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line. I understand that the lease documentation for the 317 trains that are expected is now completed, and I hope that there will be no hiccups.We cannot rest on our laurels or be complacent. We need a new option for new trains on the LTS line in addition to the 25 extra 317 sliding-door trains. There are two reasons for that. Clearly, new trains would deliver improved quality and reliability, attract more passengers on to the line and so drive down costs. Secondly, ordering new trains will help the United Kingdom manufacturing base. We need flexible financial arrangements, and we need the City to be innovative in developing those with the industry.
That is one of the most exciting elements in the franchise programme developments. It gives the private sector the opportunity to respond to the challenge of reviving rolling stock manufacturing in Great Britain and delivering the benefits that the hon. Member for York (Mr. Bayley) seeks.
It has been some time since new rolling stock orders were placed. I hope that bidders will set out how they will place orders for leasing trains, and that that will breathe much-needed life into our rolling stock manufacturing industry.
All that will promote a more efficient and cost-effective railway on the LTS line, and at the same time improve service levels and quality. The public will want that to happen quickly, and if it does we shall see an improved development of the network and more passengers coming on to the line.
Four years ago, 35,000 passengers a day travelled on the LTS line, but now only 22,000 do so. There are two reasons for that fall, one cyclical and the other structural, and we understand them well. The cyclical reason is being dealt with now, as unemployment falls. Today I see that unemployment is at its lowest level for four years, and I welcome that.
We must have more employment in the construction industry in docklands, in the service industries and in the financial institutions in London. That will bring more passengers on to the line. But there is also a structural change, in that patterns of work are changing and employment is restructuring. Changing technology in City financial institutions has displaced many jobs. We must increase the number of passengers travelling on the line to 40,000 a day by 2000, and we shall do that only by privatisation. Doing nothing will result in the number of passengers continuing to fall, with those who remain bearing a greater burden of the cost, as they did under Labour from 1974 to 1979.
One item needed for the development of the network and the LTS line is a new Parkway station in my constituency, and I shall argue for the option to be kept open in the Castle Point local plan at the local plan public inquiry. Curiously, the Labour council wants to remove the option.
A new Parkway station would deliver great benefits to my constituents and to all travellers on the line. It would enable the LTS line to compete with the parallel Liverpool street line that lies to the north, and that is important. It would deliver real benefits and greater convenience to existing passengers, and would deliver general planning and landscaping benefits to Castle Point--for instance, a new and secure high-capacity car park. It would entice new passengers off the roads and on to rail, which would
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have clear and widely accepted environmental benefits. It would protect and enhance the Benfleet station and the adjacent conservation area.Labour's local strategy reflects Labour's national strategy. Labour talks as though its cares but acts as though it could not care less. Labour calls for more passengers on the line, but it obstructs developments that would encourage passenger growth and proper investment in the line.
I do not want to be party political, and I am sure that the House realises that. I want to act in the best interests of my constituents. I hope that the Labour party, both in this House and on my local council, will review its policy and support the sound common-sense change and development of our railway network. Several hon. Members rose --
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. Before I call the next hon. Member to speak, I should point out that we have two debates today and that Members must exercise great restraint. If each Back-Bench speech is as long as the previous one, there will be many disappointed hon. Members.
5.12 pm
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): I am very pleased that you are in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, as it gives me an opportunity to say how sad I was to hear two days ago that you intend to complete your distinguished parliamentary career at the next general election. But it also gives me an opportunity--since I know that you know this line as well as I do--to tell the sad story of the south Devon rail farce. It is a farce that will teach us useful lessons about what will happen if the privatisation scheme before the House goes forward in its present form.
Madam Deputy Speaker, you will recall that the original problem was that the railway services in south Devon from Exeter to Torbay did precisely what the hon. Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) said it should do. It attracted a lot of people off the roads and on to the rail service. It did precisely what everyone says should be done by the railways--it priced itself to the point where it attracted new custom. But the immediate difficulty was that the railway company found that it could not provide an appropriate supply.
