Railways: East Coast Main Line

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The Government have invested £4 billion in the east coast main line and are planning to invest a further £1.2 billion in issues such as capacity at Stevenage, the King’s Cross track remodelling and the Werrington grade separation works. These upgrades will deliver better journey times, reliability and capacity improvements.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I declare that I am a regular user of LNER and congratulate it on its reliability and punctuality, apart from during weather difficulties. My noble friend recently reported that some of the additional capacity will go to the south-west of England, yet passengers and LNER have suffered two years of disruption from Network Rail improvements into King’s Cross, with the promise of extra capacity between London and the north of England on the east coast main line route. Will she give her word that this additional capacity will be delivered?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, throughout these timetable considerations, the Government need to balance the feedback we get from people and organisations with the journeys that passengers actually take; sometimes those two do not have a lot of connection. But my noble friend is quite right to note that the demand on LNER is coming back more strongly than in other cases. Of course we are taking that into account and, if needs be, we will make sure that the capacity improvements on the services she talks about are put in place.