Heidi Alexander

Sometimes I wonder what alternative reality the hon. Gentleman is living in. Network North may have promised everything to everyone, but not a penny of it was funded, and promising local areas schemes that the Conservatives knew would never materialise was no way to run a Government and no way to run a country. This Government are now providing certainty to those areas, giving the green light to important road and rail schemes and being honest about what we cannot afford. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman caught what was said by the former Rail Minister Huw Merriman to the Transport Committee last week, but he had this to say about the record of the last Government: “A lot of promises were made to MPs and others as to the ambition, but it did not match the amount that was actually being set down. By the time I came into post I ended up with a list that was much longer than could be funded.” I rest my case. The hon. Gentleman talked of nothing being new. Let me give him some examples of new projects that we are announcing today. We are upgrading the Tyne and Wear metro, replacing a signalling system that dates back to the 1970s and enabling the extension of the metro to Washington. We are providing new railway stations: Wellington and Cullompton in Devon, Portishead and Pill with connections to Bristol, and Haxby in North Yorkshire, which will connect tens of thousands of people to the rail network. Can the hon. Gentleman tell me which Conservative Transport Secretary committed funds to those schemes? He cannot, because none of them did. Let me also give one of the new roads as an example: the Middlewich bypass in Cheshire. The previous Government rejected the business case for that scheme, but this Government are funding it. New infrastructure, new railway stations and new roads connecting every part of our country—that is the difference that a Labour Government make.