Lord Beith (LD)

I want to make just two points, the first of which relates to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, which in turn reflects an amendment I spoke to in a previous group, to which I felt we had a disappointing reply from the Minister, about the co-ordination of rail travel with buses and other modes. Multimodal travel is still, in the minds of many people, a gamble. There may be a gamble about whether the train arrives, but the idea that the bus will connect with the train and will exist when you get there is one surrounded by uncertainty and not protected by any great area of policy or provision by the operators. Until we address that, multimodal travel will not be the norm. That is important when we are trying to get more people out of the car for commuter services, even for the distance from their home to the railway station. It is important when we want to encourage longer-distance travel but significant parts of the country are not readily—or at all—accessible by rail, when there is this dependence on multimodal travel, which, as I say, is far too often seen as too risky a gamble, with people thinking it would be better to take the car. The other point I want to make relates to heritage rail, and it is simply to show support. I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Aln Valley Railway. There are many circumstances now in which the interaction between heritage railways and the main railway industry has important features, especially as a number of lines—some already and some, we hope, in the future—run into main line stations. It is obviously quite a challenge for the relationship between the railway industry and the heritage railway industry, but it is a challenge that is also an opportunity, and I hope that the Minister will continue to be supportive and encouraging in that respect.