Dogged Mr Grayling smiled, like Blakey from On The Buses

HERE is a euphemism for school pupils with an essay crisis, shopkeepers who have let down a customer or minicab drivers infuriatingly late to a pick-up. It comes courtesy of Jo Johnson, a Transport minister speaking in the Commons yesterday during question time.

Mr Johnson (a brother of Boris but less flamboyant with words) was asked about the nine-month delay to the £15billion Crossrail project in London.

Mr Johnson paused. He cleared his tubes. Regurgitating some briefing note, he said the authorities had ‘ needed to revise the delivery schedule’.

Revise: more congenial than ‘ditch’, see? ‘ Delivery schedule’ means ‘ deadline’ but Whitehall officials find deadlines too ‘binary’ (a favourite term). Saying ‘delivery schedule’ is preferable because it sounds positive, slightly technical and best of all is loose. It allows ‘wiggle room’, which is another way of saying room for failure.

Will ‘ delivery schedule’ work in other walks of life? You there, Willoughby, boy at the back of the class with the oily hair, where the blazes is your chemistry prep? ‘Sorry, miss, but after consultations with stakeholders and in order to improve customer satisfaction going forward, I needed to revise the delivery schedule.’ Willoughby, detention.

Transport Questions, under flapping-limbed, drainpipe-necked Secretary of State Chris Grayling, always has its unintentional comic moments. Some Commons veterans speak well of Mr Grayling and say he cracks on with his work but in the parliamentary arena he is indisputably a gooseberry. Tall, he has to stoop for the despatch box microphone, then returns his head to the upright position with the sudden flick of a giraffe startled at the waterhole.

Yesterday he announced the Government’s new ‘Road To Zero strategy’. He was referring to Whitehall thinking on persuading motorists to switch to vehicles that do not pollute the streets (ie zero emissions).

The moment he spooned up that Road To Zero strategy name, parts of the Chamber started to whimper with unsuppressible mirth. It seemed such a perfect description of the May Government, on the Road To Zero votes.

Mind you, with a character such as Mr Grayling, so often in minus territory, zero could represent an improvement.

Dear old Grayling. He does not quite cop how he is seen by others. When he heard the laughter he plodded onwards, only occasionally looking up to give a dogged, windless, Blakey-from- On-The-Buses smile.

There were many complaints about crowded trains. Alec Shelbrooke (Con, Elmet & Rothwell) roared about sardine-tin conditions on morning trains at Woodlesford in his constituency. Mr Johnson, speaking with the modulated tones of an anger-management professional, said there was ‘ always room for further improvements’. That’s possibly all there is room for, guvnor.

SIR Patrick McLoughlin (Con, Derbyshire Dales) asked, with nice weighting, when the Government would honour Philip Hammond’s promise last year to introduce a discount railcard for those aged 26-30. Mr Johnson murmured that ministers were ‘awaiting a full assessment of an exciting, industry-led trial’.

Further steps would be announced in due course. More official pfaffing and delay. You should not mistake Sir Patrick for a member of the Philip Hammond fan club.

John Hayes (Con, S Holland & the Deepings) was keen to see more recharging points for electric cars. A minister predicted that these would be sited in lamp posts. Watch out, Fido. One cock of the leg and brzzzzzzt! Could be agony.

Parliamentary under- secretary Nusrat Ghani brought her own genius to the party.

Asked about sea-faring careers by Itchen’s Royston Smith – a man whose interventions are so rare they should be catalogued by Stanley Gibbons – she said the Government was doubling marine apprenticeships.

Seconds later, blinking dimly, she said exactly the same thing with identical words.

Ms Ghani hoped many more youngsters would join ‘the maritime sector as a career going forward’. Given the pitchy seas at present, she might more accurately have said ‘going sideways, up and down’, too. Cocoa, skipper?