Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con) I beg to move, That this House
has considered progress on delivering the Williams-Shapps Plan for
Rail. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue. Reform
of our railways has long been a contentious issue. There are
countless opinions on the best way to run the rail system—from 100%
nationalisation to 100% privatisation, with a plethora of views in
between—but one thing the House can agree on is that rail is a
good...Request free trial
(Cleethorpes) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered progress on delivering the
Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue. Reform of
our railways has long been a contentious issue. There are
countless opinions on the best way to run the rail system—from
100% nationalisation to 100% privatisation, with a plethora of
views in between—but one thing the House can agree on is that
rail is a good thing. Passenger rail can unlock economic growth
across Britain’s regions; it connects communities, and is the
greenest form of public transport. There is an ambitious growth
target to treble rail freight by 2050, which will deliver huge
economic and environmental benefits to Britain. The rail sector
is a force for good. It ought to be obvious to anyone that we
need more of it, not less.
We can also agree that the status quo is not working. We have an
unhappy halfway house between privatisation and nationalisation,
which clearly is not working as intended. Across much of our rail
network, fares are high, services are poor and passengers are
unhappy.
Some elements do work well. One example is open access: on the
east coast main line, a public sector operator is competing with
private sector open access operators on full revenue risk, which
are able to make the best offering to the customer. That has
boosted competition, lowered fares, increased the quality of
services and created greater innovation. Operators on the east
coast main line have recovered beyond pre-pandemic levels,
proving that competition, not over-centralisation, is in the
customer’s best interests. If we had open access across the
network, I am confident that we would be in a much stronger
position.
However, open access alone is not a silver bullet that will solve
all the problems. Unfortunately, as the Secretary of State for
Transport illustrated in his Bradshaw address in February,
Britain’s railways operate on
“a broken model…unable to adapt to customer needs and financially
unsustainable.”
That is sadly true. The modelling produced during the pandemic
was appropriate in a crisis, but is now stalling recovery and
pleasing no one. The key to creating a successful railway is
correctly diagnosing the problems that the industry currently
faces, and prescribing the right solution.
Opposition Members would attribute the woes that the railway
faces to the fact that it is not entirely in public ownership.
However, that is simply not the case. A perfect storm of factors
has converged to create the levels of turbulence that we have
become used to. The pandemic disrupted long-established travel
patterns, causing passenger numbers to drop as low as 4% at one
time. In 2023, they have recovered to around 90% of pre-pandemic
levels. However, revenue levels are at around 85% of pre-pandemic
levels, with costs fixed at 100%. That is financially
unsustainable and needs to be changed.
The temporary contracts introduced during the pandemic are
blunting operators’ abilities to attract passengers back, with
such contracts making the railway effectively quasi-nationalised,
with operators’ hands tied. The Department for Transport has
never been so involved in the running of the railways, not even
in the British Rail days. The operator of last resort now
commands four former franchises, as well as a rolling stock
company. Those services are afforded significant freedoms in
comparison with normal franchises, and they compete with
open-access operators on full revenue risk.
Then there are the Department for Transport-contracted operators,
which are on a quasi-nationalised contract with their hands tied
and must look to DFT officials to get the most basic things
approved. There is also an unacceptable lack of transparency
around OLR funding, which ensures that organisations are not
operating on a level playing field. The OLR has stated that
it
“maintains constant readiness to take responsibility for other
train companies…as required”,
but we must implement the reforms required to ensure that that is
not necessary. The last thing we need is nationalisation by
stealth.
I reiterate that we have a broken rail model with unsustainable
finances and restrictive contracts. Further to that, we have
industrial action on certain routes, with the public left feeling
frustrated and rightly demanding improvement. What is to be done?
The nationalised models are supposedly a panacea, where
high-quality trains run at cost price for the greater good, never
cancelled or delayed, and tying together communities that would
otherwise rely on gas-guzzling cars to keep connected.
So we are told, but the reality is the opposite. Bean counters at
the Treasury keep a hawkish eye on operations. Their chief
concern is the revenue produced by the network. At the first sign
of difficulty, revenue has flatlined at around 85% of
pre-pandemic levels. Remember: they order the Department for
Transport to make savings. They, in turn, have little option but
to cut services, staff and customer benefits. This further
reduces revenue, compounding the problem, which then spirals out
of control. If hon. Members do not believe me, they need only
look at a real-world example, not from some far-flung socialist
country but from here in the UK. What was the result of British
Rail’s reign over our railways? Huge operating deficits, lines
starved of investment, and dire need of modernisation,
culminating in the Beeching cuts of the 1960s. I fully accept
that privatisation is not entirely perfect, but I will not take
lectures from the Opposition about the fairy tale of
nationalisation.
(Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The other thing everybody hated about British Rail was that it
was monumentally disliked by its staff. Staff morale was at rock
bottom and industrial relations were not great. It was not a
worker’s paradise either, even while it was awful for
customers.
I entirely agree.
I concede that even under the current system, the separation of
cost and revenue across two departments creates perverse
incentives. No business that wanted to grow would structure
itself in that way. Only with major reform can we break a cycle
of decline.
