High-Speed Rail

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I spent an hour at lunchtime trying to work out whether I was a Liberal or not. I was reading the yellow book from 1928, called ““Our Industrial Future””, which recommended precisely what he has referred to—a national infrastructure planning commission that would take the decisions. That is all well and good, but I come from a different political tradition. I discovered that I was a Conservative after all. The reason why I am talking so much about local decision making is that for high-speed rail to have the impact that we all want it to have—in particular, for the rebalancing of the economy that the Government so value—there are decisions that will have to be taken at local level. My concern is that if we do not think about that now, it will not happen, so I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but the tenor of my remarks is designed to draw attention to where we need better local decision making, and where the DFT needs to factor local priorities into its planning. I will try to draw my remarks to a close, because I have been going on for almost 20 minutes. In particular, I would like the Government to convene something analogous to ““The Northern Way””, be it a ministerial committee for transport in the north of England, an advisory group or whatever. It should be something that will bring together all the different voices in the north for the purposes of understanding and reprioritising. A large number of projects have been proposed, with varying cost-benefit ratios that we have all looked at and analysed to the nth degree. We need some way of working out what the pan-northern priorities are. At the moment, I am concerned that that will not occur, so I hope that the Minister can reassure me on that key point.