The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps) With
permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the
rail strikes. We are now less than eight hours away from the
biggest railway strike since 1989—a strike orchestrated by some of
the best paid union barons, representing some of the better paid
workers in this country, which will cause misery and chaos to
millions of commuters. This weekend, we have seen union leaders use
all the tricks in the book to...Request free trial
The Secretary of State for Transport ()
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on
the rail strikes. We are now less than eight hours away from the
biggest railway strike since 1989—a strike orchestrated by some
of the best paid union barons, representing some of the better
paid workers in this country, which will cause misery and chaos
to millions of commuters.
This weekend, we have seen union leaders use all the tricks in
the book to confuse, to obfuscate and to mislead the public. Not
only do they wish to drag the railway back to the 1970s, but they
are employing the tactics of bygone unions: deflecting
accountability for their strikes on to others; attempting to
shift the blame for their action, which will cause disruption and
damage to millions of people; and claiming that others are
somehow preventing an agreement to their negotiation.
I do not think the public will be hoodwinked. [Interruption.]
Opposition Members laugh, but we are talking about the families
who will be unable to visit their relations, the music fans who
are hoping to go to Glastonbury, the students who will be unable
to get to their GCSEs and A-level exams, the businesses who are
just beginning to recover from covid and people who will miss out
on their medical treatment because of these strikes. That is what
the Opposition are supporting. They know that this week’s rail
strikes, created and organised by the unions, are the full
responsibility of the unions.
Of course, we are all doing our utmost to get the unions and the
rail industry to agree a way forward and call off the strikes. In
such discussions, it is always the employer and the unions who
need to get together and negotiate. In this case, that is the
train operating companies, Network Rail and their union
representatives. We are not the employer, and we will not
undermine the process. [Interruption.] I hear the calls of the
Labour leadership for us to get involved somehow, perhaps by
inviting the unions for beer and sandwiches to discuss the
situation. We all know that the Leader of the Opposition thinks
that a beer and a curry is a work meeting, but we will be leaving
this to the employers, who are the right people to negotiate with
the unions. Indeed, the unions are in daily talks with the
employers—or at least they were, until they walked out an hour
ago to hold a press conference, saying that the strikes would be
on.
Despite these strikes, we are doing everything we can to minimise
disruption throughout the entire network. We are working with the
civil contingencies secretariat, the Government’s emergency
planning team, to keep critical supply chains open wherever
possible. Operators will keep as many passenger trains as
possible running, although of course with so much disruption to
the timetable, that will be very difficult on strike days. It is
estimated that around 20% of planned services will operate,
focused on key workers, main population centres and critical
freight routes. But there will be mass disruption, and we advise
passengers to avoid travelling unless absolutely necessary—which,
of course, for many it will be. The National Rail Enquiries
website will be kept updated with the latest travel information
to ensure that passengers can make informed decisions about their
travel. Passengers are strongly advised to check before they
travel and encouraged to look for alternative means of
transportation if their journey is affected, including on the
days between the strikes.
We are looking at a variety of different options for the railways
to maintain services amid disruption in the medium and longer
term. We can no longer tolerate a position where rail workers can
exercise their right to strike without any regard for how the
rights of others are affected. Nurses, teachers and other working
people who rely on the railway must be able to travel. Minimum
service legislation is just one part of that. Minimum service
levels are a Government manifesto commitment, and they will
require train operators to run a base number of services even in
the event of future strike action. It is a system that works well
in other countries, including Belgium and France, and so we will
be bringing in legislation to protect the travelling public if
agreement cannot be reached when major disruption is expected, as
with the strikes this week.
The rhetoric that we have heard from union leaders and Opposition
Members over the weekend seems to be focused on widening the
division rather than bridging the gap. The whole point of the
railway reforms—based on the Williams review, which engaged with
the unions very extensively—is to unite and modernise the
industry, and just as we cannot reform the railways with obsolete
technology, we cannot do so by clinging to obsolete working
practices. For example, leisure travel at weekends is currently a
huge potential growth area. After covid, people are coming back
and are travelling at the weekends more than before. However,
under an agreement which dates back to 1919, Sunday working is
voluntary on most of the railway, so the industry cannot do what
everyone else does—what other businesses and organisations do—and
service its customers. Instead, it has to appeal to people to
come and work, and that service has sometimes been unavailable,
for instance when large football matches are taking place: during
the Euro finals, 170 trains were cancelled.
The industry therefore needs to change. Unions claim that this
strike is about a pay freeze, but that is factually incorrect. We
are not imposing a pay freeze. The whole point of these reforms
is to build a sustainable, growing railway, where every rail
worker receives a decent annual pay rise. Let me be clear,
however: if modernisation and reform are to work, we must have
unions that are prepared to modernise, otherwise there can be no
deal. This strike is not about pay, but about outdated unions
opposing progress—progress that will secure the railway’s future.
These strikes are not only a bid to stop reform; they are
critical to the network’s future. If the reforms are not carried
out, the strikes will threaten the very jobs of the people who
are striking, because they will not allow the railway to operate
properly and attract customers back.
The railway is in a fight . It is in a fight for its life, not
just competing with other forms of public and private transport
but competing with Teams, Zoom and other forms of remote working.
Today, many commuters who three years ago had no alternative but
to travel by train have other options, including the option of
not travelling at all. Rail has lost a fifth of its passengers
and a fifth of its revenue.