I hope we can agree that the solution will utilise a
public-private partnership to bring train and track back together
and provide strategic leadership of the railways. The
Conservatives, the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats have
all identified the need for a body to oversee track and train,
and the rail industry has long called for a guiding mind to
co-ordinate the network. That is why the Government are creating
Great British Railways, which will be responsible for both track
and train, as well as revenue and cost.
(Wimbledon) (Con)
My hon. Friend’s analysis of what the Government are creating is
correct, in that it would be very good if Great British Railways
were to be the guiding mind. The trouble is that it looks as
though there will be centralised control of the system, driving
out private sector initiative, driving out investment and
underpinning the underperformance of Network Rail, to which at
least 78% of the current delays on our railways are directly
attributable.
My hon. Friend the former Minister identifies some of the
downsides, although, as I mentioned earlier, there is no perfect
solution. My next sentence was going to be that creating a big,
monolithic public body will not solve all the problems unless
there is a mix of public and private working together. The
private sector has more than doubled passenger numbers in the
past two decades, has increased services by more than a third
since 1997, and has increased jobs by 27% since 2011. The private
sector must have a role.
I recognise that the private sector has not got it all right.
There are significant concerns today around particular services
linked to industrial action and rest-day working agreements. I
was a keen advocate for TransPennine Express to lose its
franchise and for the service to be taken under the wing of the
OLR until a new private operator could be found. But colleagues
across the House must look to pragmatic solutions to fix the
railways, with the private and public sector working together. We
need to create a market in which the private sector can deliver
for customers. We need to let customer-facing operators act in
the interests of the customer, not constantly seek permission
from the centre. That is not an ideological argument, but one
based on reality: command and control from the centre is not
helping the sector to bounce back after the pandemic. If we get
the balance right, a public-private partnership will enable
operators to deliver for customers.
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for rail, I hear
from all manner of stakeholders in the rail sector, including
operators, trade associations, those involved in the supply
chains, community action groups, industry journalists and, of
course, passengers. It is clear that the vast majority agree that
legislation is required to make the public body a legal entity
and give it the powers necessary to be truly effective. In
November 2019, the all-party group published a report, “Rail
Reform: A Guiding Mind”, which called for a similar body. The
report was presented to the then Rail Minister. I recognise that
the next parliamentary Session will be tight, but a Bill to
establish GBR would be relatively thin and ought not to be
controversial. I urge the Minister to lobby within his Department
to ensure that a Bill appears in the King’s Speech.
Having said that, and without wanting to give the Minister the
impression that anything other than a Bill is the preferable way
of underpinning the long-term success of the railways, some
important reforms can be done in the meantime without
legislation. The national rail contracts are one of the last
vestiges of the pandemic. They were right in a crisis, but now
they need to evolve to provide operators with more flexibility to
use their commercial nous and attract customers back. That would
restore some financial sustainability and allow the Government to
spend more on other priorities.
The independent economic expert body Oxera estimates that the
Treasury is missing out on as much as £1.6 billion over two years
because of restrictive contracts for operators. That reduces
operators’ ability to drive the recovery of passenger numbers.
Money is also being lost through the lack of ticket checks on
board. Many commuters will be aware of journeys on which their
tickets are checked once in a blue moon. That means they could
travel for free, knowing that if they did happen to be caught,
the savings they would have built up would vastly outweigh any
fines they might have to pay. However, at present there is no
incentive for rail operators to ensure the collection of
fares.
Beyond reforms to the current National Rail contracts, we must
look ahead to the end state, as envisioned by Keith Williams, and
the passenger service contract, which must be flexible enough to
reflect the varying rail market. The public instinctively
understand that when they book a flight earlier, the ticket
should be cheaper than if they were buying it closer to when they
travel. That approach needs to apply to longer-distance rail
journeys.
For shorter commuter journeys, we need to introduce more
turn-up-and-go services with tap-in, tap-out technology and some
degree of flexibility for operators to entice customers on
quieter days. I was delighted that in the George Bradshaw
address, the Secretary of State signalled that this
anti-one-size-fits-all approach is being adopted for future
contracts. As a key principle, the future passenger service
contracts should be developed to reflect the geography and
markets that they serve. They should incentivise operators to use
all their creativity and capability to deliver the best possible
outcomes for taxpayers by growing revenues and reducing
costs.
The Government also need to drive forward fares reform, which the
public rightly and understandably care greatly about. Why has it
been 18 months since the Government announced the tender for the
consolidated online retail solution to deliver radical and
long-awaited fares reform? Can we get on and start the tender
process? As the Minister knows, it does not need legislation. The
prior information notice for CORS was published in December
2021.
The Government have announced one measure relating to fares: a
single-leg pricing trial extension on LNER. That is something
that should be rolled out more widely to private sector
operators. The use of single-leg pricing removes the anomaly of
some single tickets being almost as expensive as a return ticket.
It means passengers can more easily choose when to travel in the
knowledge that the fare offers value for money. For example, if
someone commutes in at peak-time in the morning, but then attends
an event after work and comes back off-peak, why should they pay
for a peak-time return? This is a good step forward that ought to
be utilised more widely.
