§ Mr. Peter BottomleyTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, pursuant to his answer of 13 December 1999,Official Report, column 63W, concerning Ladbroke Grove, what was the relevance of railway privatisation to the answer and to the question and to which sentences in the answer it related; and what references to the rail layout at Ladbroke Grove or the safety rules relevant to it or to its operational use were referred to Ministers' offices between May 1997 and the day of the Ladbroke Grove crash. [103009]
§ Mr. HillThe privatisation reference was to make explicit the implicit point that a long process which started under British Rail ownership continued under other ownership. On the second point, there have been no references to Ministers. Ministers have no involvement in the statutory approval process for track layout or safety rules. They are the responsibility of the independent Health and Safety Commission and Executive and Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate.