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5.18 pm
Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley): I congratulate the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) on his apparent promotion to the Front Bench. That has happened so often before and he has returned to the Back Benches. Let us hope that this time his promotion is permanent, but only to the Opposition Front Bench.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Eastleigh(Mr. Chidgey) did not welcome rail privatisation.I must congratulate the councillors on Liberal Democrat-controlled Isle of Wight council. They have welcomed the fact that their rail service is to be one of the first put out to franchise--but as we know, Liberal Democrats say different things to different audiences.
Mr. Chidgey:
I hope that I have made it clear--I may have been speaking rather fast to save time--that we are not against privatisation: we are against the way in which it is being handled by the Government, which is appalling. We want a partnership between the private and public sectors to run the railways of this country.
Mr. Riddick:
This has been an extremely useful exchange. The Liberal Democrats have now said on the record that they are in favour of privatisation. That is to be welcomed. I am not quite sure, however, how Liberal Democrat researchers will be able to respond to the apparently contradictory approaches to privatisation in their party.
Mr. Peter Ainsworth (East Surrey):
I rather doubt whether my hon. Friend will be able to shed any light on this--I am certainly confused. A few moments ago the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Chidgey) seemed to be urging the hon. Member for Newham, North-West(Mr. Banks), who is temporarily occupying the Labour Front Bench, to renationalise Railtrack. There seems to be total confusion; there has certainly been a volte-face in the space of three minutes.
Mr. Riddick:
My hon. Friend makes a telling point.I do not know whether the hon. Member for Eastleigh would like to reply to it--
Mr. Chidgey:
I am delighted to do so. I do not want to turn this debate into a seminar on our policies, but I should be delighted to send hon. Members copies of our transport policy, in which all will be revealed. We have made it clear that Railtrack should stay in public control, through a 51 per cent. shareholding. We have also made it perfectly clear that we encourage the acquisition of
Mr. Riddick:
I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his contributions; they will be most helpful to both main parties.
I want to talk first about the general principle of privatising the railways, and secondly about one narrow aspect of the railways--that is, charter train operation.
At this stage of a privatisation it is always more difficult to set out the benefits that will accrue, because those benefits have not yet become apparent--there has not been enough time for them to show up. It is easy for the Opposition to criticise and to forecast the demise of the industry, just as they have done with every other privatisation. They have said that prices will rise and services will decline. It was outrageous of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms Short) to say that a private company cannot be trusted to ensure high safety standards.
Dr. Spink:
What about British Airways?
Mr. Riddick:
That indeed is the obvious riposte. Many of the world's major airlines are privately owned companies with excellent safety records. It is a disgrace that the hon. Member for Ladywood should be putting around those scare stories when they are clearly not accurate.
We need only look at other privatisations to find out what really happens. The Labour party is increasingly desperate and occasionally disingenuous when it makes its attacks on privatisation. There was a classic example of that over the new year. During the cold spell, hundreds of water mains cracked in various parts of the country. Up in the north-east, about 150,000 homes were cut off for a short time as a result of those problems. A local Labour Member of Parliament, I think the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), went on television to say that it was all the fault of privatisation. Yet at the same time 100,000 homes in Northern Ireland were cut off for the same reason, and as far as I know the water industry there is not privatised.
Up in Strathclyde, where the water industry is still in public hands, 500,000 homes were cut off. That shows how Labour sometimes resorts to desperate claims.
Mr. Dalyell:
Five hundred thousand homes cannot possibly have been cut off in Strathclyde--this is drivel.
Mr. Riddick:
I got the figure from The Daily Telegraph, which is certainly more accurate than most in its reporting. I can show the hon. Gentleman the cutting if he wants to see it.
If the Labour party really believes that privatisation will be so disastrous, why do not Opposition Members commit themselves to renationalising Railtrack? Why not commit themselves to reversing the process? Of course, the reason is that they know that privatisation has transformed the economy for the better. Long-distance coaches, British Airways, the British Airports Authority, road haulage and British Gas--those have all been transformed; prices have come down and customer services have improved.
Commercial disciplines and incentives have forced the managements of those companies to provide customers with what they actually want.
When British Airways was being privatised back in 1979, the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden(Mr. Dewar), leading for the Opposition, said that the company would become the "pantomime horse of capitalism". As we know, British Airways is now one of the most successful airlines in the world.
I believe that privatisation will have the same beneficial effect on the railways as it has had on many other industries. The new rail franchises will give new entrepreneurs and new companies the opportunity to come into the rail market. Besides bringing innovative ideas with them, those companies will want to introduce new and different services and to try new pricing arrangements that will benefit the travelling public. It is in their interests to attract more passengers to the railways--that is the point.
The purpose of privatisation, in short, is to halt and reverse the decline in railway use. Since 1948, £54 billion of taxpayers' money has been invested in the railways, but the railways' share of journeys has fallen from 17 per cent. in 1953 to just 5 per cent. now. It is time that we tried to reverse the process.
My local electricity company is an example of what can be achieved under privatisation. Prices have fallen by 19 per cent. since the company was privatised. They were reduced by 3.5 per cent. last April and will be reduced again by a similar amount this coming April. The customers of Yorkshire Electricity have also benefited from a £50 bonus resulting from the flotation of the National Grid. That, too, benefited customers.
British Telecom is another example of privatisation benefiting customers. Inland call charges have been cut by 21.4 per cent. since 1984--a 53 per cent. reduction in real terms in telephone call prices since the company was privatised. That is of major benefit to everyone. There has been an explosion in the number of public pay phones.At the time of privatisation there were 77,000; there are now 130,000. When British Telecom was privatised, the right hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Orme) said:
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman now returned to the subject of the privatisation of the railways.
Mr. Riddick:
I think that the point I was making is extremely relevant--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The Chair has decided that it is not.
Mr. Riddick:
I contend, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that it is--but I entirely accept your ruling. I believe that the benefits of privatisation will feed through to rail customers, as they have fed through to electricity and gas consumers.
Exactly a year ago, I made a speech on a similar motion. I congratulate the Labour party on its precision--although I do not suppose that it was deliberate--in choosing to debate this subject on the anniversary of the debate on rail privatisation that took place on
7 February last year. At that time, I explained that a company called Days Out Ltd. had been formed and was planning to run 60 steam excursions during the year, some of them on completely new lines. I regarded that as a plus for the new railways.
Railtrack has been very co-operative with charter operators, trying to encourage as many of them as possible to use the tracks. Unfortunately, a number of excursions were cancelled last year as a result of the hot, dry summer: it was feared that fires would break out beside the lines because the ground was so dry. The main problem for charter companies, however, has been the behaviour of Rail Express Systems, which until recently was a wholly owned subsidiary of the old British Rail. It is a great shame that that company has abused its monopoly to make life difficult for charter operators.
RES was recently sold to Wisconsin Railways, but before that it was obstructing charter operators, overcharging and then refusing to provide the details of its invoices. The Huddersfield Green party, which has run a number of charter trains over the years, experienced problems last year because of mismanagement of the trains by RES. I believe that those abuses have taken place as a result of the company's monopoly on licensed steam excursions.
"The public telephone box could be threatened with extinction".--[Official Report, 18 July 1983; Vol. 46, c. 41.]
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