Since the start of the pandemic, the Government have committed
£16 billion of emergency taxpayer support —we all know the
numbers; that means £600 for every single household in the
country—so that not a single rail worker lost his or her job. We
have invested £16 billion to keep trains running and ensure that
no one at Network Rail or DFT-contracted train operating
companies was furloughed. Now, as we recover and people start to
travel again, the industry needs to grow its revenues. It needs
to attract passengers back, and make the reforms that are
necessary for it to compete. The very last thing that it should
be doing now is alienating passengers and freight customers with
a long and damaging strike. So my message to the workforce is
straightforward: “Your union bosses have got you striking under
false pretences, and rather than protecting your jobs, they are
actually endangering them and the railways’ future.”
We have a platform for change. We want the unions to work with
the industry and the Government to bring a much brighter future
to our railways, and that means building an agile and flexible
workforce, not one that strikes every time someone suggests an
improvement to our railway. Strikes should be the last resort,
not the first. They will stop customers choosing rail, they will
put jobs at risk, they will cause misery across the country, they
will hit businesses that are trying to recover from covid, and
they will hurt railway workers themselves. So please, let us stop
dividing the railway industry, and let us start working for a
brighter future.
Mr Speaker
I call the shadow Secretary of State, .
4.29pm
(Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
No one in the country wants these strikes to go ahead, but as I
have repeatedly said, even at this eleventh hour they can still
be avoided. That requires Ministers to step up and show
leadership. It requires them to get employers and unions round
the table and address the very serious issues, involving pay and
cuts in safety and maintenance staff, that are behind this
dispute. The entire country is about to grind to a halt, but
instead of intervening to try and stop it, the Secretary of State
is washing his hands of any responsibility. On the eve of the
biggest rail dispute in a generation taking place on his watch,
he has still not lifted a finger to resolve it. Not one meeting.
No talks, no discussions; only media interviews and a petition to
the Labour party. This is a grave dereliction of duty. Should the
strikes go ahead tomorrow, they will represent a catastrophic
failure of leadership. Ministers owe it to all those impacted by
this serious disruption to get around the table for last-ditch
talks to sort it out and avert it. If the Secretary of State will
not listen to me —[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Can the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay () and the right hon. Member for
Leicester South () either go outside or be
quiet for a little while?
If the Secretary of State will not listen to me, he should at
least listen to his own colleague and former parliamentary aide,
the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (), who said yesterday:
“I can tell you the only way out of a dispute is via negotiation.
I’d call on all parties including the Government to get around
the table because this is going to have a huge negative impact on
people’s lives.”
The Secretary of State’s own MPs and the public know that the
only way to sort this out is for him to do his job.
But that is not all, because this week it was revealed that the
Secretary of State had not only boycotted the talks but tied the
hands of those at the table. He and his Department failed to give
the train operating companies—a party to the talks—any mandate to
negotiate whatsoever. One source close to the negotiations
said:
“Without a mandate from Government we can’t even address the pay
question.”
Today, the Rail Delivery Group confirmed that it had not even
begun those discussions. That is the reality. These talks are a
sham, because Ministers have set them up to fail. It is for the
Government to settle this dispute. They are integral to these
negotiations, which cannot be resolved unless the Secretary of
State is at the table, but it is becoming clearer by the day that
Ministers would rather provoke this dispute than lift a finger to
resolve it.
This is the same Transport Secretary who just a few short weeks
ago was feigning outrage over the disgraceful behaviour of
P&O and who is now adopting its playbook. Replacing skilled,
safety-critical staff with agency workers cannot and must not be
an option. So what exactly has changed between the Secretary of
State calling on the public to boycott P&O and now, when he
is suggesting that that behaviour should be legalised?
Tomorrow we will see unprecedented disruption. We have been
clear: we do not want the strikes to happen. Where we are in
government, we are doing our job. In Labour-run Wales, a strike
by train staff has been avoided. Employers, unions and the
Government have come together to manage change. That is what any
responsible Government would be doing right now, because whether
it is today, tomorrow or next week, the only way this dispute
will be resolved is with a resolution on pay and job security.
The Secretary of State owes it to the hundreds of thousands of
workers who depend on our railways and the tens of thousands of
workers employed on them to find that deal.
Those rail workers are not the enemy. They are people who showed
real bravery during the pandemic to keep our country going. They
showed solidarity to make sure other workers kept going into
work. Some lost colleagues and friends as a result. They are the
very same people to whom the Prime Minister promised a high-wage
economy a year ago before presiding over the biggest fall in
living standards since records began. There is still time for the
Secretary of State to do the right thing, the brave thing, and
show responsibility. Patients, schoolchildren, low-paid
workers—the entire country needs a resolution and they will not
forgive this Government if they do not step in and resolve this.
Even now, at this late hour, I urge the Secretary of State: get
around the table and do your job.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley () used a lot of words to avoid
saying the four words, “I condemn the strikes.” She can practise
saying it if she likes. I condemn the strikes—will she?
I remind the House that the hon. Lady is a former union official.
She will therefore know better than most that negotiations are
always held between the employers and the unions. She calls on
the Government to get the parties around the table, but they were
around the table. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Slough (Mr
Dhesi) is right that they are not now, because the union has just
walked out to call a press conference to say the strikes are
on.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley is wrong when she says
these strikes are about pay, safety and job cuts. Let us take
them in turn. Pay—the unions wrongly told their workers that
there would be no pay rise. There will be a pay rise because the
pay freeze is coming to an end, so that is untrue.