As a result--this is well known following the media attention given to this issue--parents of children who travelled on that service found that their children were constantly having to stand in a dangerous situation. They complained to my colleague Richard Younger-Ross in Teignmouth, who took up the issue with the railway company. Although both the speeches from the Front-Bench Members referred to the case, it is important that we look at it in slightly more detail than they had time to do. South Wales and West Railway wrote to the Rail Users Consultative Committee to say:
"the changes were made in response to an extreme demand situation that we have experienced for the last two educational years."
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What changes? The company's response to the changes was to increase fares at a stroke by 56 per cent. The letter went on to state: "Over 250 passengers were trying to join a train with a maximum of 150 seats.We have only limited rolling stock resources. This means that we have no extra carriages to put onto the trains--all resources at these times are in use elsewhere, generally for commuters in Exeter. If we transferred coaches on to the Torre train, we would create even worse overcrowding somewhere else."
In effect, the company was admitting that it was trying to suppress demand. That is in direct contradiction to the statements, assurances, promises and prophecies we have had from the Conservative party. Why did the situation arise? It arose for one simple reason. The explanation was given, not by the railway company and certainly not by the Department of Transport, but by the Rail Users Consultative Committee. Major-General Napier's analysis of the situation was that it occurred because of a gross shortfall in investment of up to 60 per cent. There are different estimates, but the figure is certainly more than 50 per cent. As a direct result of the privatisation hiatus, the company has not been able to deploy appropriate rolling stock to meet demand in the area.
This is not an isolated example--it may be exceptional but it is not isolated, even in the south-west. In my constituency this summer, services were cancelled almost every week, and sometimes several times a week, between Newquay and Par, and all that the travelling public were offered in exchange was a taxi service. That is totally inadequate, and has meant that more and more people have not gone on the railway at all and have driven the full length of their journey. The cancellations occurred not because there was anything wrong with that particular stretch of line, nor because there was anything wrong with the rolling stock on that line. They did not occur as a result of service or operational difficulties of any sort on that line. The cancellations occurred because of the shortfall in the network as a whole. The company has been taking away rolling stock to meet the shortfalls from as far away as south Wales, and no doubt your constituency, Madam Deputy Speaker, has suffered in a similar way.
Throughout the network, the hiatus in investment in new rolling stock has caused chaos, and there is no indication whatsoever that the privatisation with which we are threatened in the next two or three years will solve that problem. The result is that we have overcrowding, and that is not just a feature of services in Torbay but a feature of many services throughout the country.
I wish to refer to a letter from someone who was a victim of the recent railway accident at Maidenhead, a tragic accident to which we should pay due heed. Professor Robin Hambleton wrote a short article for The Guardian about his experiences in the train accident on the evening of Friday 8 September. He described the
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frightening experience of being on a grossly overcrowded train when a major incident takes place. He said in a covering letter to me: "It has always seemed to me to be rather strange that we allow standing on trains--buying a ticket ought to imply buying a seat (compare airplanes, theatres, cinemas).The thrust of my argument is that the current complacency which permits overcrowding on trains means that we are on track for a tragedy. Remember, banning standing in football stadiums would have seemed unreasonable just ten years ago."
The direct result of the hiatus in investment in rolling stock is not just that we are losing some of the services we need or that we are losing opportunities to get more people back on to the rail system, but that we are creating tragedies in the making. I do not blame the Secretary of State, who was obviously caught on the hop at the Blackpool conference by the interviewers, but the answer that he gave to this problem was clearly unbriefed and was totally inadequate. I must say that I was also disappointed by his answer this afternoon. To say that all will be well when privatisation takes over does not deal with today's situation, let alone give hope for the future. It was an absurd explanation, and it was made no better by its repetition today. That is symptomatic of the problems that the industry is facing and of the failure of nerve of many people at many levels of the rail industry. Many of the best people are leaving, which is also an indication that all is not well.
The farce of the timetables is also indicative of the chaos that disintegration is bringing to our once proud railway network. We have had as many supplements as The Sunday Times and about as much fiction from the British Rail timetable. Yesterday, I tried to get a simple and comprehensive timetable of InterCity services that I am likely to use, which I have always had in recent years. It is impossible to get that list because it is not brought together in any comprehensible form.
