I want to go a lot further than that, because my hon. Friend has made a persuasive case
tonight. If Adjournment debates mean anything, they mean Members influencing how the Government do their business, as I know you would acknowledge, Mr Speaker. It would be helpful for me to meet my hon. Friend, the different ferry operators and perhaps other interested parties, such as the local council, to hear at first hand the challenges that they face and to encourage their participation in exactly the kind of holistic review of transport infrastructure that, as I know, is so dear to his heart.
It would be my pleasure to host the review, which should work, where appropriate, with bus and train operators to co-ordinate departures and arrivals of services to facilitate journeys, and should consider the long-term transport needs of the island’s residents and visitors. It would have to be done with a bottom-up approach, led by those who know best—those who deliver the services and those who know the needs of the island—but if we can act as a facilitator or co-ordinator, I will be delighted to do so.
My hon. Friend has done a great service to the House by drawing its attention to the kind of imaginative approach that he outlined and which I have endorsed. The Government very much support such an approach. As he knows, we have adopted it with local enterprise partnerships, which bring together local authorities and businesses to agree infrastructure priorities in their area for which they can bid for local growth fund resources. It is only by working together that businesses and local government can ensure that funding decisions made by central Government have the relevant impact in meeting local peoples’ needs. That is precisely what my hon. Friend has epitomised—indeed, one might say personified —in his helpful contribution.
I have no desire to delay the House unduly, but I must suggest that my hon. Friend work closely with the Isle of Wight council—he mentioned this himself—to establish a team or what we might call a taskforce to prepare the terms of reference so that we can begin to put together the plan that he outlined to me briefly in private and has now described to the House.
As my hon. Friend spoke tonight, I thought of Dryden, as I am sure you did too, Mr Speaker. Dryden said:
“Fairest Isle, all isles excelling,
Seat of pleasures, and of loves;
Venus here will choose her dwelling,
And forsake her Cyprian groves.”
I do not think that Dryden was speaking of the Isle of Wight, but he might well have been. In bringing these matters to the House’s attention, my hon. Friend has not only won my support for the concept of examining them in a more rounded way, but done a great service to his constituents, once again confirming himself as the lord of his isle.
Question put and agreed to.
10.39 pm
House adjourned.