My name is Ruth Jones. I am the Member of Parliament for Newport West and Islwyn. I also chair the Welsh Affairs Select Committee. I am delighted to be joined by Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, Nick Millington and Farha Sheikh this afternoon for our rail infrastructure inquiry. I am grateful to all three of you for appearing before us in person; it really does help us. I am going to start off by asking Members to declare any interest they may have at the start. No one? In that case, it is only me: I declare that my husband works for Arcadis, a company that works for HS2. This session is an opportunity to explore the UK Government’s ambitions for the rail network in Wales, the shared priorities for the rail infrastructure of the UK and what the UK Government have agreed with the Welsh Government, and also the extent to which those Government priorities are committed to. On behalf of the Committee, we are delighted to have all three of you here this afternoon. First of all, could you begin by briefly introducing yourselves? I will start with Lord Hendy, please.

My name is Peter, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill. I am the Minister of State for Rail at the Department for Transport in the new Government.

I am Farha Sheikh. I am the DfT Rail Group Services Director for Infrastructure in the north and the west, so that also covers Wales.

I am Nick Millington. I am the Route Director for Network Rail, and I cover Wales and Borders as a route.

Thank you very much. That was brief—excellent. Lord Hendy, can you describe how the Government are going to improve the rail network in Wales? We have obviously had a lot of issues over the last years. What do you see as the bigger picture, going forward?

I would think it might be a common understanding, at least between us and the Committee, that Wales has not fared terribly well in railway infrastructure investment in the last few years. I think that you and the Committee will have seen the exchange of correspondence between the Welsh Cabinet Secretary, the Secretary of State for Wales and the Secretary of State for Transport. That followed a meeting where I was present, and it was agreed that the joint endeavour of both Governments would be to focus on railway infrastructure investment that delivered, in line with both Governments’ targets, better connectivity that drives growth, jobs and housing. The truth is that Wales has not had a decent share of that investment in the past, so agreeing which of the priorities are at the top of the list is a good thing to do in the run up to a spending review, which will decide the next three years’ Government spending. Having a common view between the two Secretaries of State and the Cabinet Secretary for Wales is a pretty helpful thing to do. This afternoon I am expecting to talk about those major priorities, with the proviso that—pending the spending review and a very difficult financial situation that the Government inherited—there are not many commitments that can be certain for the years beyond 2025-26, other than what gets in the spending review. The first iteration of the capital element of that has been submitted already. I do not want particularly to comment about what is in it, only to say that that exchange of letters recognises the importance of some infrastructure investment for rail connectivity in Wales, and I am sure that we will talk about what the major priorities are as we go through this session.

Thank you for that. I am sure it comes as no shock to you that the Committee fully agrees with you; we believe Wales has been underfunded for many years when it comes to rail. This is to all of you, but I will start with Farha Sheikh. What do you see as the biggest problems and challenges in improving the rail infrastructure in Wales?

There is a need to improve reliability and performance on the network, as well as connectivity in both the south and the north, to improve cross-border travel. A range of priorities have been set out already, as part of the Union connectivity review and the Burns assessment, which give us a good idea of where to target our funding immediately, so how to set those priorities. A lot of work has been done by Network Rail and Transport for Wales colleagues to determine the immediate schemes for getting towards those demands.

I am responsible for the operation of the railway as it is now. If I look at the challenges that I face with it, a key issue is weather. If you look at climate resilience, in west Wales and in north-west Wales, there can be high wind speeds. If you then consider intense rainfall—there are things that we are doing to offset that, and they are not particularly complicated at this time, but we have made some major investments in the Severn Estuary, on the Cambrian lines and on the lines between Newport and Hereford, and in north Wales on the Ffestiniog line—some major civil engineering to protect the rail. For this next five years, a key focus for me will be managing diseased trees, which are susceptible to high wind speeds. Also, very tactical drainage schemes to make sure that we can manage rainwater—that has been a focus for me, and it continues to be a focus for which we are funded through this control period. Over the last two years, working with Transport for Wales—when I arrived in Wales and Borders in 2022, the rolling stock fleet was an ex-British Rail fleet. Its quality was not particularly brilliant, and its reliability was the same. We have done work collaboratively to upgrade the timetables, to integrate the core valley lines at Cardiff Central. I travel across Wales and Borders often, and it is rewarding to see that that significant investment in rolling stock and the timetables is now bearing fruit. It has been hard work, but it is a pleasure to see the fruition. It is not complete yet, but the passenger quality and offering are improving. There is always more to do with infrastructure reliability. We have some very talented rail engineers in Wales and Borders. I am blessed with that, and we have devolved some of the decision making into Wales and Borders. We are busy now with infrastructure reliability and looking to provide fixed infrastructure that works.

Thank you very much. Lord Hendy, your report was a couple of years ago now. Do you think problems have been solved or are there still challenges remaining?

It is very nice of you to refer to the Union connectivity review. As far as the connectivity of Wales goes, at that time, of course, Lord Burns had largely finished his work in south-east Wales. Frankly, despite some urging to the contrary, I took the view that his work was extraordinarily good. There was no point in doing it again nor trying to contradict it. The best thing that I could recommend was that it was taken forward, so it has been. It was taken forward at that time, but subsequently paused. When we met in January, the conclusion was that exchange of correspondence. Undoubtedly, one of the highest priorities is to get on with the south Wales main line work. That was cordially agreed between the Cabinet Secretary and the two Secretaries of State, so that is a pretty high priority. I think that at the time my report was published, Lord Burns was looking at north Wales. He also produced some conclusions for the north Wales main line, which are easy to endorse, because it is an obvious place to improve connectivity, particularly with Manchester, Liverpool and the north-west. I am not sure it is derailed. There was a bit of a hiatus. Network North, the rather hopeless document produced at the end of the previous Government’s, life, included within it a rather specious commitment to electrify the north Wales main line. Since there was no specification and no money attached to it, you could not take that seriously. But we did agree again, between the Cabinet Secretary and two Secretaries of State, that capacity on the north Wales main line is an urgent thing to pursue. If you want to get into detail, I will have more to say about that. The third thing I would say is that Wrexham, Bidston and the connections to Liverpool are also a very high priority, and there are some pieces of work to be done on that. I think that, broadly speaking, the conclusions of the UCR have been carried forward into this Government’s policy. There has been a bit of a hiatus on some of them for the last 18 months or so because of the legacy of the previous Government. They feature highly on the joint wish for the spending review, but that process has to come to a conclusion before we know what the outcome is.