The Confederation of British Industry--usually an ally of the Government-- has indicated the nature of the chaos that is to come. In its attack on Government transport policy, it said:
"Somewhere in the course of the debate a realistic yet positive approach to transport has been lost."
Clearly, the CBI has no confidence that there are policy objectives and that they are carefully being driven to promote the future of our public transport system. Rail privatisation is clearly an example of blind faith taking precedence over experience.
I am in some difficulty. Having called this debate, I expected that the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) would at long last get off the fence on the vexed subject of renationalisation, bringing back into public control Railtrack at least. I know the difficulties under which the Labour party is labouring. It recognises that, if it made a clear commitment to ensuring that the infrastructure is in the public sector, people on the left of the party would ask, "Why not go the whole hog?" I understand that, but after our debate in July when I pressed the Labour spokesman to come clean on the Labour party's intentions, it really seemed as though it was edging slowly but surely towards a recognition that Railtrack is the key to a successful rail system.
Hints were dropped at the Labour party conference. I do not think that one could accuse Mr. Jimmy Knapp of dropping a hint--it was rather more formidable than that. He made it clear that he was expecting a commitment to
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match that which we Liberal Democrats have consistently made in the past 12 months. Indeed, he accused us of trying to steal Labour's thunder on the railways--not very difficult, I can assure the House. We have not had that commitment this evening, but the House is entitled to know. Is it going to be pick and choose, mix and match, or is the Labour party going to commit itself to outright renationalisation of whatever has scampered away into the private sector before the general election?We assumed that Labour would make its announcement today. The apprentice spokesman on transport, the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) might well make it during the final stages of the debate. Let us hope so. The travelling public are entitled to know whether we are going to make certain that Railtrack remains in the public sector. If only the Labour Opposition would get off the fence, stand up with the Liberal Democrats and say clearly, "In the event of our controlling the next Parliament, we will not allow those who have sought to make a profit out of the purchase of Railtrack shares to make that profit and 51 per cent. will be brought back if it has been sold."
It could be funded on a 10-year programme with bonds, it is not difficult, but we need to know whether the Labour party is prepared to make that commitment. The irony is that, once it has been made, it is highly unlikely that Railtrack can be sold. I am sufficiently a realist to understand that institutional investors as well as individuals are not likely to put their money into Railtrack next spring when there are a great many other things into which they could put their money which would have a real prospect of some profit. They will not invest in Railtrack next spring if the Opposition parties are absolutely united in saying that they will ensure that no one benefits from the sale.
During a trip to Wales this July, the hon. Member for Oldham, West was quoted in the Western Mail as saying:
"At the moment I do not know how it will be done but when we are in power we will be looking to bring Railtrack and the private companies back into the public sector."
Two months later, responding to the pressure following our conference commitment to buy back Railtrack, he said rather sulkily:
"We are not going to do the Tories' work for them by saying which bits of the rail network we would leave alone if they succeed in selling them."
He must have had some problems with his leader. We know that his leader and the leader's office have been dictating transport policy for some time. "Rail Privatisation News" reported a few months ago that, when it
"suggested to Party insiders that a commitment to keep Railtrack in the public sector would be both electorally popular and appease the Party's left wing membership, the response was that `these things are settled in the leader's office'."
The leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), has said that he is not going to give any "blank cheques" and yet his spokesman said at the Labour conference, in the debate on the resolution to which hon. Members have referred this afternoon:
"There is the whole question of 51 per cent. buy-back, there are golden shares, there are bonds. There are many different options. I am not at this stage going to give away any details."
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That sounds like throwing bones to the jackals at the Labour party conference, but it does not sound as though he is taking the same line as his leader.I had hoped that we would have a clear commitment this afternoon, but we have not had it. I hope that we will have it later from the hon. Member for Fife, Central, whom I should describe as the transport spokesman-in- waiting.