Moving on to freight, I had the pleasure of hosting a cross-party
parliamentary reception on this issue in March. Freight makes
sense for the environment and the economy. The longest freight
trains can ease road congestion by removing up to 129 heavy goods
vehicles from the road. If the Government set an ambitious target
to treble rail freight by 2050, the sector would deliver nearly
£5.2 billion in economic benefits as a minimum. The freight
sector would flourish by setting a supportive policy environment
and also by opening the east-west freight corridor, which, as I
have pointed out on numerous occasions, would be beneficial to
industry and the development of the Humber freeport, and would
take a significant number of HGVs off the M62.
I want to highlight the Luxembourg rail protocol, which is making
progress internationally and is expected to come into force
towards the end of the year. However, the UK is yet to ratify it.
There has been extensive engagement with the DFT and the Great
British Railways transition team, with the DFT including it as
part of a consultation last year. Will the Minister confirm today
the Government’s position on the protocol? Is he still supportive
in principle, and when will the Department issue a response to
the consultation? Is there a particular legislative vehicle
envisaged to see it implemented? Those involved in the protocol
from the UK perspective would appreciate clarification.
The rail model is broken, and both legislative and
non-legislative reform is crucial. Misdiagnosing the problem will
not make it any better; it will make it worse.
Over-centralisation is not in the interests of passengers, the
economy or the environment. All parties have identified the need
for a public body, but it is important to get the design right
and ensure that the private sector is allowed to do what it does
best with the package of reform I have outlined today. Along with
much-needed changes to ticketing and fares, the Government can
deliver rapid and much-needed improvements for passengers, trade
customers and the taxpayer.
I know the Minister would be disappointed if I did not raise a
couple of local issues, which I have spoken to him about on many
occasions. One such issue is the return of the direct train
service from Cleethorpes to London King’s Cross. Perhaps he could
update us on that. Another issue, which I have not raised with
him previously, but perhaps he could look into for me, is that
for the past 30 years there has been a Saturday-only train from
Sheffield via Gainsborough and Brigg to Cleethorpes, with three
trains each way. A few weeks ago, Northern announced that it
would make that a daily service, which on the face of it is
welcome, but it appears to be more for the convenience of the
operator than the passengers, because the one train to
Cleethorpes arrives at 11.14 am and the return train is at 1.20
pm. An hour and a half in Cleethorpes is simply not good enough;
people need at least a week there to enjoy all the facilities.
More seriously, one train arriving mid-morning with a return
train at, say, 6 pm would be sensible, but allowing people 90
minutes in Cleethorpes or Grimsby is not ideal if they want to do
some shopping.
(in the Chair)
I will move to the wind-ups at 5.9 pm.
4.49pm
(Milton Keynes South)
(Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I
congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes () on securing this timely
debate. I concur with much of what he said. The desirability of
the amount of time to spend in Cleethorpes I will leave to him to
determine, but otherwise it was a powerful speech. He referenced
the Bradshaw lecture that the Secretary of State for Transport,
my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper),
delivered a few months ago. That was very well received and
warmly applauded by the industry as a direction of travel from,
not the paralysis, but the uncertainty that the covid period
delivered. That appreciation has waned and has been replaced by a
deep concern that what is happening with GBR is starting to
drift.
There is a strong call for the legislation to be included in
Parliament’s next Session. I understand that the Bill is drafted
and has been consulted on. It is a small Bill, so it could be
introduced fairly quickly, however as a former Government Whip
and Minister I know that it is not necessarily in the gift of the
DFT to set the legislative slots, and that all sorts of
considerations must be taken into account. I urge the Minister to
argue as strongly as he can for that Bill to be included, because
it would provide the certainty that we need.
In the absence of that legislation, there is a lot that could be
done to give reassurance and certainty to the industry. As my
hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes has pointed out, there are
simply too many decisions that have to be made by the DFT and the
Secretary of State himself on the day-to-day operations of the
railways and that they should not be making. That level of
command and control is not conducive to developing the railway.
The single biggest problem, as has been identified, is this split
of responsibility between cost and revenue, with the Department
for Transport responsible for cost and the Treasury getting the
revenue. No business would operate that way, and it has to be
ended as quickly as possible.
Industry needs certainty to invest for the long term. That
applies not just to the operators, but also the supply chain for
engineering and procurement—all the different parts of industry
need certainty. They also need the flexibility to respond to
post-pandemic patterns of travel, which have not settled down. I
do not think that the business world has yet settled on a final
mix of home and office working. Just in the last couple of weeks,
we heard Google urging more and more of its employees back into
work. We will probably not get back to the traditional levels of
commuting into the office in the morning and the going home peak
in the evening, but the industry needs to have agility to respond
to the changing demands.