Thank you. I have no doubt that we will probe further on the north Wales issues in a minute. Before I go on to Andrew Ranger, as the room is warm today, if people would like to remove their jackets they are perfectly able to do so.

Welcome, all, and thank you for coming today. I just want to probe a little bit further, Lord Hendy, on some of the comments you were just making. The Secretary of State for Transport has said that the Government should prioritise the proposals around the north and south Wales main lines and the Wrexham to Liverpool line that you have just been talking about. Not to dwell too much on precise words, but is that different from saying that the Government will prioritise them?

I think the practical outcome is what comes out of the spending review. As I am sure you know, rail enhancements do feature in the spending review; they are bound to. I am not sure that I can quite get the semantics of the differences between what you are saying. If they are high priority—we have agreed they are a high priority—I think both the Secretary of State and I would hope that enough comes out of the spending review to continue to pursue them. Obviously, the Chancellor has many things to prioritise, and the international events of the last few days will not have escaped anybody in this room, so we have to make the best case we can and see what the outcome is.

You referred in your earlier answer to the transport commissions for north and south-east Wales, and obviously your own UCR. This is a little bit on the same question, really. Can the public be sure that those recommendations are going to be delivered?

They can be sure that we are strongly in agreement that they are the right things to do. I am smiling a bit; they feature in the Department’s bid for the spending review, but I do not know what the outcome is. They are very consistent. I did not need to do any of the work that Terry Burns did again. He justified his proposals perfectly well on the basis of connectivity driving growth, jobs and housing, so that is a helpful start. We will have to see, because the Chancellor has to balance many things.

You recently referred to the very out of date and spurious estimates for the electrification of the north Wales main line from the previous Government, and the fact that the announcement that they made about it therefore carried very little substance. Can you tell me a bit more about where you think the assessment of that project lies in the immediate future?

My recollection—I was the chair of Network Rail for nine years—is that there was no estimate for the electrification of the north Wales main line in the time that I was the chair, dating back to 2015. I think the last estimate was done in the early 2010s, and that proposition was not accompanied by any visible funding, so I think it has to be disregarded. The important thing is that we, as the Government, recognise the case for enhancing the levels of service on the north Wales main line, the extra stations and the connectivity it will produce on the south Wales main line, and the importance of connectivity of Wrexham to Bidston. You can take it from me that they are the top priorities that we have talked about, if only because I have discussed them over a number of years with Ken Skates and have discussed it now with both Secretaries of State, so that is what we are aiming to do. There is an outline business case for the south Wales relief line. We know what needs to be done in north Wales to increase the level of service. I think we are getting to the place where we know what needs to be done on Wrexham-Bidston with the cement works, so you are not speaking to people who have no idea what they want to do. If somebody funds them, we are pretty clear what we need to do.

That is really good to hear. I represent Wrexham, so many of those are really important to the people in my constituency and close by as well. Finally, Lord Hendy, in north Wales, the Government have prioritised the north Wales main line and the Borderlands line that we have talked about, but the North Wales Transport Commission has talked about the Cambrian Line, the Conwy Valley line and the Shrewsbury, Wrexham and Chester line. Can you give an assessment of where they are? They are a bit lower down the priority list, from the sound of it.

Maybe one of the things we should say is that what Nick described was the execution of his element of the five-year operations, maintenance and renewal funding that goes to Wales and the Borders. Of course, there have been some significant improvements on those railways. Certainly, Shrewsbury to Chester had a significant line speed improvement under renewals.

It did, yes.

With the Cambrian line, we have paid a lot of attention to the signalling in order to get the new trains to run.

Journey time reductions.

Indeed. On the Conwy Valley line, between what he spent during his time doing that job and what was spent previously, I think the thick end of £35 million has been spent on the resilience of it, to the point where it is a lot more resilient to the perennial flooding issues from the river Conwy than it has been probably ever since it was built. We have not ignored any of those things, and we know that the connectivity between north and south on the whole of the line between Chester and Newport is important. The reason I have concentrated on south-east Wales, on the north Wales main line and Wrexham-Bidston is that they are significant pieces of upgrade expenditure that would properly form part of the spending review, but for which the result would be notably different and better train services and new stations. That is the difference. Does that make sense?

It does. Thank you very much. Did you want to add anything to that, Mr Millington?

On the Cambrian line, we have recently renewed Barmouth Bridge, which was a significant undertaking. We are doing gauge clearance work in a blockade very shortly to accommodate the new rolling stock. It is virtually cleared all the way through to Aberystwyth. That is the final bit of the jigsaw puzzle, and we are doing that in the next few weeks. Then we will work with Transport for Wales to migrate the old rolling stock off and the new rolling stock in. The new rolling stock is here and is going through its paces now. It is operational, but it is a case of getting everything ready and shifting it as a co-ordination.

Thank you very much.

I would suggest it would be longer than months. The introduction of the stock—I am running it through to Birmingham New Street because it works in a pod, and it goes up to Holyhead as well. We have started on Sundays running the new stock from Holyhead through to Birmingham, which is the first part. That is working now. Then we have some infrastructure alterations to make, and there are one or two ways to do the change. We are looking at late 2026 or probably 2027 at the earliest to swap the whole lot over. That is an indicative timescale.

That is it, yes.

I am returning to south-east Wales, because I have a vested interest in Newport West and Islwyn. The last Government allocated £2.7 million to develop plans for the five new stations. We know that is a drop in the ocean. In terms of the plans, the relief lines and how we get all four lines working for passengers, how advanced is the process? We have been talking about this for years now, and I just wonder when we are going to see the new stations and when passengers will be able to get on a train and go from one station to the other. That is what people want to know.

The history of the investment so far is that the outline business case for the relief lines upgrade was finished in February 2022, but there was no further funding from the previous Government, so it was paused until late 2023. There was then authorisation to proceed to the full business case. The scheme design is now under way, and the full business case is expected by the end of the next financial year, when a formal decision on delivery can be confirmed. That sounds terribly slow. Certainly, the intermission of 18 months did not help. But with the whole history of railway projects, you only have to look at the terrible report about HS2 to realise that the right thing to do is to understand what you are delivering before you decide how much money it is going to cost, and then delivery will be to time and budget so that timescale is not wasted. Is there any more to say, do you think?

I think that covers it.

The Cardiff Parkway station is a case in point. That was developed; we all saw the plans, and then it was called in by the Welsh Government, so there have been long delays. It is now back on track again. What would you think needs to be done to avoid these sorts of delays with the other five stations?