In the meantime, please may we have a commitment to another important part of the jigsaw of rail privatisation--passenger rolling stock. The development of a rational land use and transport policy surely requires decisions about railway infrastructure to be taken in the national interest, not in the narrow, short-term interests of any private sector company. I ask the Minister and the shadow Minister for a categorical assurance that they are both prepared to spend sufficient money on the renewal of railway infrastructure and of rolling stock to ensure that they comply with the condition that they set out that, in 1994-95, it would remain in a steady and stable state--that we would not have any deterioration. We want a similar commitment for 1995-96.
On the three passenger rolling stock companies, we need to know what is at stake and how the bids will be considered. Are there serious bids and, if so, how many? Why does the Secretary of State think that there are so few? Can he confirm that the whole British Rail passenger fleet--coaches, locomotives, high-speed trains and diesel and electric multiple units-- could be sold for as little as £1, 300 million? What will be the expenses of that sale?
The House might be interested to know that the Government are engaged in the sale of a whole fleet for about the same sum of money as would be required to renew the fleet of just one train operating company--South East Trains is expected to need about £1,600 million and it serves only the county of Kent.
Rolling stock companies are likely to become unregulated private monopolies. No spare rolling stock will be available. They will simply be interested in short-term profit. If the Government agree leases of just eight to 10 years and guarantee 80 per cent. of that income, train services will simply come to a halt. There will be no spare capacity and there will be real difficulties.
In selling off the passenger rolling stock companies, the Government have stitched up a deal to get some money into the Treasury's coffers to contribute to pre-election tax bribes, without ensuring that there is a fully effective competitive environment. There is no commitment on the part of purchasers to invest any of the rental moneys in new rolling stock. There is no guarantee of improvement. Privatisation is nothing to do with enterprise or competition but is straightforward asset stripping--selling the family silver for a few coppers.
As the hon. Member for York (Mr. Bayley) said, there will be no new orders for rolling stock. There will be no salvation for the beleaguered companies that supply rolling stock manufacturers, let alone for ABB itself. The hiatus in investment which Ministers said would not happen has arrived, is getting worse and will continue. We need commitments from Labour on that matter too.
Liberal Democrats envisage a busier railway which will require new rolling stock and an end to the fares policies that drive people away from the railways, not only in extreme examples such as south Devon but in many other parts of the country.
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We believe that the rolling stock companies should be given a choice after the general election. They should be invited to become partners in a plan to expand the railway and submit themselves to a licensing regime to control costs and quality. We would ensure that they would be encouraged into new long-term franchise deals which would exclude the leasing companies, which would find themselves with a great deal of aging rolling stock and no financial basis on which to extend its life.We do not think that taxpayers' money should be poured into the pockets of unregulated monopolies. We hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House accept our position. The rolling stock companies could become what I have described. We want to ensure that those companies are made to face genuine competition in supply and that their leases will not be extended or renewed on existing terms if they fail in that respect.
In our debate on 11 July, we covered a number of other aspects of rail privatisation. With your admonition ringing in my ears, Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not propose to go back to them. However, as the Labour party initiated this debate, we want this evening to hear it endorse my last point and give a commitment on the future control of Railtrack. In the meantime, our constituents--the passengers, the travelling public--are suffering from an investment famine not only in respect of rolling stock but in respect of retracking, resignalling and basic track maintenance.
We have heard already of the number of instances where speed and weight restrictions have been imposed--for example, right the way down the Great Western and especially in my county of Cornwall. It is only a matter of time before such restrictions and the investment famine results in a disaster. A tragedy could well be in the making already. As my correspondent pointed out, the Maidenhead crash showed how near we have come to dangerous overcrowding. Safety may, in the Secretary of State's words, be paramount. If it is, the best way that he can serve that objective is to postpone the privatisation of Railtrack.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge): On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will be aware that Madam Speaker earlier this afternoon reserved her ruling on the implications of the European Court of Justice judgment which outlawed the employment of women by quota. Reports are running around Westminster that three Labour Members have applied to the courts for relief because of the way in which the shadow Cabinet elections were arranged.
There is also a report that the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) may be involved since he lost his national executive committee place because of quotas. This clearly touches on some matters relating to privilege. Can you confirm whether those reports are true?
Madam Deputy Speaker: I cannot confirm whether they are true. Whether they are true or not, I cannot see that they are a matter for the Chair.
