Cheryl Gillan

Tuesday

Cheryl Gillan

Aviation: Don’t say one thing and do another

Some tickets to the Spectator’s next debate, ‘No Ifs, No Buts: Heathrow Must Have a Third Runway’, are still available. Tim Yeo, chairman of the energy and climate change select committee, and Jon Moulton, chairman of Better Capital, and influential Tory backbencher Graham Brady will be speaking in favour of the motion, while Daniel Moylan, Boris’ right hand man, and John Stewart, chairman of the ClearSkies campaign, will oppose the motion. Click here for more information and the box office. In the piece below, Cheryl Gillan MP, the former Secretary of State for Wales, discusses many of the economic issues that surround this vital political debate.

Wednesday

Cheryl Gillan

The government could repeat its West Coast Mainline mistake with HS2

This Monday Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin faced the House of Commons to make a second statement on the fiasco surrounding the West Coast Mainline rail franchise.  Reporting on the initial findings of an inquiry into what went wrong, the Transport Secretary said the conclusions made ‘uncomfortable reading’ and showed, amongst other failings,  a lack of transparency in the process, inconsistencies in the treatment of bidders and technical flaws in the modelling. While these revelations raise huge concerns about the internal working at the Department for Transport, I was glad to see the Transport Secretary approach his department’s shortcomings with openness and transparency; I commended his approach during the statement.