This would come under what is called the rail network enhancement plan. My predecessor from the last Government told me that when he took office he was determined to publish it, but he never managed to in his life in the previous Government. This Government are serious about connectivity delivering growth, jobs and housing, but we obviously have to have regard to the very difficult financial position we inherited. The desirable thing is to have a pipeline of investments, for which business cases are progressively developed, as well as understanding about costs and timescales, and they get picked off when there is funding available. That is certainly an aspiration of this Government, and it is certainly an aspiration of the Welsh Government. There is an aspiration to have a pipeline for Wales, but first of all we have to get through this spending review. In general, this Government recognise completely the utter desirability of having a long-term investment pipeline, both for the security of the supply industry and the understanding of people who want to use the products at the end of it. I think we are serious about that. There is a lot of work going on within the Department, not just about Welsh schemes, but about schemes in England and Wales generally, in order that we can sort them out a bit. The way not to do it is either Network North—frankly, it was just a jumble of things jammed together to prove what you might have spent the money for HS2 Phase 2a on without allocating any of it—or indeed the integrated rail plan for the north of England, which was a vast list of schemes, none of which had any priority or money attached to them. That does not help very much. I think we are in a good place here. The three things that I talked about at the beginning, which we are discussing, are the joint endeavours that we care about most. The real issue is to have the funding to get them to the point of a full business case, full business case approval and delivery. That is what we are aiming at, anyway.

Depending on the spending review?

Of course. But then everything depends on the spending review, because that is the nature of government.

Diolch yn fawr. I am the MP for Caerfyrddin, which is south-west Wales. As you have already noted, reliability is a factor. Personally, I tend to catch the train east of Swansea because of the unreliability of west of Swansea, especially late at night. My part of Wales, south-west Wales, was not covered by either of Lord Burns’s reviews. Can people in these parts of Wales expect any improvement in the rail network?

As far as the operation goes, Nick said part of this already, which is that Transport for Wales has had a difficult start, but I think it is doing quite a good job. The fundamental renewal of virtually the whole of the rolling stock fleet is a really impressive job, and it will bring new trains to parts of the Welsh network for the first time in generations. The operating reliability is pretty good. I think you may be talking more about Great Western, which has had driver issues for several months, especially on Sundays. It is currently a bit better and we are pressing it on that. Of course, we all recognise that you can talk about the future as much as you like, but if people do not regard the railway as being reliable in the present day, they don’t care much what you say about five and 10 years hence. They think you are no good because you cannot run a decent service. We need Great Western to sort out Sunday driver provision. We need the railway to be reliable, which is a factor of all operations, rolling stock and infrastructure, on a regular basis. I think Transport for Wales is doing quite well. At that point, I will hand over to Nick, because he is closer to it and he has the infrastructure.

Thank you. We are currently re-signalling the line of route from Port Talbot to Carmarthen. We have got as far as Llanelli, and that is all commissioned. I visited the sites there a couple of weeks ago. We are now in the final throes of construction, and we will then do testing and we will do commissioning later this year. That will improve reliability. The infrastructure in that area is old mechanical frame signal boxes and electrical equipment from the 1970s. It is quite tricky to keep it going. In terms of infrastructure reliability, that will be a step change in reliability from the signalling infrastructure. The track asset itself is in good order, so that is pretty good. I mentioned earlier about high wind speeds. The other issue that we get is around diseased trees and vegetation, so lineside management. We have worked with Natural Resources Wales, and we are busy removing diseased trees. We have done dozens of miles. We have recently been in a blockade on the Pembroke Dock line, and we have cleared over 10 miles of lineside vegetation. That helps when we get the high wind speeds, because you don’t have to restrict the speed of the trains when the wind speed exceeds 50 miles an hour. We are clearing the lineside and creating habitat pathways in a structured way. That is very much work in progress now. The re-signalling work is underway. Also, ahead of railway reform, we have launched an initiative called local railways. That is at the front line. That is track and train—our people—working together. We have a local railway in central and west Wales. The lead for that is a chap called Rick from Transport for Wales. Their tribe, if you like—the railway maintenance people, my maintenance people at Whitland—work very closely with the train crews at Carmarthen. Building that local track and train culture is bearing fruit as well, so there are improvements that we are making now and there are more to make.

We have been talking a lot about investment and enhancement in the north-east and in the south-east. Is there a danger of a two-tier rail network emerging in Wales? What are your thoughts on that potential?

I do not see that as a proposition, and I certainly think that neither the Welsh Government nor Transport for Wales would recognise that. We have talked about those things a lot because they are where a relatively big investment will produce the most fruit in terms of both Governments’ aims in terms of connectivity driving growth, jobs and housing. I think that Transport for Wales has done a good job in looking at the Welsh railway network and the Welsh transport network as a whole, and I do not see any sign that parts of it are less important than other parts. I am cross with myself for failing to refer to Barmouth Bridge, for example, because I went down there with Ken Skates last summer and we unveiled a plaque, and we are really proud of that. If that bridge had got into the condition it was when that work started 30 years ago, the line would have shut. It would have caused a furore, but I do not think it would have been able to be afforded. The same is true actually of the Conwy Valley, frankly. In British Rail’s time, if we had had the washouts that happened in the last five years, they would have said, “We can’t repair this”. There is quite a good history of lines in the 1960s being shut after large washouts. That is not the case now. I think that commitment is there for all parts of the network, including south-west Wales. I think if or when you get James Price and Alexia Course here, they will tell you exactly the same thing. They are absolutely committed to running good reliable services, and he has committed not only personally, but organisationally to maintaining the infrastructure to deliver them.

We have a five-year work plan of operational expenditure and then capital renewals. It is not prioritised in the two areas that you mentioned there; it is prioritised across the whole of the Wales and Borders network.

I would like to hear from the whole panel, but I will start with Ms Sheikh. Can you explain what infrastructure renewal is typically funded through the OSMR allocation and what should be funded via the enhancements pipeline?

I will talk from the perspective of enhancements and what I believe is in OMR, and my colleague Nick Millington can probably expand on that. The enhancements portfolio funds those real improvements that are outside of Network Rail’s business-as-usual planned maintenance activities. They are focused around improving performance capacity and a range of benefits for passengers and freight on the network. As the Minister has explained, there is a pipeline of enhancements. The enhancements process has a gated approach to deciding which of the enhancements are taken forward through setting out a case for investment on the rail network. In that sense, enhancements are a more discrete activity decided not on a regional basis but on a whole network perspective, where a particular upgrade needs to take place to provide better performance in that particular area, whereas OMR is planned in advance. But I think my colleague Nick could probably talk better about the plans around operations, maintenance and renewals.

