Speeches by Mayer.

“There have been some reports in the media that three extra platforms might be hemmed in by retail space and might not be long enough. Do you have any views on that?”

“Are the six platforms for the new bit of the station enough?”

“Finally, on paying for it all, Ministers have stated their ambition to use private finance for the work. Do you have any back-up plans if that does not come through?”

“You have just listed a whole range of stakeholders. To be fair, when we talk to them at the moment, they say that there is good collaborative working, but this is a long-term project. Some of those personalities will change, and possibly some of the organisations will change as well. How are you making sure that there …”

“Does that mean that passengers who use the traditional Euston station at the moment need to wait until 2040 for it not to feel grotty anymore?”

“Yes, them too.”

“The funding will be coming from different streams—we are using private finance for the new station, but we do not seem to be using it to upgrade the old station, yet we are also being told that we are thinking about it utterly holistically and that it will feel like one station at the end. Does having those different s…”

“The Euston Delivery Company is now being established. In November, Camden council announced their intention to lead a development corporation as well. Thinking first about the Euston Delivery Company, what will it be responsible for and what will remain the decision and responsibility of Ministers?”

“Thank you, Chair. Let us imagine that we have fast-forwarded into the future a bit. The train lines have all been built and people are arriving at Euston station. There are more houses all around and there are shops, and it has become a popular place and is really busy. Are you confident in your passenger forecasts and…”

“What is the timescale for completing the works at Euston station? By station, I mean old, new, underground and bus.”

“In your answer, you talked about HGVs. The strategy is also about coaches. The coach sector often feels that it is part of the bus and coach sector, and now it is part of the HGV and coach sector in this respect. Are there any specific remarks you might have about the coach industry?”

“On the depot charging scheme, in answer to a written question, Minister, you told me that three of the 92 projects were to do with coaches. Do you think we need to have a more targeted approach to coaches?”

“Do we want to talk about vans now, or shall we save that?”

“We just did HGVs, but can you tell me about coaches in the same space?”

“On repeated routes, I absolutely get that for the bus sector, which is working to a timetable. But coaches often do many different things, such as excursions, and they go to completely different places; one day they might be a bus replacement service. So it is not necessarily to a standardised timetable.”

“Moving to street work permits—[Interruption]—which you know this Committee is interested in, despite recent changes that allow the use of street work permits, local authorities are often still using section 50 licences for charging infrastructure installation. Can the Department help local authorities feel comfortable …”

“Can you talk us through the relationship between the Department and local transport authorities in terms of trying to ensure we have an equitable spread of charging infrastructure?”

“Is this definitely the right way of doing it? Do we need all these individual areas procuring their own very slightly different sets of charging infrastructure, when across the rest of continental Europe they have exactly the same infrastructure between countries? Why do we need it to be different when I cross the bord…”

“Battery health worries would-be consumers, probably because we are used to phone batteries that go wrong after a short time. Labour’s manifesto committed to standardising battery certification. Helpfully, the UN has global technical regulation No. 22. In DFT’s written evidence to the Committee, you said that you were “…”

“Before you carry on, you are talking about local authorities as if they are just one, in the singular. When there is a combined authority, and it is the transport authority, it is getting the money—yet an awful lot of this is about highways. Is there any inherent problem or challenge, particularly as this will become a…”