§ Lord Melchettasked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their best estimate, or if they have none, what estimates have been made by public bodies, of the total costs, including all training, supervision, labour, materials and other capital costs, at 1980 prices, of electrifying all those railway lines that have been proposed for such treatment by British Rail, how many years it is estimated such a programme might take to complete, and how many additional jobs (in terms of full-time jobs per year) would be created while this work was being done.
§ The Earl of AvonWe have not yet received from the Railways Board the 10-year programme of schemes for the electrification of potentially profitable main line routes which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport invited them to submit last June. The best available estimates of the cost and timing of possible programmes are therefore still those given in theReview of Main Line Electrification, published in February 1981. The National Economic Development Office (Electrical Engineering EDC) have estimated that an electrification programme could directly generate some 1,200–2,000 jobs in the electrical and civil engineering industries while the work was being done