5.32 pm
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Blackpool, South): In the light of what has been said about the need for short speeches, I intend to be brief. The hon. Member for North Cornwall
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(Mr. Tyler) said two things with which I entirely agreed; with the rest of his speech I entirely disagreed. First, I entirely echo his genuine tribute to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We all wish you well and are sorry to hear that you do not intend to continue in the House beyond the next general election.I also entirely agreed with the hon. Gentleman's reference to bones being tossed to the jackals of the Labour party at its conference in Brighton. That is something that we have all witnessed in the past and have now seen again. For the hon. Gentleman to suggest, however, that anything at all could happen in response to his own party conference is laughable. I recall that the main news item of the week related to a goldfish at No. 10 Downing street and not to anything that was said at the Liberal Democrat conference.
I want to concentrate on the policies of the Labour party and its lack of firm commitments. Its approach to rail privatisation has degenerated from what was at best a policy of hit and miss to one of scare and miss. In considering rail privatisation, we must examine what services are to be offered to the passengers--the customers. I have spoken on this subject before and I said that the acid test of the involvement of the private sector in running rail services is whether there will be better customer service.
What do we find? We find that the current agreements between Railtrack and the first three franchises have already created between 13 and 20 per cent. more capacity than was needed to deliver the timetable at present in force. In a press release on 31 January, Mr. Bob Horton, the chairman of Railtrack, said:
"This will ensure that they"--
the first three franchise operators--
"are able to run present service levels, and give them space to step them up."
Contrary to Labour party scare stories, the train operators have made it clear that not only do they have no plans to reduce existing service levels but many are planning to increase them. For example, South West Trains has found 20 per cent. more capacity. Its press release of 31 January this year states:
"We plan further new services . . . a new fast service between Waterloo- Guildford and Portsmouth, the Guildford Shuttle; extra trains between Ascot and Reading--providing four trains an hour; and new through services between Waterloo and Horsham and extra trains between Waterloo and Epsom."
Great Western Trains has found 18 per cent. more capacity. Its press release states:
"The timetable plan . . . maintains the current level of services and consideration is being given to the introduction of additional ones."
For many years before coming to the House, I commuted on the London, Tilbury and Southend line and its progress has already been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) in his excellent speech. Its press release states:
"LTS Rail introduced additional off-peak trains . . . Completion of the £150 million LTS resignalling project in 1996"--
to which my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point also rightly referred--
"will provide further opportunities to encourage car users to switch to LTS Rail. We have negotiated a track access contract which provides scope for this".
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Let us consider other railway lines with which I am familiar. A press release from the director of ScotRail, Mr. John Ellis, in May this year stated:"ScotRail is committed to expansion of the services we offer our customers. This is confirmation that contrary to constant speculation, no routes in Scotland are under threat and provides for the first time a longer term commitment for the continuity of services." A press release from the finance director of Midland Main Line, Mr. Geoff Evans, states:
"Midland Main Line is a commercial organisation and recognises the need to provide the level of service that customers demand and we will continue to strive for these levels of service.
Constantly monitoring needs, we continue to make alterations to improve our service such as the recent introduction of later trains both to and from London."
We can see that, contrary to the myths and scare stories of the Labour party, services are being improved for customers and passengers. That is the acid test, the proof of the pudding. The Labour party has deliberately and consistently sought to mislead the House and the country about the passenger service requirements. It ignores the fact that, for the first time in the history of railways, the passenger service requirement introduces a guarantee for customers--an irreducible minimum below which no service will ever be allowed to fall. Never in the history of railways, private to 1948 or nationalised since, has that existed. It is this Government who have introduced it as a guarantee for passengers and customers.
That is why I remain confident that privatisation will continue to produce ever more benefits and improvements in services for customers. I travel regularly on the west coast main line and was delighted to hear my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State confirm yet again the Government's commitment to upgrading that line and improving services on it.
Privatisation will undoubtedly result in access to private capital for investment, which the railways will continue to need. It is only through access to private capital that such investment will be made. The Labour party would not be allowed to write blank cheques, as its leader has repeatedly made clear. That is why the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), who opened the debate for the Labour party, was not prepared to make any such promises.
