The hon. Gentleman knows that I tend to agree with much that he says, even though he belongs to another party. He makes his point incredibly well. Stansted is key to London’s development. It is extraordinary that the line currently running from Stansted to Liverpool Street is as chaotic, delay-prone and slow as it is. Clearly, efforts must be made to improve that service. He is absolutely right: a lot of attention has been paid to airport capacity. That is not the subject of this debate, but it is clear that investment in our train capacity, so that people can move around the city, will take a fine eye and focus. I hope that it will command the attention not just of the Mayor, as he rightly pointed out, but of the Government.
Yes, Crossrail 2 is ambitious. Its ambition comes with a price tag, but the central question is: what price doing nothing? What is the price of leaving communities cut off from central London, letting travel across London become more arduous than it is and causing major businesses to leave our capital for more mobile and modern competitors in Asia, Europe and America?
Some will still say that this is all too sudden and that more time is needed to consider and contemplate before the Government can decide, presumably, to consider and contemplate a bit more. I have sat where the Minister is sitting, as a Minister in different Departments, and I know the business of kicking things slightly into the long grass as one negotiates hard with the Treasury, but let us not forget that Crossrail 2 is quite long in the tooth. Part of the route was originally conceived as early as 1901, only to be dropped five years later. After the second world war, the idea of a Chelsea to Hackney line peppered almost every London rail study. In the early 1990s a route was finally safeguarded, and mutations of it have slowly been making their way between Whitehall in-trays ever since. Successive Governments have already had time to contemplate and consider the plan. It is now time for leadership and action.
As I outlined, London’s congestion problems will come to a head during the next period. The line needs to be open in the early 2030s, which means breaking ground in the early 2020s. We therefore need a hybrid Bill sooner rather than later and, because this project will no doubt be completed, owned and amended by successive Governments, it is critical that we establish cross-party support now, before the parliamentary cycle begins to gear up for the 2015 general election. In that spirit, I invite the Minister to address the inaugural meeting of the all-party group on Crossrail 2 that I am hoping to set up with colleagues here and in the other place over the coming weeks. Most importantly, will he detail exactly when he expects the review of the safeguarded route to begin, with an outline of the process involved, and when he expects it to be complete?
The Government’s role is not only to take leadership on this issue but to empower others to do the same. The most recent comprehensive spending review outlined funding for the Department for Transport only up until 2014-15, scrapping the long-term funding guarantee in
previous spending reviews that provided a 10-year forecast of budgets. In December 2012, therefore, we had the ludicrous scenario of Transport for London publishing a 10-year business plan that could only outline funding up until 2014-15. If that practice continues in the second spending review later this year, TfL will still have no certainty over its funding settlement after the 2015-16 financial year. It is clear that we need a proper funding settlement and that that need is great. Does the Minister agree that the best way to ensure the delivery of transport investment projects such as Crossrail 2 is to provide the bodies tasked with delivering them with clear indications of their future funding settlement over the long term?
Furthermore, I am sure that all of us who are keen to see more transport investment are concerned at the enduring silence of the Secretary of State for Transport while his Cabinet colleagues are peacocking across television studios to try to spare their Departments from further cuts. I invite the Minister to put all of our minds at rest when he responds. Will he announce his membership of the national union of Ministers and will he put on record that he would like to see Crossrail 2 explicitly included in the comprehensive spending review in the same manner in which Crossrail 1 was included in the spending reviews of 2004, 2007 and 2010?
Will the Minister ensure that he does his best to get us into position to have a hybrid Bill shortly, with cross-party support and with some certainty that the dates will hold? Although 2030 or 2031 is still some distance away, we want to be sure of getting there so that we can begin the work now and not delay it until after a general election kicks the project into the long grass, in which case we will not see Crossrail 2 come to fruition during the lifetime of anyone in the Chamber.
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