Safety—it is unsafe to have people walking down the track to
check the condition of the lines when it can be done by trains
that can take 70,000 pictures a minute and by drones that can
look at the lines from overhead. Safety is about updating
outdated working practices. If the hon. Lady cared about safety,
she would care about modernisation.
Job cuts—the hon. Lady will know there has already been a call
for voluntary job cuts. In fact, 5,000-plus people came forward,
and 2,700 have been accepted. This is about ensuring we have a
railway that is fit for the post-covid world. It is therefore
crazy that the RMT jumped the gun and, before the talks had a
chance to get anywhere, launched into strikes.
The hon. Lady’s call for the Government to be more involved is a
desperate attempt to deflect from the fact the Labour party and
its constituency Labour parties have received £250,000 from the
RMT. And that is nothing—Labour has received £100 million from
the unions over the last 10 years, and Labour Members are here
today, as ever, failing to condemn strikes that will hurt
ordinary people, that will hurt kids trying to do their GCSEs and
A-levels, that will hurt people trying to get to hospital
appointments that were delayed during covid, and that will even
see veterans miss armed forces celebrations this week.
There is no excuse for the hon. Lady and her Front-Bench team
sitting on the fence. I can almost feel her pain as she resists
saying the four words, “I condemn the strikes.”
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I call the Chairman of the Transport Committee, .
(Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I find it extremely bizarre for the Secretary of State to be
blamed for not being in the room when these talks, which were
ongoing when the RMT called the strikes, were all about
intricate, technical reforms of which we would not expect
politicians to be in charge, and indeed when the RMT has said it
will not negotiate with a Conservative Government. He does not
need to waste his time responding to that.
I was down at the port of Southampton with the Select Committee
last week, and 30% of everything that comes in on those ships
goes to the rest of the country by rail freight. These strikes
will affect everyone, not just rail passengers. What are we doing
to preserve our rail freight routes?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the cause of the strikes
and about it being bizarre that the union walked out this
afternoon while the talks were still ongoing, and while still
trying to claim there should be more talks.
My hon. Friend is right that the disruption will create a major
problem for rail freight, which has been doing pretty well as
more freight shifts to rail post covid—about 9% of the overall
total. We are now working as closely as possible with colleagues
at Network Rail to design the strike day and post-strike day
timetables, to make sure that as much freight as possible can
travel, but I will not mislead him or the House, as it will be
very difficult to achieve. Anyone who cares about our supply
chains in this country should be against these unnecessary and
unwarranted strikes.
(Paisley and Renfrewshire
North) (SNP)
What a pile of nonsense. The glee with which the Secretary of
State spoke on Thursday and again today rather tells the story.
He spoke of the support for the rail industry and the fact that
no one has lost their job. If only we had seen that same support
for the aviation industry, which was promised, we would not be
seeing the scenes we are up and down this country at airports
across this land. In response to P&O’s unacceptable behaviour
in replacing staff with agency staff, he called for the company
to be boycotted and for it to reverse its decision. Now he is
planning to legislate to allow agency workers to replace striking
staff. Why does he not care for the rights of rail workers, given
that he appeared to care so deeply for the rights of ferry
workers?
ScotRail, with the encouragement of the Scottish Government, has
negotiated a settlement with drivers to end their pay dispute,
get services back up and running and support workers. Despite
that, services will still be disrupted as a consequence of the
industrial action that the UK Government have stoked with Network
Rail workers. Does the Secretary of State agree that devolving
Network Rail powers to Scotland is the only way to protect
Scotland? Despite his claim that the unions are solely
responsible for these strikes, we now know that the UK Government
have prevented meaningful negotiations. With inflation heading
over 10% and a Tory cost of living crisis, how can he explain or
defend preventing negotiations on wage increases, unless stoking
an industrial dispute to force through anti-union laws is
actually the Government’s aim?
Finally, does the Secretary of State share my concern for the
welfare of the Scottish Conservatives, none of whom are with us
today? On the ScotRail-ASLEF issue, the Scottish Conservatives’
Twitter account said
“The SNP must sort this mess out and address the travel misery
facing commuters.”
, the Scottish
Conservative transport spokesperson, no less, called for the
Scottish Government to get involved and get round the table. That
is the difference in approach we get from the Scottish
Conservatives depending on which Government they are addressing.
So does the Secretary of State think that the Scottish Tory
approach is shameful; shameless; the standard utterly
hypocritical politics of the Scottish Tories; or all of the
above?
I will address the point about P&O, because the hon. Member
for Sheffield, Heeley () also raised it. I am
surprised that they cannot see the glaring and obvious
differences in the disgraceful treatment of P&O workers. For
a start, it fired its workers and brought in foreign workers at
below the minimum wage—I would have thought that was a fairly
obvious difference. Secondly, no one’s wage is being cut here.
Thirdly, let me remind the hon. Lady that in the industry we are
talking about train drivers have a median salary of £59,000 and
rail workers have a median salary of £44,000, which compares
rather favourably with that of nurses, who have a median salary
of £31,000, and care workers, whose median salary is perhaps
£21,000. No one is talking about cutting salaries; everybody here
is trying to get the modernisation that could secure the future
of our railways, and it is a great pity to see respected
Opposition Front Benchers trying to mislead the public by somehow
suggesting that this is something to do with the P&O
situation when it is entirely separate and different.