What can be done in the interim, in the absence of legislation? I
strongly urge the Minister to look at the suggestion made
recently by Nigel Harris, editor of Rail Magazine,that GBR could
be set up in shadow form, in the same way the Strategic Rail
Authority was set up back in 2000. It could do work such as
developing new passenger service contracts itself, with the
Secretary of State only coming in to do the legal bit—the
signing—and then it can proceed. I think that is worthy of
consideration. Similarly, it could progress with the ticketing
reform that is much overdue. It is a thorny issue, because as
soon as we reform something we create winners and losers in that
model, but it is long overdue. I am not just looking at ticketing
reform within rail itself, but rail as part of the wider
transport ticketing strategy, so that multimodal tickets can be
more easily introduced.
GBR must also not become a heavy command and control body. It has
to be the guiding mind, but in a light-touch way. It needs to
work with the sub-national transport bodies, the mayoral combined
authorities and others so that there is flexibility
geographically as well as in the types of service. There is not a
plan B. For this work to happen in the absence of legislation,
there needs to be a will in DFT and more widely in Government, at
both ministerial and official levels. There is an appetite there.
I met recently with and others from the GBR
transition team. They want to get on with the work, and they can
do it, so I hope the Minister can give me some assurance that
that work will progress and the industry can get the certainty it
needs.
4.55pm
(West Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate; I congratulate my
hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes () on it. I am delighted to
follow the chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the
Member for Milton Keynes South (), and I am even more delighted
to have the Minister here, so that we can have this
discussion.
The Great British Railways initiative emanated from what was
nothing short of a timetable disaster in May 2018. It affected
large parts of the country significantly, and it led my right
hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell () to take that first step and
say, “Actually, this does not work. This system does not click
together, and it needs proper reform.” Of course, that led to the
Williams review. If I recall, that piece of work commenced at the
beginning of 2019, and we are now four years on. Admittedly, we
have had covid in the middle, which has made things more
difficult, but the progress has been unclear.
In the Bradshaw lecture mentioned by the Chair of the Transport
Committee, the Secretary of State described the railway system as
broken, and I agree with him. There are many reasons why it has
become so fractious. We have allowed the trade unions to have
much more influence than they should have. During covid, trade
unions told train companies they would not allow the training of
train drivers. That generated a deficit in the manpower
requirement, and it meant that many train companies—including
TransPennine Express, I suspect, and many others—have to cope
with fewer train drivers than they require, and therefore have a
requirement on overtime. That has meant that the influence and
power was with the trade unions, particularly the train drivers’
union. We know that that is the case even today.
Having been a member of the Transport Committee since
2020—indeed, under the then chairmanship of the Minister—we have
had much debate and discussion about this with successive
Ministers, commencing in May 2021, March 2022 and October 2022,
and with senior officials, including the permanent secretary. We
have got to a place where the industry, as well as the passenger
and taxpayer, now needs to see real progress on what can and will
happen to improve our railways rapidly. We have talked a little
this afternoon about the need for legislation. That is one way,
but—not to be too sceptical—I do not think we will see the
legislation immediately. Even if we did, with the timescales we
have to contend with before the end of this Parliament, its
impact would be limited.
I will focus my remaining remarks on what is actually feasible to
do, rather than being concerned too much with what is unfeasible
or unlikely to take place in what remains of this Parliament. We
know very well that the DFT is able to specify the core timetable
that operators run today. That is part of the contractual
arrangements. I am a huge advocate of releasing some of that
specification to allow the private sector to bring back to our
railways the innovation and commercial capabilities that we have
seen previously. We see it currently; I recall reviewing the
statement by FirstGroup that its open-access operations, such as
Hull Trains and Lumo, have performed very well. I am a huge
advocate of enabling that to happen because my great concern, as
someone who worked in the railways for 20 years before I was
elected to this place, is the enormous uncertainty in this huge
industry, which affects both the economy and the passenger
experience.
In my own constituency, I have two operators, South Western
Railway and Great Western Railway, both of which have had
extended management contracts from the Department to deliver
train services. It is of great regret to me and my colleagues
locally that there was no consultation about the needs of the
community when those contracts were leased. When the current
contracts come to an end—if it is in this Parliament—I hope we
might have that discussion.
However, in the absence of that consultation, I have an ask for
the Minister to consider. Once upon a time, we ran summer
Saturday trains, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes
mentioned, from the Salisbury-Sherborne-Yeovil line down to
Weymouth. That service was removed without consultation, and I
would be very appreciative if the Minister would ask his
Department to consider putting it in the service specification
for South Western Railway.
The county town of Dorset—Dorchester—has suffered terribly over
the last two or three years. The whole county has been cut off
from London on numerous occasions for a number of reasons,
whether it was covid or otherwise. The journey time to London
from Dorchester is almost three hours; if I recall correctly, it
used to be two hours and 15 minutes in years past. I would very
much appreciate it if my hon. Friend the Minister would consider
such improvements to the railway and ask Network Rail to consider
them.
5.01pm
(Stoke-on-Trent South)
(Con)
It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue, and
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes () on securing this
much-needed debate. It is also a pleasure to follow my hon.
Friend the Member for West Dorset ().
