Speeches by Alexander.

“I spoke yesterday to the managing director of East Midlands Railway, Will Rogers, and the Chair of the Transport Committee is completely right to say that support must also be provided to the staff who were caught up in this incident. One of the things that Will Rogers explained to me is that he is receiving support fr…”

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks and for the tone in which he has expressed himself. I share in the condolences he has expressed to the driver of the Corby train, Shaun Burton—as I said in my opening remarks, the thoughts of the whole House are with his family at this awful time. The right hon. Gentlema…”

“My hon. Friend is completely right to highlight the vital role that train drivers play. I would like to put on record my thanks to Dave Calfe, the ASLEF general secretary, for his statement over the weekend. The Rail Minister has spoken with the general secretary, and we will continue to work to ensure that drivers are…”

“We need to be increasing capacity on services between Scotland and the north-west and London. We know that the West Coast Main Line—”

“I do. If you think about the £45 billion commitment that we have made for future decades on Northern Powerhouse Rail, with over £1 billion to be spent in this spending review alone, the Chancellor fully understands and appreciates the transformative effect that investment in transport infrastructure can have. I would h…”

“It was always going to be the case that HS2 trains would spend a lot of their time on the conventional rail network. Given the previous Government’s decision to cancel HS2 north of Birmingham, making sure that the rolling stock that we deliver aligns with our ability to improve services north of the west midlands is ab…”

“We need to address capacity constraints by considering both timetabling and rolling stock.”

“I repeat what I have previously said: I have no intention of telling people how they should travel. I am not setting an overall traffic reduction target, but I feel that lots of people—including me—suffer from what you might call car dependency. What the Government are doing across their wide range of work, whether it …”

“Yes. The key themes of Better Connected are all about people, place and partnership because the reality of the transport system that most people will experience in the country will often be determined by the role that the local transport authority or the council play—or, if people are living in big city regions or comb…”

“Yes.”

“If I take the example of the Lower Thames Crossing, which is a strategic freight route with lorries that come over into the port of Dover and need to make a journey up to the Midlands and the north, we need additional capacity there. It is right that we make that investment, working with the private sector to relieve t…”

“We have not put a target in place, but what we have made clear through our Better Connected strategy is that we want to provide better choices for people to choose sustainable modes of travel. If you look at the reform agenda that we have, whether it is on the railways with the establishment of Great British Railways a…”

“No, there is not a contradiction. We are in danger of confusing two separate things. You use the example of not setting a passenger growth target on the railways and somehow suggest that that is in contradiction to an estimate of where traffic may go in the future. The reason we have not set a passenger growth target i…”

“Thanks ever so much for the invitation to come and speak to you again, Chair. I am the Secretary of State for Transport.”

“I really do not want to get too drawn into the detail of this because as soon as I say that I would protect one thing, the response will be, “Well, you’re not protecting something else.” I hope you will forgive me if this answer is not as clear as the ones I would normally seek to give you. We have a large capital budg…”

“That is why I say that what we have set out through all the work we are doing, highlighted in the integrated national transport strategy and Better Connected, is to prioritise improvements in sustainable forms of travel, such as public transport. Going back to the former discussion, that is we are investing heavily in …”

“I can understand why it is hard for people to get their head around but the way that Mark Wild has described this to me is that the civil engineering project has taken four years longer than it was originally predicted to do and then the original project team underestimated how long work on putting the systems in, test…”

“We have not covered ourselves in glory historically—that is probably an understatement. The lessons of the James Stewart review into HS2 should be well heeded. I took from it that a failure to plan properly in the early stages just results in bigger problems further down the line. You need to set your scope, stick to i…”

“Thank you to you and the Committee for all the work you have done to support the many changes we are making to the transport system, particularly on the Railways Bill. Your recommendations were very helpful in that respect. We are making good progress on improving public transport, investing in our roads, and enabling …”

“I hope you will understand that I am not going to get into detailed commentary on speculation that we have seen in the media. The Government will be setting out their approach to the defence investment plan shortly, and we will detail the approach to funding as part of that. It is right as a responsible Government, as …”