I will go to Lord Hendy next, if I may. To bring it into focus, my seat has Ruabon station in it, which is the second busiest of Wrexham’s five stations. We believe it is unique in the UK in being the only station where the northbound platform is cordoned off from the village, so you can only get to it from the southbound platform. There is no lift and there is no ramp. In relation to getting the upgrades that that station needs, what pot of money would ensure that that was compliant with the Equality Act 2010?

Ruabon, sadly, is not the only station on the network with less than total accessibility. Because our network is the oldest in the world, it is thousands of stations, and many of them are not accessible. The Access for All Programme has sought in the past through several successive periods and Governments to give accessibility to stations on the network. It has been run as a bidding programme. Indeed, the last Government, just prior to the election, announced 50 stations that looked—if you did not look at the small print—as though they would all get done. But when you looked at the small print, they were 50 stations selected out of hundreds, which would be taken to the next stage of feasibility to see what such a scheme would cost. I am not sure whether Ruabon is in that list of stations or not, but we can find out and write to you if we cannot find out today. Like many such schemes, they are quite expensive and sometimes quite difficult to deliver. Nick will undoubtedly tell you the ones that he has just delivered and that he has in the course of delivery. We are, as a Government, working out what we should do about Access for All. I must have spoken to getting on for a quarter of the Members of the Commons since last July, all of whom would like an accessible station if they do not have one. The truth is that money is limited, but the Government will endeavour to bring forward a programme that will do as much as possible. That is about the best I can say at the moment. Access for All is part of the spending review proposition. It is not OMR in the sense that Nick would recognise it. It has to be bid for. It is capital expenditure; it is enhancement.

Just before I bring Mr Millington in, did I hear you correctly that there are other stations with those three categorisations: there is a platform cordoned off from the village, so you can only get to it from the southbound platform, and there is no lift and no ramp?

My guess, without counting them, is that there are probably a couple of hundred stations in Britain like that.

That busy as well?

Yes. There is this huge variety of stations from very busy and very large with a number of platforms to even, sadly, some stations with a single platform, and the platform is not accessible. The only thing that I would say, and I am very happy to say it here, is that I endeavoured in Network Rail, and I am still endeavouring now, that if there is any way of anybody producing a scheme to give accessibility in those cases without building two lifts and a bridge at a cost of several million pounds, I think everybody would like to hear of them. The thing that restricts the number of stations you can fit is the fact that building two lifts and a bridge is a pretty expensive job. It is not trivial.

A third option is obviously the access from the village to the other platform. I will bring in Mr Millington there, if I may.

I was going to break down operations, maintenance and renewal, and then I will go on to enhancement, if that is okay. In terms of operations of the route, we have approximately 400 signallers that operate 50 signalling locations across the route. We have in the region of 750 maintenance staff that work from depots across the route. In terms of operational expenditure, that is circa £800 million for the five years. That pays for the signallers. Also, if you look at maintenance and inspection—inspection and then maintenance of the railway network, and that includes earthworks, drainage, track signalling, off-track power, telecoms—that is operational spend and maintenance spend, and that totals just over £800 million. Then we have over £1 billion-worth of capital renewals. That is like-for-like renewals; it is regulated renewals. We get our regulated settlement. Like-for-like renewals would be track renewals, signalling renewals. There would be some earthworks. There would also be some refurbishment in that. A way that we can make the money go further is to refurbish. We can also blend modern technology with refurbishment to life extend assets to create reliability as well. So that is renewals. Like I said, that is about £1 billion for this control period. It is all very detailed in terms of what we are going to do and where we are going to do it. We are regulated quite closely on that. In terms of Access for All, recently we have opened up Ludlow and we have also opened up Cwmbran, Newtown and Llanelli. When I say recently, I am talking in the last six months. This morning the teams are taking the scaffolding down at Abergavenny and that is very, very close now. They have a prospective date of 21 March, but I will let them get to the end and then claim a victory at that point. But Flint is also in advanced stages of construction. I was there myself the other day and it is substantially complete. We have tenders in for Tenby as well. We have not started on that one yet. That is recently what we have done with Access for All.

That is interesting. Thank you.

Last year we had 12 named storms in Wales and Borders. In preparation for those storms, weather forecasting is a lot better, thankfully, and our preparation in terms of infrastructure readiness is a lot better. Nonetheless, a decent storm—Darragh was a particularly notorious one, where we had the red weather warnings, and it ravaged the railway for two days and took us about three or four days to clear up. There is naturally a distraction when that happens. In terms of how we are funded, we continue to invest in intelligent and remote infrastructure that will help us. Rather than putting people out and doing inspections and things like that, we can use technology to understand whether the weather has done damage and whether the railway is fit for reuse straightaway. We have a fleet of 10 four-wheel drive vehicles that can go on railway infrastructure, and we can now very quickly get the railway back open again. We are adapting for the conditions. A lot of the resilience work that we are doing with trees and drainage we are funded for, and it is necessary and we are getting on with it. That is good. I do not know where climate is going to take us fully, but we have climate adaptation work. We have done some significant work in terms of civil engineering in the Severn Estuary, Black Bridge near Welshpool, and a number of other locations where we have spent a considerable time and effort—it is basically civil engineering to make the railway much more resilient to climate change. It does cause us issues with the delicate balance of: do you run the service or do you not run the service? That is a judgment call. Weather forecasting is helping us do that, and the technology. In our control office in Cardiff, we are getting a lot cleverer at being much more targeted with our risk mitigations. It is not blanket approaches to restrictions. I feel like we are getting much better at dealing with the challenges that we have now. We have plans to make the railway more resilient. But in the future, the climate adaptation workshops that we are doing right now will describe the investment or compromises that we are going to have to take.

I would say in Wales and Borders, there was always a plan to manage the lineside. What was not accommodated was ash dieback. With ash dieback, we have 40,000 trees that are in various stages of decay and disease. If you look at how we were funded in previous control periods to manage lineside habitat corridors, the competent resource that we have that do that work were diverted on to literally taking down trees that the wind would blow down in front of trains. That has been quite tricky. That has created a backlog. We have £52 million in this five years. It is important that we do not waste it. We have a method of work now in terms of licensing with Natural Resources Wales that is helpful. It has taken us a while to get to that. As I speak, we are busy on the central Wales line from Shrewsbury down to Swansea, and we are restoring the lineside habitats and clearing the diseased trees. We have recently spent £1 million on Wrexham to Bidston, and we have now, in the next four years, 600 miles of the route planned and dated, in terms of maintenance. It is quite heavy maintenance, but that is our plan. We are dealing with a backlog but we are getting on with it.

