Crossrail Bill [Instruction No. 2]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 2:03 pm on 12 January 2006.

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Photo of Martin Salter Martin Salter Labour, Reading West 2:03, 12 January 2006

I welcome the revised instructions to the Select Committee, but the process is a bit like pulling teeth. We managed, as a result of a delegation I led from Reading borough council last February, to persuade the then Minister of State for Transport to start safeguarding the route to Reading from Maidenhead. I was grateful for that, and it has the support of all local authorities in the area.

The case for Reading versus Maidenhead has to be examined. But, as I have said before, Crossrail's publicity guide talks about an opportunity to connect the United Kingdom. I am a fan of Maidenhead, to a point. But we do not connect the UK from Maidenhead. Reading is the second busiest rail terminal in the country outside London. A huge number of businesses in the Thames valley, from Swindon through to Reading and Bracknell, rely on our public transport infrastructure. Indeed, it is one of the reasons they locate in the area, and one of the reasons why we have negative unemployment.

We need, as part of any eventual—I stress "eventual"—extension to Reading not to miss the opportunity to have a western link to London Heathrow airport. That is one of the things people have petitioned for; indeed, I am one of those petitioners, having organised the largest petition to Parliament on the issue from the western side of London. We need an absolute guarantee that we will end the farce of making business people, commuters, tourists and whoever, if they want to catch a train, as we want to encourage them to do, to London Heathrow—some 25 miles from Reading and just a 25-minute drive, in fact, outside rush hour—go 40 miles to Paddington, passing London Heathrow airport, then changing to the Heathrow Express and coming 20 miles back again. How good for the environment is that? How could we design such a transport system? If Crossrail comes to Reading, the opportunity must not be missed for a western link.

We have put together a comprehensive petition for Reading to be the western terminus. That has involved the Evening Post, Reading borough council, me and the business community. I am delighted that it has cross-party support, and Mr. Wilson is also a petitioner and fully supportive of that approach.

The people representing Maidenhead themselves reject the argument that Maidenhead is the logical western terminus. We have had petitions from Mrs. May and the Maidenhead civic society. Many of the steps necessary to make a Reading extension viable also apply to Maidenhead.

Any western extension must meet certain criteria. There must be scope for a western link to Heathrow, and that is not in the plans at the moment. Most importantly, there must be no detrimental effect, as my hon. Friend Dr. Naysmith and others from further west have said, to existing high-speed services into London Paddington. That is crucial to the economies of Swindon, Bristol and elsewhere. From Reading, the second busiest rail interchange outside London, there is a high-speed service into London—if one can get a seat—every eight to 10 minutes at peak time. It is a 29-minute service. Who would want that disrupted by a metro stopping service running ahead of it, possibly using some of the same track? The argument is very complicated.

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Jane Griffiths
Posted on 13 Jan 2006 11:56 am (Report this annotation)

surely a councillor should lead a delegation from Reading Borough Council? And why has Reading Borough Council not petitioned the Select Committee?