I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this wide-ranging debate. I am heartened by the amount of support that this project still has across the Chamber. I recognise that I will
never be able to make my noble friend Lord Framlingham happy on this one. I will work on the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and might get there in the end—we are going to keep trying, because it is a very important project.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, made some particularly important points about these large critical infrastructure projects and the difficulties this country faces in the way that we are set up and do our budgeting, scheduling and timetabling. Certainly, over the longer term some changes will probably happen in those areas. It is the same in rail as in roads, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, who spoke about roads being vital. As Roads Minister I completely agree with him. The Government are committing vast sums of money to improvements in both roads and rail, which are absolutely essential. The next RIS2 will have £25.3 billion to spend. On rail, we are spending £48 billion in the next control period, which is significantly more than we have spent on our railways for a very long time.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that this has pretty much always been about capacity—it just happens to be called High Speed 2. If I could have one wish in my life, it would be to change the name of this project. Calling it High Speed 2 has caused so many problems. It is a high-speed railway, I completely get that, but it is about capacity. Although it might be possible to slow down the railway, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, suggested, that would cut capacity. However, that is one of things that the Oakervee review will look at.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, stated that this project was transformative and mentioned many other times when Members both in the other place and in this House, from the Government and beyond, talked about its transformative nature. It is very difficult to disagree, but “transformative” can mean many different things. We must be absolutely clear—this is what Oakervee will do—that the benefits and costs are appropriate for this project. That is the reason for the review.