Railways (Convention on International Carriage by Rail) Regulations 2005

I am grateful for all contributions to the debate and the general statements of principle, although I recognise the reservations expressed. I am not sure whether to be pleased or terrified that I differed, as was suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, from the speech made by my colleague in the Commons. I do my best to emulate those speeches and reach their standard, and when she says that I have carried out some derogation it suggests that the standard may have slipped. I hear what she says. I was certainly able to make one late change, as they did not know at that stage that Syria had ratified the regulations. We had moved up from 26 to 27, but in other respects, all I can say about the contribution is that a poor thing it may be but—in the words of Touchstone—it is mine own. In terms of the issues that the noble Baroness raised, I want to emphasise that co-operation on international railways is a long-standing concept. I seem to recall that it would have better had Russia been included way back in the past. When the Russians wanted to bring their tanks forward on the eastern front, they had terrible troubles when they got to the Polish border because the tracks were a different gauge and they had to change bogies, which caused them some distress at a crucial point in the Second World War.