The other point worth quashing is the idea that somehow we have
not provided a negotiating mandate or that we have told Network
Rail not to negotiate. That is simply not true. Network Rail has
a negotiating mandate and is able to negotiate. It is negotiating
on a package of measures that includes more than 20 areas of
reform, which are deeply technical and require not only the input
but the work of the employers to negotiate. In return for these
reforms lies the route to better salaries—higher pay. But I want
to ensure, once and for all, that we quash the idea that our
railway workers are poorly paid in this country; they are
not.
(Wokingham) (Con)
What has been the monthly rate of taxpayer subsidy to the
railways so far this year? What additional flexibilities could
managers use to try to get a bigger proportion of services
running even on a strike day?
My right hon. Friend is right to discuss the subsidy, which has
been £16 billion as a whole through covid—or £16 billion
committed, which means that we do not have the exact number yet
for the amount of that which is still going towards the
operations this year. One thing I can say to him is that without
that support the railways simply would not have been able to
operate. It is the equivalent of £160,000 per individual rail
worker. To turn around and call these strikes is a heck of a way
to thank taxpayers. We have lost around a fifth of the income
from rail. I hear Mick Lynch, the leader of the RMT, claim that
the Government are cutting the money that is going to the
railways, but that is a fundamental misunderstanding on his part.
The money that is missing is the £2 billion of passenger fares
that are not being paid because people are not travelling.
(Hayes and Harlington)
(Lab)
In my area, we witnessed the Paddington and Southall crashes. One
of my constituents was a driver who lost his life. We were told
then about the modernisation of safety inspections and it was the
workers who pointed out what risks they caused. We hear today
that there will be a 50% cut in the safety inspections of the
infrastructure. Does the Secretary of State really think the
British public have more confidence in his assessment of safety
on the rails than in that of the workers who actually implement
the safety inspections? I believe the British public expect the
Secretary of State not to come in here ranting to provoke a
strike but to behave with the dignity and responsibility of the
high office that he holds.
As the House will recall from last week, the right hon. Gentleman
receives donations from the very union that is going on
strike—
indicated dissent.
He is saying no, but I believe that is the case.
It is not true and you know that.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. I cannot have a dialogue. I recognise that there is a
difference of opinion. It might have to be settled at another
point. We will stick to this point and if the right hon. Member
for Hayes and Harlington () wants to raise the matter
later, I will listen to him.
Similar to the right hon. Gentleman—this is where we have a lot
in common—I had the very sad Hatfield rail accident in my
constituency, and Potters Bar is next to where I live. Those were
two major rail accidents in respect of which the maintenance of
the railway was absolutely key.
I have heard Mick Lynch of the RMT mention this figure of a 50%
reduction in safety staff. What is wrong about that is, as I
explained in my statement, if we can have automation, with trains
taking 70,000 images per minute, and use drones and other
technologies, it will put our railway at risk not to use those
things, because the modern standards that are required for
maintenance will not be available.
The right hon. Gentleman asked how I know about these matters; as
Transport Secretary, I have the unfortunate task of having to
read all the Rail Accident Investigation Branch investigations,
and I sometimes have to respond to coroners as well. Recently, I
read with great sadness about a man who was killed while walking
along the track to maintain it. We need to get rid of these
outdated, outmoded ways of carrying out maintenance and really
look after the safety of the railways.
(Worthing West) (Con)
I think the House will appreciate that the way to deal with
increasing rail safety and reducing risk to rail workers is not
really across the Floor of the House but between the employers
and the union safety representatives. Further progress should
then come.
The rail unions have a six-month authority to cause industrial
disruption; they should not be using it straightaway. In my view,
my local passengers—most of whom earn less than rail workers and
some of whom do not earn anything at all because they are
students trying to take exams this week—would prefer it if both
sides of the House could call on the unions to postpone these
disputes until they will not affect so many people so harshly. I
think, as one of the most union-friendly Conservatives, that my
voice is not necessarily going to be heard by the union leaders,
but if Labour would join in we could say in a cross-party way,
“Postpone the strikes this week, get on with the talks and
negotiations, and if people want to take time off to go to a TUC
or Labour rally, they should come back to the talks, not just go
to the media.”
My hon. Friend is of course absolutely right about this. The
absolute truth is that we need to have modernisation—we need to
improve our railways. If we work together to do it, we can have a
far improved railway and bring back passengers, and we can make
easier things such as ticketing—currently, only one in eight
tickets are purchased in a ticket office, yet we have the same
set-up, with people sat behind the glass, as we have had since
the 1990s. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we can modernise
and improve the railways, but what is required is for the Labour
party, which is much closer to the unions, to endorse that.
Perhaps if I can, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will clear up my
exchange with the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington
(). I understand that it is
his constituency Labour party that has received the £30,000 in
RMT funding.
(York Central)
(Lab/Co-op)
When there is an impasse in negotiation, it is the responsibility
of all the partners to do whatever they can to resolve the
dispute. I have been talking today to railway workers, and they
are desperate to see an end to this dispute, but they do need a
change in the dynamics. Will the Secretary of State stop his
grandstanding, enter the room that the unions are willing to
occupy, and engage in dialogue and see where that takes him?
The hon. Lady, whose own constituency Labour party received
£3,000 from the RMT, may have missed the leader of her union
address a press conference about an hour ago, where he made it
clear that he had walked out of the talks to which she is
encouraging the employers to return. We are ready to speak. We
want to see this settled. Pay offers have been put down, but
modernisation is required in return. It takes two to tango.