We will make a bid for what we need to run the railway to a certain level of serviceability, and we will do our best to justify everything we possibly can with the knowledge that we have.

Maybe I can help you more generally, because I was still at Network Rail when the control period funding for 2024 to 2029 was agreed. Within it is a very substantial increase in the level of funding for what Nick describes: lineside, drainage and so on. That is in the light of evidence of climate change. It is in the light of one or two quite serious accidents that have been had, and it is in the light of previous lower categorisation given to drainage and lineside. I am pleased to hear what he is saying, because that for me is evidence for the submission we made to ORR for a much larger balance of that funding to be applied to items like drainage and lineside as a consequence of climate change. He is describing the effect of doing it, which is brilliant, because without dealing with ash dieback, the interruptions to the services would have been far worse. I am pleased to hear what he is talking about. I think Network Rail is one of the public bodies that has taken ash dieback seriously, not only within the Network Rail boundary but sometimes also outside it.

In this first year of the control period, we have been able to treat a number of repeat flood sites. The money that Lord Peter has mentioned—we have invested that; it is in the ground. We have improved train performance this year on a moving annual average by 6% across the Wales and Borders route. The second biggest cause of delays historically was flooding, and we can see that tracking down as a result of the investments that we are making. So it is working.

My last trip on the Cambrian line was not only to unveil the plaque at Barmouth Bridge with the Cabinet Secretary for Wales, which was good fun, but also to look again at Black Bridge, which is just on the eastern side of the Huntworth. The bridge was not renewed, but the track was lifted by some 6 to 8 feet in order to stop the perennial closure of the Cambrian mainline every time that river got above the mark. Next time your Committee wants to go out for a day, get Nick to take you. Further along near Welshpool, a whole section of low embankment has been replaced by rock armour so that when the Severn floods, it just flows through the embankment and floods the surrounding farmland. When it drains away you can still run the train service. That is good 21st-century engineering for real effects of climate change. It is impressive to see it. The same is true on the Conwy Valley line when the previous activity was replacing the embankments until the next time they got washed out. Now what you have done is rock armour so that the river runs through it and then drains off again.

We are able to use the four-wheel drives, and we are able to clear trees and debris that ends up on the railway quite quickly and get the railway back open now. We do get problems with the weather, but it causes fewer delays.

We look forward to our trip to Welshpool, then.

This is a question for Lord Hendy. Do the infrastructure projects agreed and prioritised by Heidi Alexander, Jo Stevens and Ken Skates still need to be approved by the Treasury as part of the spending review?

Yes. There is no way out of a spending review if you are part of a Government Department.

We did think so, but we wanted to double check.

Much though we would all like some other route by which we could achieve it.

I would like to probe a bit into how the decision-making process works. When you are deciding which projects to prioritise, what are the criteria that we use? Is it demand-led? Is it GVA improvements? Is it housing? How does that work? In a cross-border context as well, because for me and anyone on the Borders that is particularly interesting, especially when you are working with a devolved nation—I would be quite interested in any insights you have into that.

One of the great benefits—I will not big up my own stuff on the Union connectivity review—of Lord Burn’s work, both in north Wales and in south-east Wales, was that as a previous Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, he knew perfectly well how to frame an argument about spending more public money on better transport. You express it in terms of economic growth and people accessing jobs and housing. Not much of that work needed to be done because Terry had already exposed it in south-east Wales, which has better connectivity with Newport, and jobs in Newport, Cardiff and Bristol. Also in north Wales, where there is better access to the north-west conurbation, similarly to Wrexham and Bidston. I think that is why it was so easy for the two Secretaries of State and the Cabinet Secretary to agree that those were top of the list, because those arguments have already been made. If we look at what else people want to do on the railway in terms of enhancements as opposed to operations, renewal and maintenance, one of my jobs in my quiet times is to see your colleagues and explain to them that just asking for a station, or asking for increased line speed or asking for more railways is not much of a case in itself. It has to be supported by the growth, jobs and housing argument in order to get on the list. Those three projects were very easy to get tripartite agreement on because the case had already been made.

If I could take the Bidston-Wrexham-Liverpool connection as an example, is the extra benefit there mainly to Liverpool in terms of economy, or is an assessment done of benefits along the whole route?

My understanding, from where I sit, is that the real benefit is the better accessibility to the economy of Liverpool for a great swathe of north-east Wales, and therefore both better economic effect in those areas and probably better GVA in Liverpool. That must be a joint endeavour. My understanding is that the Liverpool city region is looking at the business case for battery train operation, and the infrastructure case is about sorting the cement works out so that you can operate a more frequent service.

I have a broader question as well. Obviously, there is a lot of stuff planned here and great things happening. Do we have the breadth and depth of resource available in terms of people, skills and materials? Is that a concern in terms of being able to deliver these projects speedily or as quickly as possible?

I do not think there is a supply chain constraint in this. There is an approval process, which is inexorable because you have to make the case to the Treasury and they have to give you the money. By railway standards, none of the three things we are talking about are huge projects. South Wales main line is quite significant at £250 million or £300 million. But we need to get to the stage of being able to get the money agreed and then we can get on with it, basically.

My estimation is that that is certainly a supply chain that is hungry for work. They are permanently looking for more investment. There is certainly the appetite to do the work.

Can I just piggyback off Andrew’s question on the criteria that you set out about those projects in respect of the business case? How are more rural areas best positioned to put their case in terms of GVA increasing connectivity within the framework? We talked about reliability west of Swansea as an example.