I very much supported the enthusiasm of the former Secretary of
State for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn
Hatfield (), when he launched the
Williams-Shapps plan. I particularly supported the commitment to
ensure that we saw a reversal of some of the damage done by the
Beeching mindset. That was why I was somewhat concerned that a
Beeching-esque mindset could see some revival under
William-Shapps, although it is not inevitable that that will
happen.
The Beeching mindset is that where there is a bus, there is no
need for a train, and that where there is a train, there is no
need for another train in competition. Beeching called
competition duplication, as though a competing service and
consumer choice were redundant or inefficient. He was wrong, and
the nationalised railway continued to decline. However, thanks to
privatisation, we have seen competition return, and record
numbers of passengers with it. For example, Birmingham New Street
to London Euston faces excellent competition from Moor Street to
Marylebone, which has helped to keep fares low on those routes,
while other places—such as Stoke, unfortunately—face
disproportionately higher fares. On the road, there is also the
National Express service from Digbeth to Victoria and of course
the soon-to-open service from Curzon Street to Euston or at least
Old Oak Common.
That is competition, convenience and choice, not duplication; it
puts passengers first, and we need more of it. As my hon. Friend
the Member for Cleethorpes said, it is noticeable that, where we
have seen more effective competition, with open access on the
east coast, performance has been better and fares have remained
more competitive. Unfortunately, following the pandemic all risk
and reward now rests with the Government. With our railways put
on life support, they are more nationalised than ever before,
with zero incentive for operators to grow revenues or deliver for
passengers.
Our railways are facing an acute revenue crisis, but not really a
passenger numbers crisis. The Office of Rail and Road’s estimate
of 1.4 billion journeys for the financial year 2022-23 is
historically high—it is not back to the 2018-19 peak but, mainly
due to increased leisure travel, it is well above 2010 levels,
and it has increased to where it has been for all but half a
dozen years in the post-war era.
Season ticket sales unfortunately plummeted with lockdown and
have not recovered. People who previously would have travelled at
peak times, paying the highest fares for business meetings, now
find it far more convenient to move to Zoom or Teams. It is good,
then, to see operators such as East Midlands Railway introducing
a new form of season ticket that allows eight days of travel
within a four-week period. I just wish that EMR would restore all
the services it cut during the pandemic, particularly on its
route through Stoke-on-Trent, and add more to serve revived
passenger numbers, which, on EMR, are now at 101% of pre-pandemic
levels. There is certainly a demand that is not being effectively
met by the barely hourly service throughout the week between
Crewe and Derby, with only an afternoon service on a Sunday.
Across the national network, the latest quarterly figures,
published last week, show that passenger numbers are 88% of what
they were in the same pre-pandemic quarter four years ago, but
revenue is only 70%. The rail plan needs to inspire innovation
and incentivise operators to win back fares. It also means our
railways need to up their game in winning an increased number of
lucrative freight contracts.
When it comes to the make-up of GBR, there must be the
flexibility for operators to provide services over and above the
contracted minimum in response to consumer demand. It would be a
mistake for the whole timetable to be decided centrally and
inflexibly by the Department in London. As my hon. Friend the
Member for Wimbledon () said, we cannot just see a
transfer of all the bad practice and cultural problems we have
seen in Network Rail. The headquartering of GBR in Derby is
therefore welcome, as is the commitment in the plan for more
regionalised management. We must see a much lighter-touch and
decentralised GBR that allows the needs of local economies and
communities to be properly reflected.
However, those regions must be got right. Currently,
Stoke-on-Trent endures being split over two Network Rail areas,
in a farce that has forced us to seek intervention from the ORR
and No. 10 to compel Network Rail to engage with the transforming
cities fund projects as a single organisation and to stop
dragging its heels over the TCF infrastructure works that had
already been agreed. Even now, I await the unacceptably overdue
progress on improving access to Longton station in my
constituency. At the very least, having GBR in Derby would put it
on the same line as Longton—the Crewe to Derby line—which would
hopefully focus minds on improving services in stations through
north Staffordshire, including reopening a station in Meir, in my
constituency. Indeed, it would be a great commuter base for GBR
staff working in Derby, adding urgency to getting the TCF
programme delivered.
GBR will need to make serious studies of the Crewe to Derby route
and the impact of High Speed 2. Unfortunately, current designs
for Crewe threaten to take away capacity for local trains rather
than opening up the promised capacity for more local trains. More
capacity was supposed to be the rationale for the whole upheaval
that HS2 is causing. What is the point of having HS2 services
that no one can get to or use if local and regional services are
completely hollowed out as a result? We should use the pause of
phase 2 to look again at whether money could be far better
invested in upgrading existing rail infrastructure to better
provide the enhanced connectivity that is needed.
In conclusion, delivering the rail plan urgently requires more
detail of what the plan actually is. It needs opportunities for
open access to be prioritised. It needs to enable tangible
benefits for passengers and to bring back the intangible glamour
of rail travel that helped make it the preferred mode of
transport, adding to revenue by adding consumer value. The focus
has to be more competitive services to drive up standards for
passengers, support economic growth and put our railways on a
much more stable footing for the long term.
