Speeches by Alexander.

“We want to provide more information on the indicative funding allocations for both phase 1 and phase 2 by the end of this year, and that may stretch into the end of the financial year. Phase 1 is obviously the Yorkshire package of improvements and phase 2 is the new line between Manchester and Liverpool. There is work …”

“I might have to write to you about the detail of the investment decision.”

“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…”

“We are making good progress with Great British Railways. We obviously had the Railways Bill pass its Commons stages last week, and it now goes to the Lords. You will be aware that this gives me the powers to set up GBR. We anticipate that GBR will be established probably about 12 months after the Act gets Royal Assent,…”

“Laura Shoaf, who was appointed as the Shadow GBR chair, did a really important piece of work for us. We have now closed down Shadow GBR, but Laura has joined the board of the DFT Operator, the publicly owned holding company into which all the TOCs are transferred when they come into public ownership. It was important t…”

“In the last couple of months we have sought to rationalise the number of different organisations involved. For example, we have transferred about 200 or 300 staff from the DFT into DFTO to reduce the number of individual organisations that will all feed into Great British Railways, and to start to develop the right cul…”

“I am frustrated by that as well.”

“The planning application that was given consent in December for Universal Studios makes the second phase of the railway into quite a different beast. We have had to finish the work at the stations; for example, Wilmslow needs to be handed over. As I said to you at oral questions last week, Chiltern Railways is leading …”

“I do not have an entry-into-service date.”

“We have not as yet, but I have asked the Department to make sure, given that train services are not running at the moment, there is a way in which we can bear down on costs. If we are not getting the revenue in, the worst thing would be to have all the costs going out. For example, we have released a train to support s…”

“That is a really good question, and it is exactly why we have set up the mass transit taskforce, chaired by Bridget Rosewell. We have been told that there are a lot of barriers that promoting authorities experience; sometimes they are to do with planning, sometimes it is regulatory. We need to make sure that whichever …”

“I am acutely aware that for young people who want weekend jobs—perhaps their first experience of a job—you have villages on the outskirts of towns and cities across the country where there might not be a bus running at all on a Saturday or Sunday. In the next spending review that we will be going through in 2027, I wou…”

“Those discussions will continue to take place between EWR and my Department. It is probably the best value-for-money way of delivering the scheme but we will make sure that we are robustly testing any assumptions about novel aspects of the way in which that technology may be deployed.”

“The last example that you gave about the disagreements between Transport for Wales and GWR about access to track and running of new services will be better under GBR because at the moment it is a decision that the ORR has to take. We are changing the way access decisions will be made through the Railways Bill; there wi…”

“We are going to maintain regional branding within GBR. It will be GBR Great Western or GBR Midlands, maybe. It may be GBR Anglia as opposed to GBR. We are not going to have GBR C2C in Greater Anglia. We will make pragmatic decisions so that it is clear to customers. The one bit of the jigsaw we still need to work throu…”

“Our position on this has been pretty clear and consistent. Airport expansions are privately financed. Any associated improvements to the road or rail network need to be met by the scheme promoter rather than the taxpayer. There is no money dedicated in this spending review to improving Heathrow's rail or road infrastru…”

“It will be for a promoter of a scheme, the applicant of the DCO, to set out what their proposals are to meet the obligations that we will define in the Heathrow expansion national policy statement. It will be for the applicant to make the calculation about how much those mitigations will cost. As the Secretary of State…”

“Clear tests will need to be met in what we will call the Heathrow expansion national policy statement because it is specific to Heathrow, not the Airports National Policy Statement we have now.”

“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…”

“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…”