Public Accounts Committee
27 April 2026
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Public Accounts Committee House of Commons
00:04 - 01:32
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Public Accounts Committee on Monday 04/27/2026. It has been long acknowledged that several large cities in the North Of England including Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield are poorly served by transport connections and limited rail infrastructure. The government's Northern Powers Rail program is intended to improve connectivity between these major cities in order to promote growth through increased productivity. The government's funding cap for the Northern Powerhouse Rail program is 45,000,000,000, for twenty six seven in '25 prices. This includes the building of the new rail line stations as well as upgrading the pre existing infrastructure to provide more frequent services in shorter journey times.
Today we're looking to understand how departments are working to ensure that Northern Powerhouse Rail aligns with the government's economic growth plans for the North, as well as to scrutinize how DFT will work with key strategic partners to deliver the benefits of the program. Given the PAC's long interest scrutiny of the complex and challenging HS2 rail project, we will also be assessing whether DFT is effectively learning and implementing the lessons from previous rail programs. So with us today to help us with all that, we're delighted to welcome the permanent secretary Joe Chamouligan Gilligan. Joe, would you introduce yourself just very briefly, tell us when you were appointed and then perhaps Will and Nick and Tom after that.
01:32 - 01:44
Speaker 2
Brilliant, thank you very much Chair for having us here today. I'm Joe Shambhagalingam, permanent secretary at Department for Transport, a role I took up last July having previously been the second permanent secretary. With me Nick Bisson.
01:44 - 01:54
Speaker 3
Nick Bisson, I'm the transport's director for Northern Powerhouse Rail, and I have worked on Northern Powerhouse Rail since 2018 in a range of different roles.
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