Member

My understanding—this is what the intelligence given to me suggests—is that something was made clear to the construction consortium building the TransPennine route upgrade or TRU, a railway scheme. The suggestion was made by officers of West Yorkshire Police that if they were funded for some new police cars, the consortium would experience fewer problems with abnormal load movements. So far as I can see, West Yorkshire Police is competing very hard with West Midlands Police in this respect. A Written Answer to a Parliamentary Question informs us that the TRU transferred to West Yorkshire Police £175,000 for some snazzy Volvo EX90 cars. To put that into context, it is more than the total annual income for providing police escorts for Surrey, Sussex, Leicestershire, Thames Valley and probably the Met combined. Can the Minister explain to the Committee what he thinks is going on, so that I can be fully informed when I discuss this with Transparency International next week? My Amendment 416D seeks to prevent this happening again.