Weasel words have been used to suggest to the rail unions that promises have been made in order to try to guarantee their support. It is not surprising that the Labour party continues to be dominated by the rail and other unions when no fewer than 186 Labour Members are sponsored or supported by trade unions. I went through the list of those sponsorships and saw that no fewer than 50 Labour Members are sponsored or supported by transport unions. A list of shadow cabinet members--at least, the current shadow cabinet until later tonight--is sponsored or supported by rail unions.
Once again, the Labour party is in the pocket of the producer culture--the trade unions--bought and paid for. They do not speak for the customers or passengers but continue to speak for the union barons who control Labour, as they have always controlled Labour and will continue to control Labour. The Labour party is interested not in passenger or customer service but in its union paymasters and bosses. The public at large and the travelling public will have no faith in the scare stories and myths put out by the Labour party.
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5.41 pmMr. John Heppell (Nottingham, East): I have been a little surprised by the tone of this debate. I do not know the seat of the last speaker-- [Hon. Members:-- "Blackpool, South."] It might have been more appropriate if he were the hon. Member for the planet Krypton because he is certainly not from the same planet as me and does not represent the same views as I hear from my constituents. I shall deal with one of his points by saying that I am sponsored by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, which is one of the railway unions. I am proud of that and glad that the hon. Gentleman was able to look at lists and see the interests of every Labour Member. I should like to see a list showing Conservative Members' business interests, but unfortunately Conservative Members have consistently tried to block such openness.
I was also surprised that the Liberal Democrats tried to turn this debate into a political point scoring match. We are discussing the country, not party political views, and they have made cheap shots. I am not waiting for my hon. Friends the Members for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) or for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) to make a commitment to return the railways to public control because we have already had that commitment at conference, and it came from neither of those two hon. Friends but from the leader of the Labour party. He made a commitment that the railways would be returned to public control and be publicly accountable, and that is good enough for me. Hon. Members may sneer and try to twist things round, but the commitment effectively exists. When it was made at conference, I saw that Jimmy Knapp was as delighted as I was, and I am certain that the majority of people in the country were also delighted.
While I do not expect it from Conservative Back Benchers, I expected much more sympathy and empathy from the Secretary of State. We have seen recent reports of overcrowding on trains and commuters literally scrambling for seats. Given that the Secretary of State and the Minister for Railways and Roads have spent the past few months scrambling for a seat in terms of parliamentary selection, I thought that they would empathise with commuters.
Rather than abuse the time available as others have, I shall try to keep my speech short and sweet. I sat on the Committee which discussed the Railways Bill, where many assurances were given about what would happen in the privatisation process. Many of my hon. Friends feel that, during the passage of the Bill, we were, if not deceived, at least misled about what would happen. I do not feel that we were misled.
I am not trying to be charitable to the Ministers involved. I recognise that the current Secretary of State and the Minister for Railways and Roads are new boys and I do not wish to make them the villains of the piece, but there is plenty of evidence that their predecessors made commitments on which they have reneged. For example, during the passage of the Bill, the privatisation of Railtrack was not discussed. It was simply not on the cards. We knew nothing about it until, last October, the Secretary of State for Transport suddenly announced that Railtrack would be privatised. So we had no proper debate about that.
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After a great deal of pressure, commitments were made on through ticketing and we were told that it would be protected. Then, in the past year, the Government proposed to reduce the number of stations that could sell through tickets. Of the 2,500 stations which currently exist, 1,300 are staffed. We were told that 294 stations would be allowed to sell through tickets, which did not rule out through tickets but meant that nobody could get hold of them. Luckily, because of the prompt action of Labour Front-Bench Members and others who brought the matter to the public's attention, that proposal was dropped.We were given guarantees about passenger services and told that they would be kept at current levels. Although Conservative Members say that under the passenger services requirements we have been guaranteed a minimum number of trains for the first time, that minimum is 15 or 20 per cent. below the current number so it is not much of a guarantee. After a great battle, we were reassured that there would be free competition and were told that British Rail could bid for franchises. However, when the first three franchises were put out, the Secretary of State excluded British Rail from bidding. I am an ex-railway employer--I mean employee. The way things are going, I may be an ex-railway employer in the future. I remember when we had a system called "Organising for Quality", when the railways were split into business sectors. It was called "O for Q". I say that carefully because at the time it was a standing joke within the rail industry that "O for Q" was what the Government and British Rail's management thought of their customers and work force. We were suspicious that the railways were being prepared for privatisation. Happily, and unhappily, I was wrong about that.
