Speeches by Glover.

“You have covered some of this in your answers so far, but in which areas do you think the changes from the 2012 version of the national policy statement are most significant? Equally, what issues has it left unaddressed?”

“Intriguing idea, yes.”

“Up until now our discussion has mostly been focused on cities, either medium-size Oxford and Cambridge or large like London, but the UK has many constituencies like mine in Oxfordshire, which is basically three towns of differing sizes and then a whole load of villages and rural areas. How commercially viable do you fe…”

“Thanks for those comments. To clarify what you said, I think we are both correct, actually. It was TfL evidence to the London Assembly Transport Committee expressing that view, just to make sure that is cleared up for the record. What you have all said very much speaks to the point that I think you made earlier, Richar…”

“You have already made some good and interesting points about where car sharing reduces the number of vehicles on the road, so I will not invite you to expand on any of those but to look at the flip side of that. There have been some concerns from the London Assembly’s Transport Committee that car clubs might have the p…”

“You gave some good stuff on this in one of your previous answers, but what more can local authorities do to support the different forms of car sharing? Perhaps to nick my hon. Friend’s way of doing this, what would be the most useful first step that local authorities could do to help?”

“You gave some examples earlier of local authorities that already do some of these things well. Do you have any others, both UK and abroad, that we should be looking at?”

“Q11. On a recent visit to the UK Space Agency, based in my Oxfordshire constituency, I learned of the huge value created by our space sector, generating more than £7 for every £1 invested. Given the Government’s decision to scrap the UKSA as an executive agency, will the Prime Minister guarantee its international credi…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) for securing this important debate, which builds on some themes that were discussed in a Westminster Hall debate a few months ago on the subject of walking and cycling safely to school. …”

“I am pleased to hear that. I very much agree with that point. One would hope that a sensible policy towards rolling stock procurement and rolling stock strategy would be analysis of what type of train is needed for what type of route, and then it wouldn’t matter what the historical franchise map was. Let’s procure that…”

“Yes, thank you, Chair. We have covered some of this already. There are a lot of challenges coming with rolling stock, as I am sure you agree. We have class 150 Sprinters that are now 40 years old. That is very old for a diesel train. There are other diesel fleets from the late ’80s and early ’90s that are rapidly agein…”

“Lord Hendy, one of your predecessors, Huw Merriman, told us that control period funding cycles should be reviewed so that contracts for half-completed projects shouldn’t fall off a cliff at the end of a cycle. We have already touched on this a little bit. Would you agree with his analysis?”

“To add to that, we have been talking about giving the supply chain confidence. It is hard to think of a better example for a project that has been yes/no, on/off or stop/start than midland main line electrification. We have been told so many times, “Yes, it’s definitely happening.” The supply chain has mobilised and th…”

“I think that is an over-generous review, Chair, but thank you very much. Much of the Government’s written evidence talked about the need to balance giving certainty to industry on the one hand with allowing Government flexibility, for example through the spending review process. That approach contrasts quite markedly w…”

“I get the point about the changed market, although the figures I have seen for most European countries are that their rail use is now above pre-pandemic levels, whereas ours are still significantly below. Perhaps it is the relationship between the two and which comes first, the lower demand or the improved product. Tha…”

“We have already talked a little bit about how Scotland takes a different approach to electrification. There are other examples of how other countries seem increasingly to do things as standard that we think are exceptional, very expensive or too difficult here. We are going to talk a bit more about rolling stock later.…”

“Feel free.”

“I briefly note on the previous discussion that it is not as if we have a huge swathe of electrification. Russia, Hungary and Greece have a higher percentage of electrification than we do, so it is quite extraordinary that we find this so difficult. This is the mistake that has been made. We keep talking about electrifi…”

“It is very pleasing to hear your strong enthusiasm for ETCS digital signalling here, but it has been a very long journey between the first scheme on the Cambrian 20 years ago in Wales to the next large-scale deployment—apart from a bit of Thameslink core—being the east coast main line. Since that time there has been lo…”

“Just a fairly specific point about the relationship with the new infrastructure strategy, which promised an infrastructure pipeline with an interactive portal. What rail schemes will be included as part of that? Perhaps the real question is what the relationship is going to be between RNEP and major schemes and the ove…”