(Cities of London and
Westminster) (Con)
UKHospitality, the hospitality trade association, believes that
the strikes tomorrow, Thursday and Saturday will have a massive
effect on the hospitality industry. We are talking about not just
the major employers, but the small, family-run restaurants and
cafés. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, rather than taking
these strikes, the RMT should be going back to the talks and
trying to stop these strikes, so that we can protect the jobs
within the important hospitality industry?
My hon. Friend is right. These strikes will cost the railways a
lot. They will particularly cost people who are unable to
travel—particularly the lowest paid, because they often have jobs
to which people still have to physically turn up. There is
probably not a sector that will suffer more than the hospitality
sector. Just as this country is recovering from covid, it is
completely unforgiveable of the unions to call their members out
on strike when they are doing so artificially and without good
cause, while negotiations are still continuing, and on the false
prospectus of there not being pay rises when there were always
going to be pay rises.
(Richmond Park) (LD)
The Secretary of State has mentioned on a number of occasions the
various different people who will be seriously impacted by the
strike: the exam students; those with medical appointments; and
many, many others. Given that he insists that there was nothing
that he could possibly have done to avert this strike, can he
tell us instead what conversations he has had with the NHS, with
education leaders and with others to understand what his
Department can do to help health and education staff get to work
for the rest of this week to support their critical industry?
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question and, indeed, for
her vote as well. When this House voted last week with a 278
majority condemning the strikes, I believe that she and her party
were in the Lobby putting their position clearly on the record,
unlike the Official Opposition.
On those discussions with the NHS, with teachers and the rest, I
am engaged with the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, which is the
part of Government that co-ordinates with me and fellow
Secretaries of State across Government to try, as far as
possible, to ease some of the strains and stresses that will
come. For example, in the case of exams where people may turn up
late, we have been working with the exam authorities. However,
there is no magic solution. There are 2,500 stations in this
country and more than 20,000 miles of track. The fact is that, if
they are closed down as the unions are doing, many people will
suffer.
(South West Bedfordshire)
(Con)
My constituents from Leighton Buzzard and Dunstable pay enormous
sums of money to commute into London. Has the Secretary of State
done any modelling on the impact of some of the pay rises that
are being asked for and the ability of people to be able to
afford to travel on the railways?
As Transport Secretary, I find that a lot of the time people talk
or indeed complain to me about the cost of a ticket on our rail,
which can be very high. It is worth knowing that one third of the
ticket price is made up of the salary of those who run the
trains. As I have said all along, I want to see our railway
workers paid well for doing their work, and in fact they are paid
very well for doing their work, but we must run our railways as
efficiently as possible to keep the ticket price down for the
passengers. That is the most important part of the reforms needed
and what is unfortunately at the heart of this strike: not pay,
but the reform. To answer my hon. Friend’s question about his
constituents, I am arranging for people who have annual season
tickets, rather than having to rely on a delay repay system, to
be able to apply to get their money back for the days they are
unable to travel this week.
(Wirral West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State knows that the Government have cut £4
billion from our transport system, including £2 billion from
national rail. As a result, the companies involved have decided
to impose a real-terms pay cut, lengthen the working day for new
starters, attack rail workers’ pensions and cut thousands of
jobs. That is likely to lead to much poorer conditions for staff
and potentially less safe services for passengers. We are on the
eve of the biggest rail strike in a generation. When will he step
up to his responsibility and do what he can to resolve the
dispute?
I am afraid that reading the RMT brief is what leads Labour
Members to believe a bunch of untruths. Let me start with the
first one: a £4 billion cut, the hon. Lady says. I think I have
already explained that, but that is the passengers not coming on
the railway. That is why there is a cut in revenue to the
railways. What a terrible way this is to address that—going on
strike, closing down the railway and putting more passengers off.
It makes no sense. She talks about pension reform, but there has
been considerable progress made, and it is the Pensions Regulator
that needs there to be reform, otherwise the system would fall
over. There has been considerable progress made in some of these
areas, but again it is worth pointing out to the House that the
rail pension age for earlier retirees is 62, and the pension can
be about £40,000 a year. Those are rightly generous terms, but
they must come in return for reforms to the rail system,
otherwise it will fall over. It is not the Government cutting
money; it is passengers not travelling.
(Stoke-on-Trent South)
(Con)
Meir station was announced at the weekend, and it is fantastic
that we are moving to the next stage of the restoring your
railway fund. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, just when we
are trying to attract more people back on to the railways and
investing in things such as Meir station and the restoring your
railway programme, it is not the right time to be striking, and
that these totally reckless actions by the unions must be
condemned?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Here is the thing: I know the
Opposition would love to paint us as being anti-railway, as if we
want to close it down or we do not care about it, but the
opposite is true. There has not been a Government for
decades—perhaps ever—who have invested so much in the railway. If
we think about the £96 billion for the integrated rail review in
the north and the midlands, the £35 billion of ongoing
improvements, maintenance and upgrades, and the fantastic
announcement on Meir station as part of the restoring your
railway bid, reversing the Beeching cuts, there has never been a
more pro-rail Government. We just need a union that is prepared
to work to enable it to continue to thrive.
(Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
To declare an interest, my father-in-law is a train driver and a
member of the RMT. I am saddened that from the Government Benches
we are not hearing the same loving rhetoric towards our railway
staff that we did during the pandemic. The Secretary of State
called our railway workers heroes. What has changed, and why will
he not get around the negotiating table and see what he can
do?