5.09pm
(Paisley and Renfrewshire
North) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue. I
congratulate the hon. Member for Cleethorpes () on securing this debate. We
have heard from colleagues, and indeed a former colleague, on the
Transport Committee. I agreed with much of what they said, but
not necessarily the conclusions they drew.
We are two years on from the publication of the Williams review,
and in that two years we have seen any prospect of high-speed
rail serving north of Manchester removed completely. Even the
remaining parts of HS2, when opened, will now terminate near
Wormwood Scrubs rather than travel into central London to Euston.
That is a boon for prison visiting, but hardly useful for
connecting to the centre of the city, which was one of the
original points of HS2.
Cities such as Leeds and Bradford have been kicked off the HS2
map and offered trams in return. Like Scotland, they will be
stuck at the end of what, in high-speed rail terms, will be
branch lines. Even the crown jewel in the review—the formation of
GBR—has been kicked into the long grass, as if the Government
here have an exhaustive and time-consuming legislative programme
to get through in this place, and days were not collapsing early,
which we frequently have.
Answers to my written questions published this week show that £64
million has been spent over the last two years on the GBR
transition. If GBR is being mothballed until after the
election—if there is a change of Government, we will be looking
at long after that for any action—those costs will continue to
accrue and we will be left with a bill into the hundreds of
millions for an organisation that, essentially, or officially,
does not exist.
The former Secretary of State intervened at the last minute to
slap his name on the front of the report. Given that he is now
firmly in the sidings and stuck with no route in sight, I wonder
whether he regrets his burst of self-publicity, although I think
we all know the answer to that. It has been left to his
successors to pick up the pieces and make the case for the review
and its recommendations, but No. 10 and the Chancellor are
clearly not listening, because by their actions—and inaction—they
are showing just how low down rail and transport more generally
is on their list of priorities. I feel for the Minister because
his Department is being targeted by the Treasury for swingeing
cuts. The Williams review called for a 30-year strategy for the
rail network, but that simply cannot happen when the Treasury
sees transport as an easy target for cuts.
Williams ruled out public ownership and public control, yet as we
have seen with ScotRail and the Caledonian Sleeper, the Scottish
Government disagree. The UK Government insist that the private
sector railway works efficiently, but it clearly does not. The
review said:
“Simplification is more important than nationalisation”,
but while the rest of the UK continues to have passenger services
under private operation, that simplification cannot happen. Those
who receive the new passenger service contracts envisaged by
Williams will still extract profit from the system, and the
profit will still come from the public one way or another,
whether it is from unregulated fares or direct via the DFT
contracts. It is not simplification; it is just a tweaked
continuation of the present system.
Scotland was the last part of the UK to see its railways
privatised and the first to bring them back under full public
control. We have heard many times in recent years that Scotland’s
railway and the partnership between ScotRail and Network Rail in
Scotland has provided much of the template for the GBR
operation—if indeed it comes to pass. However, the
semi-integration of track and train is despite Westminster, not
because of it. Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government
are, as per, trying to operate with one arm tied behind their
back, with the operator being fully devolved but the track and
infrastructure network still reserved.
What is needed now to complete the integration in Scotland is for
Network Rail to be brought under the control of the Scottish
Parliament, with a Government that are committed to rail in the
long term, regardless of the mindset of the Treasury. That is in
part being driven by the target to decarbonise Scotland’s railway
by 2035—a target that we are well on the way to meeting, showing
how a Scottish Government with control over services are marrying
their policy objectives with that of the railway.
Thirty years after the Railways Act 1993, which began the
privatisation of the system, we are still seeing the same
mistakes repeated and the same political ideology standing in the
way of a real plan for our rail network over the next 30 years.
The truth is that, while Williams-Shapps may have offered the
possibility of a sea change on the network down south, we are now
likely to see its demise by a thousand cuts, with its core ideal
delayed for who knows how many years.
To conclude, we have GBR on the back burner, possibly
indefinitely; HS2 curtailed; the north of England bearing the
brunt of cuts yet again; a Treasury on the warpath ahead of any
election promises; and no end to the fragmentation and
profit-driven structure that has demonstrably failed over the
decades. It is time the Government went back to the drawing
board, looked again at Williams’s integrated rail plan and their
13-year track record of cuts and more cuts to improvement
programmes—cuts that never seem to affect Greater London to the
same extent as they affect everywhere else—and started building a
railway fit for the future, rather than patching up the work of
the great engineers of the Victorian era who built our
railways.
5.15pm
(Slough) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve once again under your chairship, Ms
Fovargue. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cleethorpes
() for securing this important
debate on the future of our railways. He eloquently explained
that the status quo is not working: fares are high, services are
not running, and passengers are not happy. The rail model is
broken.
Whenever someone puts their name to something and is then no
longer there to lead it, the project is usually destined for
failure, as was the case when the then Transport Secretary, the
right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (), decided to append his name
to the long-awaited Williams review, calling it the
Williams-Shapps review, and was then unceremoniously moved out of
office to be replaced by another Transport Secretary. I knew
straightaway that the review was doomed to be discarded and
dumped, which is the situation we now find ourselves in.