Basic reliability is something that the railway ought to produce without business cases. One of my main jobs is to see Network Rail route directors and train operating company managing directors to drive home the Government’s determination that the basic railway will be as reliable as possible. You do not need to make a business case for that. We might have some arguments about how well it is being done and what the barriers are to achieve it. In terms of enhancements, I think wherever you are it has to be expressed in terms of growth, jobs and housing, and maybe also sustainability and social coherence. This Government are absolutely determined to have economic growth, without which we are not going to get out of the funding difficulties. It cannot be a surprise. The mitigation to that is that schemes in rural areas are not likely to cost billions of pounds. They are likely to be smaller schemes, but ones that you hope would be justified. What we want to get away from—there is a habit of this, going back many years—is people saying, “I don’t like what I have. I want something better” without any real justification other than that what they have is old, or communities saying, “We just want this because we used to have one.” Another thing we ought to mention is that it is not only public money that could be spent on the railway. There are also other funding bodies who might find it in their interest to do that. One of the benefits of having an enhancement pipeline that I am very keen to get to is that you can show people what might be done. Better connectivity drives land value, for example. Next time you go into Birmingham New Street from the south, look at the horizon of Birmingham. The real scandal of HS2 is that all those people who are now building large office blocks and residential developments, and the land that they are on, are all going to make a sack load of money on the back of HS2 without putting in any money in the first place. I am not suggesting, of course, that a rural community could pay for a new station on its own, but it is always beneficial in an argument with the Treasury to find some third party who will find some benefit out of what mainly would be public expenditure. That is always useful. I think that applies in rural communities and small towns just as it does in major cities. I am not stupid enough to think that you will get an entire project paid for on that basis, as with Battersea Power Station on the Northern Line extension. But it would be worth knowing that somebody thinks there are some commercial or property benefit out of some of these schemes. That is one of the reasons for talking about them before they are authorised. The reality of the three big schemes that we are talking about is that very predominantly they will have to be paid for out of public funds because there are not high land values. One of the things that we are very keen on for people is accessing decent work and producing growth as a response. But without giving the game away, in Wrexham-Bidston, if we can produce a benefit for the cement works, it would be quite handy if they paid for some of it. That would not be a bad ask, would it? It would save the taxpayer paying for it. It is a long winded answer.

It is very helpful and much appreciated. I had a question around the rail network enhancement pipeline. The previous iteration of this Committee said in 2021 that it was concerned about this. It said it was too slow and hampered rather than helped. How could the RNEP process be changed to accelerate the process of delivery enhancements in Wales?

There are two answers to that, one of which is that the Wales Rail Board was established as a consequence of the Committee’s last report in 2021. We all think that works quite well. Having a view from the Welsh Government and from Transport for Wales, and including Nick and his colleagues, about what is good for the Welsh railway network is very helpful. That is one thing. The other is that—shamelessly, I will say it politically—you have a more serious Government here who want to achieve something. My predecessor, though I get on with him really well, was never able to publish it simply because it was not felt by that Government to be a terribly important thing to publish. If you do not think it is important, you don’t do it, do you? I would like to do it for a whole number of reasons, including certainty in the supply chain and certainty for the people who want the railway to serve their communities better, and also for the purpose of eliciting that element of third-party funding that we can do in respect to these schemes. We will see what happens. The Government are serious about this. We are also working on a 10-year investment programme because it is recognised that if you cannot set out what you are proposing to do in the long term, the cost of doing it in big but random chunks is far greater than it would be otherwise. The supply chain, if you get them in, will tell you that everything will get cheaper if they have continuity of work. That is what we would like to do. But it is hard, and it is especially hard in an economy that is not in the best condition when public spending starts from the black hole that we inherited. You have to be realistic about it.

Thank you, Lord Hendy, for your response on the electrification of the north Wales line back in 2023. My constituency, which is only small, was promised something that was undeliverable and, as you mentioned, that was not funded. It is important for all of our constituents that we know what is possible and what is not, and that we do not sell something that is undeliverable for them and raise expectations. Thank you for your honesty at the beginning with that. Moving forward, have you estimated the cost for Wales of the projects that will be prioritised in Wales?

I think we know that the likely cost of all the Burns stations is £250 million to £300 million. The north Wales coast service upgrade enhancement—what do you reckon that is, Nick?

A maximum of £20 million, but we are out to consultation now and we will refine that estimate in April.

He has some level crossings that either need to be closed or replaced. Depending on what you do, that would cost £20 million or hopefully less. On Wrexham-Bidston, we have some idea what fixing the cement works is.

Somewhere in the order of £40 million but, again, we are coming towards the end of the outline business case now, and the estimate will be updated for that one.

Looking back at historic underfunding, £2.4 billion is a figure that has been used for the underfunding for Wales. Would you recognise that amount of money?

I am not sure what it is in relation to.

Infrastructure—£2.4 billion. In 2021 the Welsh Government said that there was historic underfunding of Wales’s railways amounting to £2.4 billion over the 28-year period from 2001 to 2029. Is that a figure that you would—

It is not one that immediately comes to mind, but I think that from where we are now we would do better to look forward at the things that most need to be done. To do that you need two things—you need three things, really. You need an adequate operations, maintenance and renewal settlement so that the railway is in good enough condition to operate satisfactorily. You need to have an enhancement portfolio and ideas of what to do. But, very importantly, and we started with this, we have the three major priorities in rail for the combination of the Welsh Government, Secretary of State for Wales and Secretary of State for Transport. That is a pretty good place to start. I am less interested in arguing about historic underfunding because you can say it all you like, but to get money now we need to act on the things that Government want to spend its money on and which will produce the economic results. It is very handy to be able to come here and know that there is an agreement between the Welsh Government and two Secretaries of State about what most needs to be funded.

Would you recognise that there is a lot more work to do in Wales because of that underfunding and underinvestment, and that there needs to be maybe more spend in Wales now to bring the rail infrastructure back up?

I can certainly recognise the argument, but I think what is important is that what we bring forward meets the criteria of the Government and the Treasury for the investment. You can argue all you want about how much money you would like, but if you cannot meet the investment criteria, it will not happen. I can recognise the feelings of unfairness, but the antidote to that is to put forward things that are fundable and get them funded.

We know these projects are value for money and they are what we need for housing growth and all the rest of it. If we come to the comprehensive spending review and you, Jo Stevens and Ken Skates are fighting for them, and everyone wants them, what happens if we do not get them?

The issues that they are designed to resolve do not go away, do they? That is the point. I can say it now. I do not know how it will get reported, but it seems to me unfeasible that everything that every Government Department puts forward will be funded through the spending review since the Chancellor discovered such a huge hole in the economy, and there is so much to do. But in terms of these projects, if the worst outcome is that one of them does not get funded, providing the need for it does not go away, you would continue to argue for it, wouldn’t you?

I would, certainly.

