Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)

I thank my noble friend for that question. The truth is that we knew at the time of the cancellation of HS2 phase 2a that the original purpose of a new railway, originally all the way to Manchester, was to enhance capacity. We knew at the time that phase 2a was cancelled that there were no alternatives and, therefore, that the railway would be constrained north of Birmingham, as it currently is. The Government are thinking about what might be done about that, but until HS2 is built to Birmingham, the Office of Rail and Road has told applicants for open access on the west coast main line that there is simply no space left—and there is no space left. The ORR has had to consider its duty to promote reliability on the railway and encourage Network Rail to improve reliability, and it would be pretty hard to do so if at the same time it approved applications that did not have appropriately guarded train paths to achieve it. We will see what happens on the east coast main line, where several applications are currently being considered by the ORR as an independent adjudicator. The truth is that one reason for ETCS on the south end of the east coast main line is that the east coast main line is largely full too. I draw the House’s attention to earlier discussions that we have had about the new east coast main line timetable, which has been long in coming and in the end had to be decided by me as the Rail Minister because it was so difficult to get agreement between the parties that had train paths and rights to train paths in order to produce a satisfactory timetable. The truth is that my noble friend is right: on both main lines there is a shortage of capacity, the solution to which can be achieved only through further investment.