Speeches by Alexander.

“I don’t think the Department for Transport should be the operational manager of the railways, but Ministers should set the strategic direction for Great British Railways and hold that organisation ruthlessly to account. I have seen a number of times the analogy of the abolition of NHS England. The Government have not a…”

“At the moment, we are in a commercial negotiation and I’m not going to get into the detail of what the additional costs will or will not be. In setting rail fares, we will always look at what is right to do for the travelling public and what the wider rail network needs around money to operate and invest in the trains …”

“The situation with the rolling stock on South Western Railway is that the arrangement for the rolling stock and the expiry of that contract aligns with the expiry date of the South Western contract to operate the trains. That is not the case on all train operating companies. Normally, negotiations around rolling stock …”

“You are right. While it is proposed that GBR will have the ability to sell and retail its own tickets online and bring together the ticket-retailing function that the 14 train operating companies have, there are some really good companies operating in the private sector. This is not about trying to put those companies …”

“Indeed.”

“What we have said about our public ownership programme is that we will bring the train operating companies into public ownership when either their contract with the DFT expires or what is called the minimum core term in that contract expires. If we do it that way, we do not have to pay financial compensation to the tra…”

“We have actually set up a new directorate within the DFT to manage the rail reform process. We have recruited a new director general, Richard Goodman, who started in the last couple of weeks. We work very closely with the DFT Operator, which is, if you like, the initial holding company for the train operating companies…”

“It is a start. I know Chris well and he does brilliant work with Active Travel England. I am a big supporter of that organisation. We have put £300 million into the cycling and walking strategy. That stands in very stark contrast, I suggest, to the previous Government, who took money out in repeated years towards the e…”

“That is the plan we are working on at the moment. A number of local transport authorities have already put together some very good local transport plans. My officials in the Department will always be very happy to talk to any local authorities who, in advance of those documents being published, would like some advice. …”

“Routinely, I have discussions with colleagues in DESNZ, with the Energy Secretary, and with MHCLG from a planning perspective. Last week, DESNZ announced some changes to the queue of grid connection projects, which will be really important for making sure we have grid connections to deliver rapid charging hubs, for exa…”

“We are investing £200 million in charging infrastructure. That sits alongside a pipeline of about £6 billion-worth of private sector investment through until 2030. We need to go further. We need to go faster and we need to fill in the geographical cold spots for charging infrastructure, be that on the strategic road ne…”

“We look in the round at all of these issues. We have grants for installing charge points at home. We still have some plug-in vehicle grants for purchase. We are working through the spending review on what other options there may be to boost demand further.”

“On vans, we have said that petrol and diesel vans can be sold through until 2035. Obviously, one of the points I would make is that the vast majority of car sales that happen in any given year are second-hand car sales. We are now seeing a lot of demand in the second-hand EV market; they sell more quickly than any othe…”

“Yes, I expect to publish it after the spending review and to align it with the work that we are also doing on the integrated national transport strategy, and to look at some updated guidance around quantifying carbon reductions. That will all be coming later this year.”

“No, I don’t think they do. I think we have the balance right between giving flexibilities to the vehicle manufacturers, and giving confidence and certainty to consumers and the operators of charge point infrastructure. We have maintained the phase-out date of 2030 for the sale of new petrol and diesel cars. We have mai…”

“Yes, we would be looking at all of those impacts in the round”

“At the current time, we do not expect hydrogen to play a particularly significant role on the network. It has relatively high cost and relatively low energy density. We have been looking more at the contribution that electrification and battery trains can play. Jo, do you have anything else you want to say on hydrogen …”

“I am certainly supportive of moving more freight from road to rail. In setting up Great British Railways, we will create an organisation that has a single guiding mind around how best to use the finite capacity on our rail network. Clearly, we want to attract more people to use our railways, away from car journeys that…”

“The electrification of the rail network is critical. Unfortunately, some of the plans that the previous Government put together have proved unaffordable. We are going through a process of reviewing that at the moment. We think that battery trains and electronic trains that can use overhead lines are the way forward. I …”

“It is probably worth saying that the expansion of Heathrow airport, a third runway at Heathrow, and the expansion of Luton airport, the expansion of Gatwick and the expansion of Bristol is taken into account in the modelling for carbon budget 6, which runs between 2033 and 2037. The Government need to publish an update…”