That is why it is important to have them founded on a real proposition for growth, jobs and housing, because that will not go away, will it? But that is the compelling case that you want to put it forward to make it successful. I have spent quite a long time in the previous job reading all the 190-odd submissions for Restore your Railway. Since the election, I must have seen most of the people who thought they were beneficiaries, and I have had to tell them that the previous Government had not funded any of them. I think that is unfair. But that is why putting things forward that have a strong economic and political case for growth and jobs and housing is so important, because that is what we get funded. It is not the new stations that are important; it is the effect they have on the economy and people that is important, isn’t it?

I probably can’t. I can tell you that heavy rail is reserved in Wales. Any heavy rail scheme that the Department delivers should always be classified as England and Wales when applying the Barnett Formula, and that is why HS2 is in it. Scotland and Northern Ireland are different because heavy rail infrastructure is devolved. It is consistent with the funding arrangements for all of the other policy areas reserved in Wales but devolved in Scotland, Northern Ireland. For much more than that, I have to refer you to other people in Government who decide it. You can probably tell that I have rehearsed that argument. In fact, I think every question I ever answer about railway infrastructure in the House of Lords—Lord Wigley asked me about this, and I always tell him the same thing, or endeavour to.

I try to avoid figures like that because you do not know where they have come from and you do not know what they consist of. But I could add up the Burns stations at £250 million to £300 million. I could add up the two pieces of the north Wales coast service enhancements and Wrexham-Bidston and come to a number like that. But I do not think that helps you. What helps you is the strength of the argument about what they will deliver for the economy and the people who are affected by better connectivity. I think that is a better way of doing it. Of course there has to be some geographical balance across the country. I do not think you should rest easy, but you should be very confident that in his work, Terry Burns rehearsed every argument conceivable about all three of the schemes, which means that the arguments are very strong.

To follow up on the first part of that question, are you more persuaded by the case for devolving rail infrastructure to the Welsh Government now than you were maybe when you were giving evidence back in 2021 to this Committee?

There is quite a lot to say on this subject. One of the benefits of the Wales Rail Board, which the Committee did recommend then, is that the collaborative working that Nick has described—in particular the work that he has recently done on combined local railway management—has borne a lot of fruit. I have never been a particular enthusiast on behalf of taxpayers of Wales for devolving railway infrastructure further, simply because it is not ownership that is important; it is its condition and its use. I do not know what James Price would say if he was here, but I bet he is pleased that he did not have to spend £35 million on the Conwy Valley line over the last 10 years to keep it going. Those are the risks involved in owning railway infrastructure. I think where we have got to in Wales is a very good operational position, which is the Wales Rail Board and the collaborative working between Nick and Transport for Wales. They have a good service specification and an understanding about what the best transport network is for Wales. Also, I know this because James told me, but I did warn him before they took over the Valley lines. I said, “I don’t know why you want this lot, but you are welcome to have it.” So it proved. A collection of old Victorian coal railways have proved to be quite difficult to put into good condition. I do not think that is the argument that is worth pursuing. I think the argument that is worth pursuing is making the railway run properly in the best way possible at the least possible price for the best benefit of Wales, and putting the right investments into making it serve better and get the economy growing.

To come back on that, you mentioned the amount of money that has been spent recently, but obviously the underinvestment for decades now also has an impact. It needs to be recognised that the underinvestment of money coming into the infrastructure in Wales has been challenging as well. Having that conversation moving forward is about making sure that, as you mentioned, the economic arguments are there for funding these projects; but it is also about recognising that there has been an underinvestment for several years, what that does to the economy in rural areas and the lack of growth due to that underinvestment.

One of the limitations of the arguments about owning infrastructure is that I have never seen infrastructure handed over with a dowry that equated to putting it into good condition. That is partially what has happened on the Valley lines. TfW were very keen to have it, but they discovered when they got it that it was in far worse condition than they expected. For me, it is a pretty arid argument. It is much better to concentrate on the network you have, to get the most out of it, to run it at the least possible cost, to generate the most revenue and to create the most economic benefit you can. Then concentrate on the enhancement projects that give the most additionality. That is a much better way to do it. Ask yourself this rhetorical question: if the Welsh Government were to own the infrastructure, who would you like to own the Severn Tunnel? If you think that is an asset, you need to go away and put your head in a bucket of cold water. It is a huge liability to keep it going. It is a real cost. It was built in 1885, and who owns it is neither here nor there. Keeping it in good condition is what we want together, to keep it working.

Also investing in that fairly across the countries.

Having had many happy train journeys around the Severn Tunnel because it has been shut—the route is very pretty but, it adds an extra hour onto the journey—we agree it is good to keep it in working order.

I have a question around Great British Rail. How will the creation of Great British Rail change the way in which infrastructure and maintenance enhancement is delivered?

I would say Wales is a bit ahead of the curve because the Wales Rail Board and the level of collaborative working between Nick and Transport for Wales is very close. It has not always been as good as this.

It has not.

But it is now, and I think that is a good place to start. The aspiration in GBR is to have an integrated railway with track and train. But that integration is about management integration. For example, it is about working together to make the best of the network, to make sure that if something goes wrong it is recovered very quickly. I would say, both from observation of the results as expressed in the operating statistics and from what Nick and others tell me, that Wales is in advance of that. I know that the Cabinet Secretary would like more influence over enhancements, which we have talked about already, and that is an aspiration expressed through the Wales Rail Board, which I think we will be working on. But I would say that the working relationship and the way the railway works in Wales is something that we hope to emulate in parts of England.

A good example is the Cambrian lines, where we have the blockade work and we have collaborated with Transport for Wales to bring the cost of capital renewals down. The reciprocal is that in the summer we have worked in Network Rail with Transport for Wales to put on longer trains along the Cambrian coast. But if you empower the local people to work together and take away the red tape and the organisational transactions, they create a railway that is cheaper, the yield is better or the net subsidy is lower, and the problems that hinder them in running a better railway, they solve. We have multiple examples of that in west Wales. We have launched a local railway in north Wales and we are focused on a number of areas there. We track jointly net subsidy per passenger, operational efficiency, capital investment efficiency. The money goes further. The money is not taken away; it just means we do more things with it with regard to capital renewals. We are working together now and we have done a session with Transport for Wales over the last six weeks to understand how you would integrate a railway operation that is run by the Welsh Government and the infrastructure that is run by the UK Government. We have a sliding scale. We have started now and there will be some transactions or some corporate governance that will stop us going up the scale, and we will deal with that as we go. But we are creating benefit by working together now. So we will carry on with that in mind.

Will the proposed Rail Reform Bill give Ministers in the Welsh Government statutory powers in relation to GBR Cymru?

