Rail Freight

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

How right the noble Lord is. The digital signalling programme for the east coast main line does absolutely as he describes, which is to give more capacity on the existing track. It is in train, as far as I know; it is on target and on budget for the south end of the east coast main line. It is subscribed to by all the operators, including all the freight operators that use it. One of its principal objectives is to get more train paths out of the same railway.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that, if we are to get a substantial move of freight on to the railways, we need to move to palletisation as opposed to containerisation as the principal unit that is used, and that to do that we need to construct proper freight villages in order to have the transfer that is necessary, and that without those infrastructure improvements we will not get to the target?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

It was a privilege for me to open the ninth Maritime Transport rail freight hub in Northampton about six weeks ago. I had a long discussion with John Williams, the chief executive, and we discussed precisely that. We were discussing how we should measure this, because tonnage is maybe not the best way of measuring container loads—in fact, the numbers of containers might be a better method of doing it, if we could find a way. The Government are very active in this, as am I personally. It is clear that intermodal container traffic, and indeed national container traffic, is the largest growth feature of this market and we should do everything we can to encourage it.