In some respects, I can understand that, if a Government plan to privatise something, that is a legitimate policy and, although I may not agree with it, they have the right to pursue that policy. However, the Government have not considered the way in which the industry works most effectively. Had the privatisation been done by business sector or by breaking the railways down into geographical areas or regions, one could see some logic in it. But rather than privatise the railway so that it can operate more effectively within the private sector, the Government have simply sought to sell it in the easiest way without considering how it will operate afterwards. Remarks by the Secretary of State and some Conservative Members have proved that, to them, success will be achieved if they manage to sell it all. To me that is nonsense.
I believe that the attempt to pass the railways into the private sector will fail. Should it succeed, however, we should try to ensure that they operate in the most efficient and effective way within the private sector. The hon. Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) may talk about the objectives of privatisation, but the big problem for me is that the only objective I can see is that of selling off the railways.
When I served on the Railways Bill, a chart was used to show how the responsibilities, financial arrangements and safety requirements of the various proposed companies would fit together. Even before the creation of Railtrack, involving 12,000 employees, 5,000 of them signalmen, I remember describing the proposals as a
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cobweb of confusion because it was impossible to tell who would be responsible for finances, operational measures and safety. The scenario is even worse now, because we are talking about 25 train operating units which will become train operating companies, three rolling stock companies which will lease stock, three new freight companies, a regulator and a franchising director. One can see how the confusion will become worse and worse. Without clear lines of responsibility and communication, all that we have is a recipe for disaster.We need look no further than the events of the past two days to understand the importance of clear lines of responsibility. The arrangements between the Home Secretary and the Director General of the Prison Service appear to be straightforward, sensible ones. The Home Secretary is at the top, and below him is the director. Even in that simplified structure, however, it seems that they could not agree about who should make the decisions. Once we have 100 different rail organisations working independently, who will then decide who is responsible for them? We are talking about thousands of licences being issued as well as thousands of legal agreements between different organisations. What is on offer is a dream for accountants, consultants and solicitors, and a nightmare for the rest of us. I believe that among Conservative Members there is a significant minority--perhaps not counting those who are present--who recognise that the rail privatisation proposals are a disaster. During the passage of the Railways Bill, I realised, as I am sure many others did, that Ministers were saying things with tongue in cheek. They knew that it was nonsense and they did not believe in it. In some ways the previous Secretary of State for Transport inherited that Bill. He got so used to repeating nonsense, and did it so convincingly, that it made him eminently qualified to become chairman of the Conservative party.
One of the Ministers responsible for driving the Bill through was the Minister for Transport in London, for whom I have a great deal of time: he is witty and I enjoyed working with him on that Bill, as I have done since on local transport projects. He has always been helpful, but after spending all that time working on the privatisation of the railways, what does he plan to do? He plans to go off and sell cars. If I had made such a shambles of the railways as the Government have done, I think that I would go off and sell cars as well.
The privatisation proposal gained little initial support except from within Conservative Central Office. Hardly anyone was in favour of it then, and even fewer people want it to go ahead now. As a result, morale within the railways is at its lowest level ever and investment in the industry is at its lowest level for 20 years. Hon. Members do not need to believe me because one does not have to do a great deal of research to confirm that what I have said is true. Just this Monday, The Guardian quoted not a rabid socialist like me, who is intent on keeping the railways under public control, but the chairman of the Rail Users' Consultative Committee, Major General Lennox Napier--the Conservatives have not managed to replace him yet--who can hardly be described as a hero of the left. The article reported:
"He said investment had never been lower for 20 years. Until 1993, it was running at around £1 billion a year, but it is now down to £400 million."
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