ago, to Sir John Betjeman who saved it and to John Prescott—who is rarely accoladed here or anywhere else—who drove the project through. We all ought to be eternally grateful to him for that. I am sure that most of the people in the country will be. The only trouble that the Minister faces is that people want more such projects. My noble friends Lord Mar and Kellie and Lord Glasgow spoke for a lot of people who are very dissatisfied with the document which came out from the department at the end of October, entitled Towards a Sustainable Transport System, which presages years and years of studies and model building but no action. I hope that the Government will build on the work featured in the Green Gauge document and go ahead with something which we all know is necessary. We do not want to construct a system based on the consultants’ reports which no doubt will be generated between now and 2014, because we could be on the way to starting it. People in Birmingham, people in Manchester, people in Liverpool and people in Leeds want it and they want it now. Reference has been made to rolling stock. I characterise the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, as being in the blue corner. His party privatised the railways and gave us the rolling stock companies which were going to be enterprising and buy rolling stock. What are they? They are conservative bankers—more conservative than the people in the department ever were—and there is a desperate shortage of rolling stock. So much for the enterprise that the Conservatives talk about.