Channel Tunnel Rail Link (Supplementary Provisions) Bill

The hon. Gentleman is trying to have it both ways. He wants to praise his Government for mounting the rescue, but when things happen that he and I disagree with, he says that the Government have nothing to do with them. He cannot have it both ways. I hope that the Bill will make it more difficult to walk away from these responsibilities in future and that the House can receive some reassurance about that in the winding-up speeches. Looking ahead, as the Minister explained, the purpose of the Bill is to prepare LCR for break-up and subsequent sale, so that Eurostar will then become a purely stand-alone operation. It is reasonably likely that one of the bidders, possibly the successful one, will be SNCF. The chances of SNCF caring very much about Ashford, Ebbsfleet or Stratford are remote unless some safeguards are written into the sale to try to recapture the full regeneration benefits that Members on both sides of the House want and that should come from a project that has absorbed billions of pounds of taxpayers' money. I hope that the Minister can reassure me about that at the end of the debate and at subsequent stages. I want finally to deal with the change in the role of the Office of the Rail Regulator to allow it to charge fees on the line. Will the Minister clarify whether that new charging regime is designed to allow, or even to promote, competition on using the line? He will be aware, as will others, that there have been reports of new operators who wish to run trains through the tunnel on High Speed 1, and many of us think that such competition, if technically feasible, would be welcome. As we have heard during the course of the debate, the issues surrounding the high-speed line are rather less smooth than the ride that we will all enjoy on it. It may yet prove in the long term to be a successful ““grand projet”” of the type that this country is traditionally not very good at. I hope so. To be fully successful, however, it needs to provide the benefits originally promised to Ashford and other parts of Kent. I hope that the Minister can reassure all hon. Members that those benefits will materialise in future.