Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)

I thank my noble friend for that question. I was at Euston a week last Monday, hearing about the details of the plan. The station itself was very modern in 1968; it is no longer very modern. As a previous chair of Network Rail, I can tell your Lordships that if you look closely at the columns in the station, there are bands around the marble because it would fall off without them. The station is no longer in a fit condition. I would like to take some modest credit for having reincluded the concourse at Euston in the overall plan for the redevelopment of Euston and, now that the tunnels for HS2 will go there, I am very hopeful that all parts of the station will be fit for passenger usage in the future. However, in the meantime, the most important parts of the 100-day plan are the following. The concourse is too small, so the logical thing to do on the concourse is to load the trains earlier, yet the position up until very recently was that neither of the train companies routinely managed to do that. However, they are now changing. So, a significant proportion of Avanti trains will be loaded at least 20 minutes before departure and, for the more local services on the London Northwestern trains, the platforms will be full of passengers even before the train has arrived. That will make a huge difference. There is a bookshop there currently that will not be there shortly, to create some space. I recall that we got criticism for removing Boots, but too many shops and not enough concourse space is the wrong answer. There will also be some further improvements to signage and visibility. When the last signage was done, it was hoped that it was the right job, but I am afraid it turned out not to be. I hope that that is sufficient granular detail, but, if my noble friend would like to make himself available, either I or somebody else will show him around Euston Station, and I can get them to show him what is going to happen.