I wish the hon. Lady’s relation well in his job, and I hope he
can get back to it very soon. I have just explained that this
Government are putting £96 billion into northern powerhouse rail,
£35 billion into upgrades and more money into the restoring your
railway fund. There has never been a more pro-rail Government, as
far as I can see, in history. However, it is also the case that,
during the pandemic, we pumped in £16 billion, equivalent to £600
per household in this country or £160,000 per railway worker, to
keep them in their jobs. We love the railways, and I like the
people who work on them as well—I just want them to work, that is
all.
(Blackpool North and
Cleveleys) (Con)
I am sure the Secretary of State will join me in thanking the
wider members of the railway economy who will have to come
together to sustain a skeleton services over the coming weeks.
Will he draw a conclusion, though, from the 2016 Southern and
Thameslink strike, where a lack of familiarity with the Passenger
Assist service for disabled passengers meant that many could not
complete their journeys and in the worst-case scenario were left
abandoned on deserted station platforms after the last service of
the day? When he discusses contingency planning with the many
train operators, will he bear that very salient point in mind,
because it was forgotten last time and had to be relearned yet
again?
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who is a distinguished former
Rail Minister and knows a great deal about the service. He is
absolutely right about Passenger Assist. We are expanding that
service by, for example, speeding up response times and
introducing things like apps and standards to make sure that
people can use our trains. We will shortly complete the work that
we have promised on putting in tactile pavements around station
platforms to remove another potential risk of using our railways.
I am fully on board with everything that he said—we just need our
railways running, though.
(Warrington North)
(Lab)
My mum is one of the RMT members who will be taking industrial
action this week, along with many of my constituents, the
majority of whom are cleaning workers, catering and gateline
staff, and other ancillary roles who are not even on a real
living wage and at the sharp end of this Government’s cost of
living crisis. My mum and the other key workers in transport are
not striking because they want to; it is a last resort because
they feel they have been left no choice. A real-terms cut to
their pay or the threat of losing their job altogether is far
more than the wages they will lose in striking to defend
themselves. Will the Transport Secretary therefore tell the House
what steps he has taken to enable train operating companies to
make an offer on a deal so that this crisis can be fairly
resolved and the strikes averted?
They have actually already made an offer—the hon. Lady may not be
aware—that the RMT has talked about this afternoon and clearly
rejected as well. She talks about the cost of living crisis but
fails to mention that it is a global inflationary problem caused
not only by coronavirus but now a war in Ukraine on which this
country has helped to lead the response. She talks about the
salaries of people on the railway. As I have said several times,
I want the salaries to be higher. There will be a pay increase
this year for her mum and for everyone else. It is important to
recognise that a responsible Government have to make the judgment
between railway workers, nurses, teachers, care workers and many
others. In that regard, she should know that in the past 10 years
there has been a 39% increase in railway workers’ salaries
compared with just 16% for nurses. We do need to make sure that
the fair settlement is fair for everybody.
(Dudley North) (Con)
Accepting that there is never a good time to strike, does the
Secretary of State agree that to do so when the cost of fuel is
at impossibly high levels, people are struggling to hold down
their jobs and rebuild their businesses in a post-covid
environment and children are in the middle of their exams shows a
callousness from union bosses that should be condemned, and not
supported by Labour Members?
Exactly. I think the whole House has noticed that their inability
to simply say that they condemn the strikes is the most striking
part of this debate. This will hurt ordinary people. It will hurt
the cleaners who rely on trains to get to their jobs but will not
be able to get there, and in some cases will therefore not get
paid. This is a strike led by the union bosses who have misled
their members into thinking that there would not be a pay rise
without striking when that was never the case.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. As I travelled
today from Belfast to London, I was very aware of the hundreds of
accents and the thousands of visitors. With all the strikes
affecting so many tourists who rely on the trains to get about,
what steps are being taken to provide information for visitors
who do not know how a strike will affect them, and how can we do
more to see an end to these strikes?
That is very much one of the things that we are working on
through the civil contingencies secretariat. I am working with my
right hon. Friend Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media
and Sport to ensure that tourists can still receive information
through their hotels, bed and breakfasts or wherever they happen
to be staying, because they would not necessarily know to look at
things such as National Rail Enquiries, as I hope others would.
We are trying to push the message out as widely as possible, but
it will be far from perfect. Again, just as this country was
starting to recover—just as we came out of coronavirus first,
because we got the jabs done first—this is the last thing, among
others, that the tourism sector needs.
(Montgomeryshire) (Con)
It is sad that the Labour Front-Bench team will not condemn the
strikes that are happening tomorrow, but in Wales, Labour is
going further and denying their existence. In my constituency,
which I assure the House is in Wales, there are no strikes
tomorrow, Thursday and Saturday—Labour is calling them “travel
disruption”. I ask the Secretary of State not to forget about
Wales and to make sure that we get the trains running again. When
is a strike not a strike?
I notice that the tone of the Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople
has changed considerably since last week, when they each stood up
and claimed that in whichever part of our great United Kingdom
they run the Government, there were somehow not going to be
strikes. The RMT strikes affect the entire country—Scotland,
Wales and England. The only place that is being spared is
Northern Ireland. The track and the responsibility of the
unions—the RMT—to work with Network Rail means that the
disruption, I am afraid, will be wholesale.
(Glasgow South West)
(SNP)
May I press the Secretary of State, as a number of hon. Members
have—[Interruption.] No, I have not received any money, if that
is the conversation that he is having with the Minister of State,
Department for Transport, the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills
(). I want to press him on
agency workers. He has been asked if he will legislate to allow
agency workers to effectively bust industrial action in future.
