My Lords, unless I mistook what was going on, I have a feeling that the Minister has already replied to this amendment. I feel that the reply he gave to Amendment 22 was in fact a reply to Amendment 24A, hence the reference to freight paths and to keeping arrangements flexible in advance and not making commitments this far out. It may be that he has more to add on these issues.
I would make just two points. It is not clear to me why my noble friend thinks that publishing a draft timetable nine years before the line opens is a good idea. This would build up a whole set of debates, expectations and controversies long before the likely pattern of demand and usage is clear. Was there some particular reason why he was so keen that this work should be done so far in advance of the opening of HS2?
The second point that the Minister replied to earlier was about freight use, but of course it is not envisaged that there will be any freight paths on HS2. Perhaps my noble friend will say why he thinks there should be, because the released capacity on the west coast main line will provide very significant additional freight opportunities, and of course freight trains do not run at the speeds achieved by passenger trains, so they would significantly disrupt the operation of the high-speed service if they operated during the day. Moreover, as the Minister also said earlier, I understand that the custom and practice on most high-speed lines is that
maintenance work will be done overnight and it is therefore essential that the lines can be closed for that purpose. So I was not quite sure about some of the points made by my noble friend—why he wants either to set these in stone now, or in the case of freight, to build up expectations that there would be freight services on this line, which is quite unlikely to be the case.
3.30 pm