East Coast Main Line Rail Services

EDM number 208 in 2008-09, proposed by Mark Lazarowicz on 09/12/2008.

That this House notes the pending decision of the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) on the planned expansion of rail services on the East Coast Main Line between London, the East Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, the North East of England and Scotland; recognises that there are competing applications for scarce track capacity on sections of the East Coast route; believes that the best use of any available capacity would be for the ORR to allocate it to the operator of the publicly-franchised Inter City East Coast service operating over the entire route, which delivers revenue to the Government for reinvestment in the railways; understands that the 25 new services that National Express East Coast wishes to run from December 2009 will deliver thousands of extra seats per day, create around 50 new jobs, reduce average journey times between London, the East Midlands, Yorkshire, the North East of England and Scotland, and bring about new direct services between London, Lincoln, Cleethorpes, Grimsby, Harrogate, Bradford and other communities; and calls upon the ORR to find in favour of the National Express proposals.

This motion has been signed by a total of 17 MPs.