Surplus Railway Locomotives And Parliamentary Questions

EDM number 471 in 1995-96, proposed by Chris Davies on 21/02/1996.

That this House notes that the British Railways Board which currently has more than 300 locomotives out of use and rotting in sidings while a further 408 have been sent to scrapyards since 1992, has used a variety of administrative and other devices to ensure that none of these publicly-owned assets can be purchased by potential operators seeking to run their own freight trains; is astonished that the Government has failed to curb this blatant attempt by the Board to confound the open access policy; draws attention to the fact that when a parliamentary question tabled by the honourable Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth asking for details of the number of locomotives scrapped and the number available for sale was answered in November 1995, the Minister of Transport replied that the information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost; congratulates the magazine RAIL, which by contrast was able to obtain the information from legitimate sources for the price of a couple of telephone calls; is dismayed by the use on some 2,230 occasions in this Parliament of the excuse of disproportionate cost as a means of responding to parliamentary questions some of which Ministers might find embarassing to answer; accepts the recommendations of Sir Richard Scott regarding the need for openness when Ministers are answering questions; and believes that Ministers should be required to provide an estimate of the cost when responding in such a manner.

This motion has been signed by a total of 15 MPs.