What guarantees will he give that those agency workers will have
the necessary training in safety and all the rest of it? Is he
suggesting that Network Rail should break the law this week by
hiring agency workers, and who will pay the fines if it does?
No, Network Rail obviously cannot do that this week, but yes, my
right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and
Industrial Strategy will bring forward legislation quickly to
allow for what the hon. Gentleman calls agency workers. For this
purpose, that is actually more about transferable skills. It will
mean that somebody who is sitting at a screen in a control room
and is fully qualified to run the screen next door, but at the
moment is not allowed to do so because of some antiquated union
rules that prevent it, will be allowed to do so. That means that
the whole country will not be held to ransom by union barons who
prefer to pursue their narrow agenda, supported by the Labour
party, when ordinary hard-working people want to get to work. We
will be introducing that legislation, and we will be doing it
very quickly.
(Kensington) (Con)
Tomorrow will see yet another day of tube strikes in London,
which will be the 53rd day since became Mayor of London, even
though he was elected on the basis of promising zero strikes.
That strike will cause untold misery and disruption for my
constituents at a time when businesses in London are just
beginning to recover from coronavirus. Does my right hon. Friend
agree that London deserves better than and his union paymasters, and
that London Labour Members should condemn the strikes, rather
than tacitly supporting them?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She and the whole House will
have noticed that while the Opposition were singing the praises
of other parts of the Union, including what they call Labour
Wales—I do not think it is Labour at all, but Labour runs the
Administration—for not striking, they failed to mention that
their own Mayor of London has had 53 days of strikes. The truth
is that we need to move ahead with automated trains on parts of
the London underground; the metro in Paris has them and it is
time we got on with it here.
(Eltham) (Lab)
Earlier, the Secretary of State waved around a document relating
to 28 areas of reform that he thinks need to be implemented to
modernise our railway. Has he stipulated that they must be agreed
before rail operators can negotiate pay?
I will recount, but I think it was 20 areas, and no, I have not
done that, but it is the kind of modernisation we would expect.
For example, I was just looking at the list, and one working
practice means that paysheets have to be done on paper, whereas
it would clearly make sense to do them electronically. It would
save a lot of time and a lot of money, and I cannot really see
why anyone would be against it, but it is a working practice that
is not allowed. I mentioned being able to move between different
very similar roles but only where somebody is fully qualified,
and those kinds of flexibilities in rostering do not exist.
It is pretty much like trying to run an orchestra for Network
Rail, but it does not know who is going to turn up or which
instruments they will bring, and it has no ability to tell them
where to sit—and then it is supposed to make the railway run. We
have to modernise our railways.
(Ipswich) (Con)
Obviously, we have this Tuesday and this Thursday, and many of my
constituents will have to put up with this chaos. They will also
have to put up with it on Saturday, and also on 2 July, when
ASLEF will also be organising the drivers striking in Ipswich.
But this is something they have got used to—constant disruption
at the weekends in Ipswich. Recently, we had six weekends in a
row where we had replacement bus services. Does my right hon.
Friend agree with me that weekend services should not be an
afterthought, but are increasingly becoming more important?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I caught Mick Lynch, the
leader of the RMT, on TV at his press conference after he walked
out of the talks, saying that there is no need for any reductions
or changes because, on the basis of last week’s figures, 90% of
the passengers had come back. That is completely wrong. Those
numbers are not accurate; a fifth of the passengers are still
missing. However, there are the occasional lines and the
occasional times when 90%-plus have come back, and they tend to
be at the weekends. It tends to be on the Saturday and Sunday
services, and is all the more reason why we need a seven-day
railway, like any other business. We need to be able to run it on
a Sunday, because compared with 1919, when these rules were put
in place, the world has changed.
(Sefton Central) (Lab)
My constituents will not be able to use Merseyrail trains
tomorrow, but not because there is a strike at Merseyrail. There
is no strike because Labour-run Liverpool city region has met the
rail unions and avoided strikes at Merseyrail. However, there
still will not be any trains in Merseyside because this
Conservative Transport Secretary is responsible for Network Rail,
where there is a strike, and he has refused to meet the unions
for months. Labour has found a way to resolve potential disputes
in Wales and in Merseyside, so what is it about this Transport
Secretary that prevents him from finding solutions and stopping
these strikes?
The hon. Member may want to reflect the same question to the
Mayor of London, I suppose, for the same reasons. I am delighted
that Merseyrail has been able to do its thing. I do hope that he
will now join me—will he join me?—in condemning the strikes,
because I think that would have real weight from the Labour and
unions party, but the Opposition will not do it, will they? They
will not condemn these strikes, and millions of people up and
down this country have taken note.
(Southend West) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree with me that Labour Members who
refuse to condemn these strikes have no regard for the potential
effect on the exam results of children taking GCSEs and A-levels
up and down the country? Both the AQA and Edexcel—both well-known
exam boards—have confirmed that they will not allow the strikes
or their impact to be used as grounds for appeal for students who
arrive late or perhaps are unable to arrive at all. Given the
experience that schoolchildren in this country have had over the
last two years, which has been the worst in our lifetimes, does
the Secretary of State agree that it is utterly reprehensible for
all sides of this House not to be condemning these rail strikes
absolutely?
My hon. Friend puts it brilliantly, and she is absolutely right.