It has been two years since the Williams-Shapps plan for rail was
published, promising the biggest shake-up of our railways in
three decades. We certainly have seen a shake-up, including three
Prime Ministers and as many Transport Secretaries, two failing
train operating companies put under the operator of last resort,
endless strikes, and nearly one in 20 services cancelled in the
third quarter of 2022-23. As the hon. Member for Paisley and
Renfrewshire North () remarked, the Government
are ideologically opposed to taking rail back into public
ownership, as the Labour party has proposed. Great British
Railways was hailed by the Government as the solution—a guiding
mind with clear, central accountability. That means nothing if
the status quo remains and progress continues to stall.
As the hon. Member for West Dorset () explained, the path ahead of
us is unclear. There is enormous uncertainty in an enormous
industry. If Great British Railways is the Government’s flagship
rail policy, it has certainly run aground. As explained by the
Chair of the Transport Committee, the hon. Member for Milton
Keynes South (), there is Government drift on
GBR, especially on the legislation. Just a few weeks ago, it was
reported that officials were told that it would not be a priority
and would not appear in the King’s Speech. GBR has been taken out
of the transport Bill, and it may have only a fraction of the
powers first proposed. A new headquarters has been announced amid
much fanfare and videos produced at taxpayers’ expense, but
concrete proposals for it are nowhere to be seen.
I look forward to the Minister providing some clarity. Perhaps he
can tell us whether the Government even remain committed to
delivering Great British Railways in full. If they are, will he
use this opportunity to outline exactly what non-legislative
steps will be taken by his Department to move forward with Great
British Railways, and when? It cannot become an expensive vanity
project, with taxpayers footing the bill. They have spent £50
million and counting on the transition team, and £20 million on
consultants alone.
Worse still, the Government forced local authorities into a
protracted competition for the opportunity to host Great British
Railways’ headquarters, on a promise that it would bring jobs and
opportunities. Now, after spending its precious time and
resources, Derby is stuck in limbo—a fitting metaphor for the
Government, who cannot help but over-promise and under-deliver. I
urge the Government to get on with it. As the hon. Member for
Stoke-on-Trent South () highlighted, the Government
must stop dragging their heels, but they have been too busy
lurching from crisis to crisis, while rail operators’ poor
performance has gone unpunished or, even worse, been rewarded. In
April, the Transport Secretary authorised a £65 million reward
payout for First Group, the company that ran two of the
worst-performing operators last year. It is absolutely absurd.
Passengers deserve better.
We have years of missing annual updates on the rail network
enhancements pipeline, which is vital to industry stakeholders.
We have had consistent industrial action, which Ministers admit
is costing much more than if they had agreed the pay rises for
rail workers. We were promised simpler fares; instead, we get a
5.9% increase. We were promised net zero; instead, we got only
2.2 km of rail electrification in 2022. We were promised
centralised timetabling; instead, we got service reductions and
cancellations. We were promised devolution; instead, we got
disparity, with the north left in the lurch.
Our railways are on a downward turn, despite journeys returning
to pre-pandemic levels. Passengers and the industry feel as
though they have been abandoned. Unity, vision, leadership—that
is what our railways need, and what stakeholders and passengers
want, not this broken system under this broken Government.
5.20pm
The Minister of State, Department for Transport ()
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Fovargue, and
to reply to this debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for
Cleethorpes (). I thank him for his work
as chair of the all-party group for rail.
Given my former role as Chair of the Transport Committee, it is
also a pleasure to be surrounded by former Committee colleagues,
including the shadow Rail Minister, the hon. Member for Slough
(Mr Dhesi), who cannot stand to be Chair. We also have two former
Transport Ministers. I welcome all continued liaison with the
Transport Committee—a great Committee with great members.
In his Bradshaw address in February, the Transport Secretary set
out his vision for rail: a customer-focused, commercially-led
industry with Great British Railways as the guiding mind for the
sector. I welcome the supportive comments of my hon. Friend the
Member for Cleethorpes about the Bradshaw address and the need
for a guiding mind. I agree and, to answer my shadow, we still
support it and will still deliver it.
The case for rail transformation is now stronger than ever. As
many have said in the debate, the railways are not delivering the
services that customers deserve. The industry remains fragmented,
which limits effective decision making. The existing commercial
model is not sustainable, with the cost to the taxpayer remaining
too high, and the structure does not provide adequate opportunity
for private sector investment or initiative. Like my hon.
Friends, I fully support the private sector in what it does and
what it has done in the past; we need it now more than ever,
following the pandemic and the reduction in passenger numbers. We
need to put customers at the heart of what we do.
By establishing Great British Railways, we will enable a single
guiding mind to co-ordinate the network, bringing infrastructure
and operational decisions together, and planning coherently for
the future with robust levers of accountability. It will develop
local partnerships to bring decision making closer to the
communities that the railways serve. Importantly, Great British
Railways will enhance the role of the private sector, developing
a new commercial model that focuses on operators competing to
deliver high-quality, punctual services and excellent customer
service.
