We continue to invest in upgrading the railways across England and Wales, with a budget of about £2 billion a year, including opening five new stations and two new lines in the past three years. In the north-east, the Government are investing in Darlington station, the Northumberland line and the east coast main line upgrade.
I thank the Minister for his answer, but the most critical rail infrastructure needed in the north-east by far is the Leamside line project, starting with Ferryhill station. Its importance cannot be overstated; it is about resilience, capacity and levelling up. Can he tell us when we will get spades in the ground to show our commitment to constituents in Ferryhill and let them see the economic benefit that these stations will bring?
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who is a champion of rail in the north-east. I thank him for his long-standing support for this scheme and for sponsoring the bid for restoring your railway ideas funding to reopen a station at Ferryhill. The updated strategic outline business case for the Ferryhill-Middlesbrough proposal is with the Department and we will be looking at it shortly.
Railway ticket offices are essential railway infrastructure. The Minister has said that his hope is that staff will be redeployed on to the concourse, so can he comment on the fact that the planning assumption for Great Western Railway, once it closes the ticket office in Plymouth, is that it will cut the number of roles at Plymouth station by 42%, as part of a 40% cut in the workforce across the network in the south-west? Is that his actual plan? Can he also publish the letter of instruction sent by his Department to train operating companies requiring them to start the consultation on ticket office closures?
I certainly intend to be as transparent as you would expect in this regard, Mr Speaker, so I will look into the hon. Member’s request. I re-emphasise that this is a consultation by the train operators. His own train operator will no doubt take his comments about the station in his constituency on board. That will then be assessed by the passenger body and, if matters need to be worked upon, I would expect those two bodies to do that. If that cannot occur, it moves to an ultimate determination in the Department for Transport.