I am grateful to the Minister for that response. Indeed, I was not aware of the Treasury paper, which is good news and rather justifies me tabling the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, may be wondering why the Treasury is moving so early. He said that a timetable is needed for the business case and yes, of course it is needed to build a new line. I am not talking in particular about freight on the high-speed line. If that does develop, it could run at night, but it is not that significant. However, for the west coast main line, a lot of people will be looking for business cases to work out how they will respond not only to the west coast franchise but to other franchises and freight. Ministers have said for many years that there will be so much space on the west coast main line that you will be able to run a lot of freight trains, and we hope that that is true. However, I recall that, a few years ago, other Ministers promised services on the west coast main line with a 10-minute frequency, non-stop from Milton Keynes. The number of non-stop services from the constituencies of particular Members of Parliament can cause a bit of congestion near London.
As the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, said, if any investment is required—even for just a small set of points or something like that—it takes a long time. We can debate why, but it does. In particular, if a freight service that goes up the west coast main line wants to run a new service between a port and an inland terminal and signs a contract with a customer for 10 years, it will want some comfort that it will be able to run that train for 10 years. Unlike passenger services, which can run when they are empty if they are told to, a freight train will not run unless it is full. It is therefore good news that the process has started, and I shall follow it with great interest. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.