Channel Tunnel Rail Link (Supplementary Provisions) Bill

I largely agree with the comments of the Minister and the spokesman for the Conservative party, the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), both of whom support the Bill in principle. The Minister correctly says that it is a small, technical Bill, but it has significant implications for taking forward the channel tunnel link. It is clear that we now have a railway of considerable capacity and one that we can be proud of, taking us from the channel tunnel through to St. Pancras. Many of us who used Eurostar when it first opened were embarrassed that we could travel through the French countryside so fast, yet clank around at probably 18.6 mph on the way from the Kent coast up to London. That has been dealt with. After a slow start, the Government have moved fast to help in their own way with the completion of the St. Pancras project, and the country is better off for that. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches look forward to the day when high speed services do not stop at St. Pancras but run much further north, so that people from Edinburgh, Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool will be able to access high speed services and travel to Paris and Brussels without the need to change in London. I hope that the Government will bring forward plans to examine those possibilities sooner rather than later. As we send the Bill on to the other place, as I hope we shall shortly, I should like to highlight a couple of points that it would be helpful for their lordships to examine. The first is about the implications of the potential sale of the infrastructure. The Minister is right to talk about the three constituent parts, but I would be concerned if the track were ultimately not owned by Network Rail. That would be inconsistent with the rest of the rail network, and it is difficult to understand how a sensible arrangement could be reached with suburban or domestic trains running on infrastructure not owned by Network Rail. It would be much cleaner if it were owned and run by Network Rail. I hope that their lordships will examine that. The second matter, which we have not considered today but which is important, is freight movement. The Minister said at column 1123 on Second Reading:"““High Speed 1 might be appropriate for freight usage””—" might be appropriate. It should be made clearer in another place how freight will be able to access the line. I hope that that will not be, as the Minister said,"““on a completely commercial basis””.—[Official Report, 20 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 1123.]" If that were the case, freight might be excluded.