New passenger service contracts will balance the right
performance incentives with simple, commercially-driven
contracts. Those will not be one size fits all. I want the
private sector to play its part in reinvigorating the rail
sector, driving innovation and attracting customers to rail. We
are now working with industry on how we can introduce more
private sector risk and reward into existing contracts.
On the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes
about open access, I too want to see more open access where it
benefits passengers and taxpayers, with a more level playing
field in track charging. As part of rail reform, we want more
competition to drive up quality and choice. We look forward to
working with existing open access operators, as well as new
entrants to the market such as Grand Union Trains, which will
shortly introduce new services between London and Carmarthen, to
maximise benefits for passengers. Legislation is needed to take
forward some of the structural elements of reform, but we will
ensure that customers feel the benefits as soon as possible,
ahead of the introduction of such legislation.
My hon. Friend mentioned the Luxembourg rail protocol. The
Government signed it in 2016 and remain committed to unlocking
the benefits of greater private sector financing of rolling
stock, which the protocol aims to support. The Government intend
to implement the protocol, and we will continue to explore all
suitable legislative opportunities to do so.
Let me turn to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for
Cleethorpes about lowering barriers to entry to create a more
competitive retail market. As set out in the plan for rail, we
recognise that there is a multitude of train company websites
with different standards of service, which is confusing to
passengers. We are looking and working closely with industry
partners to review the best way to address that. Reform is not
something that can be completed overnight, but delivery is well
under way. We have launched national flexi-season tickets, as
mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South
(), and over 700,000 have been
sold since launch. We have delivered on our commitment to extend
single-leg pricing to the rest of the LNER network from 11 June.
That delivers simpler, more flexible tickets that are better
value. In March, we announced Derby as the winner of the GBR HQ
competition.
The accessibility audit of all 2,572 railway stations in Great
Britain is complete and work is under way to ensure that data is
kept up to date and made available to the public. In response to
the points on rail freight, the rail freight growth target call
for evidence will be published shortly, and we remain committed
to introducing a long-term rail freight growth target towards the
end of this year.
The transition team at Great British Railways has analysed
hundreds of responses to the first-ever long-term strategy for
rail call for evidence. The plan will be published later this
year. In response to the complex rules and industry processes,
the Great British Railways transition team, with the support of
the Office of Rail and Road, will identify and recommend such
rules and what can be done.
We continue to press ahead to deliver reforms and tangible
benefits, including publishing the Department’s response to the
rail reform legislation consultation this summer, taking forward
workforce reform, developing the new commercial model, and
continuing to simplify fares and roll out pay-as-you-go
ticketing, ahead of legislation. I was asked many questions about
legislation in the debate; I can only say that we will deliver
legislation when parliamentary time allows. Such decisions are
made collectively across Government and can be confirmed only
during the King’s Speech in autumn.
I heard the call from my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes
South (), Chair of the Transport
Committee; Nigel Harris is indeed an influential figure who has a
lot of good ideas. With regard to the suggestion of a shadow
body, I am working with my Department—I had meetings in the last
week—to try to escalate and set up more of the teams, so that
rather than waiting for matters to be transitioned over, they can
take those matters and come up with ideas. I am not saying that
our idea is exactly the same as the one put forward, but we are
looking to create the very same culture. My hon. Friend is
absolutely right: so much can be done without legislation, and so
much is being done. Since the end of last year, I have met weekly
with the team that is transitioning everything to Great British
Railways to ensure that whatever can move without legislation
does move. The reality is that this change project is more about
getting the change delivered than, ultimately, about legislation;
legislation delivers paper and powers—it does not actually
deliver the change, which is what I am working on.
To the point made by my shadow, the hon. Member for Slough, it is
deeply regrettable that today ASLEF has balloted its members to
continue strike action. It has balloted to ask for a continuation
of strikes, but it has not asked its members whether they would
like to take up the fair and reasonable pay offer put forward by
industry, which would take average pay from £60,000 to £65,000
for a 35-hour week. That is on the table, but it is not being put
to members. We remain committed to that offer, but we ask the
unions to do their part and ask their members to give their view
on it. I hope that the hon. Member would join me in welcoming
that stance, which could bring an end to strikes rather than
seeing the unions continue to put this country and rail
passengers through absolute misery.
To conclude, nationalisation is not the answer. We need
simplification and modernisation. I agree with my hon. Friend the
Member for Cleethorpes: privatisation has been a success story.
The new model will take the very best of the private
sector—innovation, an unrelenting focus on quality and
outstanding customer service—and fuse it with a single guiding
mind to drive benefits and efficiencies across the system as a
whole. I look forward to working with all my colleagues across
the House to make this reform work.
5.29pm
I think it is fair to say that it has been a lively debate, with
contributions from many colleagues. That shows how rail issues
always arouse the passions of hon. Members. In contributing, they
highlight the interests of their constituents. It has been a
helpful debate. I thank the Minister for his response, which I
think continues the debate. I hope that as we move forward, the
guiding mind, which of course is the Minister, will produce some
results.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered progress on delivering the
Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail.
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