To some extent, one or two of my noble friends have already alluded to the matter in Amendment 23. Are we to have a vertically-integrated high-speed line or not? It links with some of the previous amendments we have had. At the moment, the legislation says that you shall have separate
organisations running the infrastructure from those which operate trains on it, be they passenger or freight. Having got the legislation right, the need and desire for them to talk to each other is absolutely fundamental. It has been tried with alliances: South West Trains was probably the first one. It is interesting that that alliance ended after four years because they said that it did not bring any benefit, but they were talking to each other anyway.
3 pm
It is obviously essential that everybody talks to each other—we talked about this before—but having a train operator with a financial involvement in the infrastructure goes against all the competition issues, which have made the railways the success they are in this country today. There is competition on freight and real competition on the passenger side: the franchises are bid for and the franchise operators come up with creative ideas, and it is then up to the Department of Transport to make sure that they deliver. Therefore there is competition, which is beneficial. I would not like to see whoever is running the most trains on HS2 being allowed to take over the infrastructure for its own ends. Having said that, I beg to move.