I am trying to work out the best way of saying it. We want that Bill to be supported by the Welsh Government and for that matter, the Scottish Government. We are expecting before the Bill gets into Parliament to make sure that the Welsh Government are happy with its provisions. But I would say the level of devolution is already pretty strong. You are not dealing with Scotland, but the situation is slightly different. Equally, we would want them to assent to it. The important thing about devolution in the forthcoming railways Bill is the additional inclusion of English combined authority mayors who need the railway to better serve their communities in terms of growth, jobs and housing. That is the particularly important statutory addition to the railways Bill. But I think that the process that Nick is describing, I am expecting to continue. I am expecting that the Welsh Government will be happy with the Bill before it enters Parliament, because why would we introduce it if it weren’t. Anything that they think they need through the Bill will be given to them as part of the Bill.

Farha, can you explain the responsibilities of the Wales Rail Board and its role in delivering infrastructure and enhancements?

The Wales Rail Board is a collaborative board that has already done some good work between the Department, the Welsh Government, Network Rail and Transport for Wales to identify and agree a set of priorities for investment into Wales. That is around the schemes we have talked about earlier, and the rail board has overseen the development of initial business cases for those schemes. Going forward, the rail board is developing proposals to strengthen its role within the rail network enhancement pipeline process and proposals have been tabled. We are working through that now to understand that following the conclusion of the spending review, how that rail board then takes decisions around the prioritisation and progression of the Wales schemes through the RNEP process.

Do you think then, as you mentioned there, the rail network enhancements should be transferred from the Department to the Welsh rail board?

That is something that we still have to work through. The rail network enhancements process is set up as such in order to allow all parties, including Treasury, visibility of the cases put together for funding. I think we would want to find a mechanism with the Wales Rail Board that allows rapid development and delivery of those cases while giving visibility to the right parties to ensure that they can be signed off and progressed through that process. That is the discussion that has already started. We kicked off that discussion last month in February at the rail board, and we are coming back together in a couple of months’ time once that has been worked through.

To either of you: do you share the Welsh Government’s ambition that GBR Cymru should have its own dedicated enhancement fund?

I think it is a great aspiration. You would not want to do that, for example, to the exclusion of an understanding with the Treasury that everything in that programme is the right thing to do. I think we are in quite a good place. If we were here shuffling about, not being quite sure that what the Secretaries of State have agreed is the right thing to do, your question would have far more point to it. The interesting thing is that it was not hard at all to agree between the Cabinet Secretary, the Secretary of State for Wales and the Secretary of State for Transport what the top things to do were, because they have already been outlined and expressed in the language of the Government’s economic purpose that enables them to go forward. That is what is important. If there were some massive disagreement about what should be done next, it would have far more poignancy. I completely understand the desire of the Welsh Government to have a strong level of control. But on the railway itself, railway boundaries do not respect national boundaries, as you can see from the line between Newport and Chester, which crosses the border about 18 times. The best thing we can do is to work together to have a good common understanding about the best things to do, and then make the best arguments to get the money to do them. In my head, that is more important than the semantics of who owns the programme. We do not have a piece of paper between us about the importance of those three projects. That is what is important. I should have said earlier that there is an aspiration for Nick’s part of Network Rail to be stronger and have stronger self-determination. I can tell you from my previous job that he has been busy grabbing power from various parts of Network Rail so as to make his job both easier to do and produce greater outputs. I expect that process to continue because that is the right thing.

The real mitigation to that is the competence of Transport for Wales, which has established itself as a strong body looking at multimodal transport across the Welsh nation. I have a lot of respect for the board, for Scott and for James, as the chief executive. I think they do a good job. Some of the work that they are looking at to do for connectivity north-south across Wales is good. I know that there is work going on about the future of bus franchising, for example. I think the result of that is that they will continue to produce very strong rational, economic cases based on growth, jobs and housing because that is as important in Wales as it is in England and the whole of the United Kingdom. I do not see that conflict occurring in the future, because I have a lot of faith that where TfW would then like to invest will be consistent with the ambitions of the UK Government. I cannot see it will be any different. If it were not a good body, we might shuffle about and not quite tell you, but it is a good body and it is doing a great job. From that point of view, it is very, very likely to have recommendations for further investment, which the UK Government would find very easy to sign up to.

I would hope that if Ken Skates, Scott, who is the chair of TfW, and James were here in front of you, they would say the same thing. I am pretty sure they would.

A slight change of tack here. With all the infrastructure that we have talked about today, we are looking at better services, better reliability and all those other things that we have spoken about today. I would be interested in your assessment would be of the part that open access operators have to play in that. Could they be helpful, are they helpful or do they confuse the picture? Mr Millington, perhaps you are best placed to answer that.

I may not be best placed to answer the question. My job is to make whatever instructions I have to run run, and that is what I have made an effort to do. For instance, we worked closely with Grand Union when they won their access rights to Carmarthen. They are a train operator like any other. They have contractual rights. Being a bit nostalgic, I want to run a good railway. I have worked with Grand Union, which are now Lumo, to deliver their aspiration and their entitlement. With regard to the decision on whether they should have access on the revenues and the rest of it, that is not for me to answer.

The best thing I could do is to refer you to the Secretary of State’s recent letter to the ORR, where she sets out pretty clearly what this Government believe to be the benefits of open access and the limitations. Of course, one of the things that concerns us is that the Treasury’s subsidy to the whole of the UK rail network is far greater than it was before covid. There must be some limits to how much existing revenue we want to see abstracted from the existing services. We do also recognise that open access services bring new connections, new paths and new passengers. Currently the decisions on those, as I am sure you know, are taken by the ORR. The Department makes submissions on them. The ORR makes its own decision on its own statutory responsibilities. Open access has obviously benefited the railway. Historically, there are some very good examples of open access. The Secretary of State’s letter was written because a large volume of applications are currently being considered by the ORR and she wanted to make her view clear, and also that she had to have regard to the strong desire of the Chancellor and the Treasury to reduce the railway subsidy back to something like it was pre-covid, because that is a burden on taxpayers.

Anything to add, Ms Sheikh?

No, I think that covers it.

Thank you very much. I want to thank all three witnesses for attending this afternoon. Looking around at our Committee members today, we are all train users. Passengers do not need to know which train they are using, but just that it is a good train, it has plenty of carriages and it runs on a track that is well maintained. I think on that we all share the same ambition. Thank you very much for your time this afternoon. It is very much appreciated.