On 9th February, the All Party Parliamentary Group for High Speed Rail launched an inquiry to “establish the future capacity requirements of Britain’s railway infrastructure and to consider the most appropriate means of addressing these requirements in order to deliver an efficient railway infrastructure that can best meet the needs of the UK in the 21st century.”
The deadline for written submissions is Tuesday 13th March, 2012. Submission guidelines can be downloaded from the main inquiry page.
(Note: at the time of downloading the submission guidelines, the oral evidence session dates listed in the guidelines were in February, but the website gives updated dates of 14th March, 21st March, 18th April, 2012.
Also the inquiry is not specifically about HS2 or high speed rail.)
The membership of this group is not exactly ‘independent’. They would help their legitimacy if they appointed at least advisers and/or a chair who were clearly independent. If they want to really clear the air on this topic, then full independence is the gold standard – but could they at least aspire to a silver or a bronze standard?
Representative MPs from Manchester and Leeds so far – I wonder who the other three will be?
Whoever they are they will also have to “believe that the UK needs a modern high speed rail network” because they will be the All Party Parliamentary Group FOR high speed rail.
I don’t want to believe the ‘Notes’ at the bottom of the details for submitting evidence.
Is there another All Party Parliamentary Group QUESTIONING high speed rail?
To raise awareness of the need for parliamentarians to give very serious consideration to all the concerns over HS2 during their debate on high speed rail?
I doubt it! But there should be. Then both groups could get together and look at the rail capacity forecasts with a balanced objective.
I dont see how they can make much progress until the present capacity data is released