East West Rail project affecting Milton Keynes to be scrutinised by government's Transport Committee

The multi-billion pound East West Rail project is to be scrutinised by the Parliament’s Transport Committee this week.

A special ‘evidence session’ is to be held on Wednesday by the committee, which is a cross-party group of backbench MPs that is appointed by the House of Commons to carry out inquiries into the Department for Transport’s policies, scrutinise its decisions and hold it to account.

It will focus on the decision making process and the objectives behind building it.

The East West Rail project will connect communities with a new Oxford to Cambridge railway, part of which will be a line running between Bletchley and Bicester. Work on this stretch began in 2020 and the track-laying is now almost complete.

The project has an estimated cost of £6-7bn. It announced in 2013 and the East West Railway Company was set up as a delivery body in 2017.

Wednesday’s evidence session will be attended by project’s chief executive Beth West, Rail Minister Huw Merriman and Department for Transport officials as well as the Mayor of Bedford Borough Council, Tom Wootton and other witnesses.

It can be watched live from 9.30am on Parliament TV here.

The session is part of the strategic transport objectives inquiry, and will see MPs question the Mayor of Bedford and representatives of the Oxford to Cambridge Science Supercluster Board and England’s Economic Heartland – a sub-national transport body covering an area from Swindon to Cambridgeshire.

It follows a recent National Audit Office (NAO) report which said the government “is not yet clear how the benefits of the project will be achieved nor how it aligns to other government plans for growth in the region”.

The report did not provide a value-for-money appraisal of the project.

Witnesses will be asked about the case for building East West Rail, and how different strategic objectives were considered and prioritised in the lead up to the project being green-lit. These objectives include local economic growth, housing development and improving connectivity between cities along the route.

MPs will hear how local government, businesses and residents have been consulted and communicated with, and how the Government and EWR will respond to the findings of the NAO’s report.