Mr Maynard suggested reintroducing the line could be partly funded via private landowners and developers, in exchange for allowing new homes to be built around stations.

“That might sound radical, that’s what our Victorian forebears did 150 years ago, it’s what Japan, Korea and Hong Kong do, it’s what much of Northern Europe does,” he said.

He said that housing development would be more readily accepted in the area if investment in rail came alongside it.

But he warned that without the rail link, journeys by road between Oxford and Witney would take an extra half an hour by 2031.

“We will be delivering on our side of the bargain of getting all those houses into West Oxfordshire in a coherent and sensible way,” he said.

“Because without a railway solution we will not have that solution and we will have an unsustainable and long term problem.”