From the Financial Times:
Geoff Hoon, newly-appointed transport secretary, yesterday threw his weight behind rail electrification and a potential network of high-speed lines - barely 15 months after his predecessor largely ruled out both options in a white paper on the railway industry, writes Robert Wright .
On the day he announced a National Networks Strategy Group to advise on the development of UK▸ infrastructure, Mr Hoon told the Financial Times: "I want us to be getting on with things like electrification . . . I think we have to have a discussion about high-speed rail links."
Mr Hoon stressed that the new group - to be chaired by Lord Adonis, minister of state at the Department for Transport - would not only be looking at rail projects. It would also look at improving road capacity.
However, the rail aspects will attract most attention because they contradict the stance of July 2007's white paper. Published under Ruth Kelly, Mr Hoon's predecessor, the document said a decision on new, high-speed rail lines could wait for another 15 years.
The white paper also largely rejected the case for further rail electrification, saying modern diesel trains remained a good option for most currently unelectrified routes. The UK's last big route electrification was completed in 1991 - pre-rail privatisation - on the East Coast Main Line from London to Edinburgh.
Figures regarding how much Network Rail, owner of the national network, can spend between 2009 and 2014 will be published today, with a ruling by the Office of Rail Regulation. Network Rail's funding will not include money for any electrification or high-speed rail.
However, there were still ways that work on electrification could be funded, Mr Hoon suggested. He looks likely to argue that some of the work would fund itself through savings on train maintenance and extra efficiency.
"I've seen some of the early work on electrification," Mr Hoon said. "I see nothing in that work that suggests to me we can't move ahead quite quickly."
Electrification would also help the environment, Mr Hoon added. "The time is obviously right, for environmental and other reasons, to give that a push," he said.
It would take longer to plan and build high-speed and other new rail routes, he added. However, he rejected the idea put forward by the Conservative party at its conference this year that a high-speed rail line from London to Manchester and Leeds could remove the need for a third runway at London's Heathrow airport.
"It's complete and utter nonsense," he said. "You only have to look at the needs. For example, their figures are based on substituting something like 60,000 flights. There are only 13,000 flights from London to Manchester and Leeds every year."
See
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/23ff61a6-a622-11dd-9d26-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1 
