Transport Committee Chair to investigate track access charges and HS2

The new chair of the Transport Select Committee wants to investigate restrictions on flying, rail freight track access charges and HS2, she told a fringe meeting at the Labour conference.

Ruth Cadbury also said she expected Great British Railways managers to be before her committee “at least once a year” to discuss issues including reliability and cost- effctiveness to the taxpayer and the passenger.

Speaking at a Rail Industry Association-organised session, the Brentford and Isleworth MP said: "There are political issues about being seen to restrict flying, but what we know is the more people know about and are able to weigh up the full cost of flying…

“We’re losing -  last time I looked it was £17 billion in levels of tourism income because of cheap flying. It’s so much cheaper to go on holiday and tourism centres in the UK aren’t incentivised through the business rates system to make going on holiday in the UK better. Rail needs to be able to compete more equally with aviation.”

Turning to HS2, she said the project “should never have been called ‘HS’, because that’s what didn’t help in the public imagination”.

She added: “It should always have been about capacity. Too few Brits have actually experienced the benefits of high speed rail.”

From the floor, Rail Freight Group assistant policy manager Phil Smart suggested track access charges as “an area of investigation for the select committee”.

He said: “It’s the anomaly of track access charges for freight, that have been going up faster than the rate of inflation, and at the same time road fuel duty’s been frozen.

Cadbury replied: “I think it’s difficult to disagree. Apart from anything else, we need to grow rail freight in order to get congestion off the roads, because it’s a so much more efficient, carbon efficient and healthier way to travel."