Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend and his colleagues, my hon. Friends the Members for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) and for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), on leaving us in no doubt of the importance of upgraded, improved rolling stock on that franchise. We are looking at all rolling stock options as part of the process and high quality points will be awarded for proposals to upgrade the franchise. The invitation to tender will be provided to bidders in August of this year.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

T3. Now that HS2 Ltd has declared that it sees no business case for extending the high-speed line to Scotland, will the Secretary of State confirm that it is now an England-only railway and that full Barnett consequentials for the devolved countries will be announced in the next comprehensive spending review?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I do not accept that at all. Indeed, I have said that I want to see services going to Scotland, and one of the points in the report by Sir David Higgins about faster services was that those will go on to north Wales as well.