No one more than me welcomed the ambitious £38 billion investment which has been shown to be overambitious. Part of that investment programme was introduced during the coalition Government and, no doubt, there were creaks in it even at that time.
The Minister has tried to assure me that this is not necessary but was the Midland main line and the TransPennine Express announcement as much news to the local authorities as it was to us? The momentum and rhetoric of the Government since the election, particularly out of the Treasury, has been about pushing this programme forward. This makes it even more incredible that suddenly it has hit the buffers, to use the cliché, literally within a week of this amazing government rhetoric. Did the local authorities get any inkling of this before the public and the House?