It is actually callous. That is what it is. I have a daughter who
is taking an exam on Thursday. Thursday is a strike day, and she
will now go in by car. I can see that the stress is already
building on her, because she is now worried about getting there.
Yet the Opposition have nothing to say on the subject. They
refuse to condemn the strikes. My hon. Friend is right: it is a
callous approach.
(Birmingham, Perry Barr)
(Lab)
The Secretary of State came into the Chamber with confected rage
about workers, comparing them with ’70s workers. I do not know
how old he was when the Thatcher anti-unions laws came in, but
they are what the unions are working under. They are holding up
their obligations under the law as it is. He is ultimately
responsible for the rail network across the UK, so why does he
not get around the table and deal with that?
First, I assure the hon. Gentleman that it is anything but
confected rage when I see what is happening not just to my
daughter and others taking exams but to hard-pressed people
across the country who cannot get to their jobs as well as
veterans who want to go and celebrate. Secondly, will he join me
in condemning the strikes?
(Wrexham) (Con)
Tomorrow, as Kellogg’s is in my constituency, I was due to host
its breakfast club awards in Parliament to honour the 5,000
schools and their teachers who diligently run Kellogg’s breakfast
clubs, which aim to tackle food insecurity. Thanks to the strike,
the awards have been cancelled. Does my right hon. Friend agree
that by striking for more, the RMT takes away from the many?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and she gives another example
of how not condemning the strikes is being part of the problem.
People must be prepared to stand up for what they believe in. If
they want school trips, companies doing corporate social
responsibility and people to be able to visit Parliament—all
those different activities—they have to be on the side of people
using the railway, and they have to condemn the strikes.
(Leeds East) (Lab)
It is disgusting how the Secretary of State and the Government
have smeared and continue to smear ordinary, hard-working, decent
people such as railway cleaners, safety operatives and ticket
staff who just want to keep their jobs and get a decent, fair pay
rise. Does it not go to show which side the Government are on
when they seek to slash workers’ pay while the train companies
continue to make hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds in
profits?
I was just checking whether the hon. Member is repeating the
RMT’s handout, because what he says is factually untrue in the
same way as a series of things that the RMT and Mick Lynch said
on television and at the press conference this afternoon. One of
the untruths is that anybody is trying to cut anyone’s pay. That,
I am afraid, is being propagated by Opposition Front Benchers,
who try to suggest that this is somehow like P&O. That is not
true. We are putting salaries up. We want people to earn decent
wages for decent days of work. We just need to get the reform so
that we are not stuck in the 1970s on a railway that is having to
recover from coronavirus.
(Eastleigh) (Con)
These strikes will cause untold harm to businesses, students and
vulnerable people who have lived through some of the toughest of
the last two years. Considering the huge sums of money that the
RMT donates to the Labour party, does the Secretary of State
agree that Labour should publish a table of donor receipts so
that constituents can lodge a claim for their lost wages from
Labour party coffers or from the extortionate union salaries?
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point.
(Cleethorpes) (Con)
In generations past, the railway industry played a major part in
developing seaside resorts such as Cleethorpes. Does my right
hon. Friend agree that, were these damaging strikes to continue,
all they would succeed in doing is damaging many small businesses
in communities such as mine? Will he do all that he can to ensure
that working people can get to work on the trains?
This is the great irony: the people whom the strike will hurt the
most are not the white-collar workers who will sit behind their
computers using Zoom and Microsoft Teams but the people trying to
support tourist industries in places such as Cleethorpes—people
trying to run bed and breakfasts—and people trying to get to work
to do their jobs, and often they can least afford to lose a day’s
work. However, they will lose not one day’s but at least three
days’ work, and there will be chaos on the other days of this
week. It is a disgrace, and the Opposition cannot find their way
to condemning it, which is disgraceful, too.
(Blackpool South) (Con)
The trade unions decided to go on strike without even knowing
what the industry was offering on pay and conditions. Does my
right hon. Friend agree that that exposes the strikes for exactly
what they are: political game playing from the Labour party and
its trade union paymasters, without a second thought for the
hard-working travelling British public?
My hon. Friend is exactly right. He has seen through it. The
leader, Mick Lynch, said that he is “nostalgic” for the union
power of the ’70s, and that is exactly what they are driving for.
As my hon. Friend rightly points out, Mick Lynch called his
members out on strike, telling them that it was about getting a
pay increase, but not telling them that they would already be
getting a pay increase because the pay freeze had ended.
(Meriden) (Con)
The Labour party often says that it represents working people,
but having taken £100 million from trade unions, and having
failed to condemn the strikes, does the Labour party really
represent misery and chaos?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This statement has been
running for an hour, and we still have not heard the four simple
words, “We condemn the strikes.”
(Ashfield) (Con)
This strike is a real kick in the teeth for hard-working
taxpayers, who have dug deep over the past 18 months to keep this
industry alive. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Labour
party—the spineless party opposite—should grow a backbone and
condemn these strikes?
That is an appropriate place to end. My hon. Friend is absolutely
right. People have dug deep—that is exactly what they have done;
it was £600 per household. People are furious. They paid out that
money to make sure that nobody lost their jobs, and what thanks
have they got? Where is the reward? Where is the “thank you” for
keeping the railway going? It is a strike that will put people
out of pay and hit people’s pockets once again, and Labour
Members cannot even find their way to say, “We condemn the
strikes.” It is a disgrace.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I thank the Secretary of State and all Members who took part in
that item of business.
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