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Mr. Prescott: They want money.
Mr. Jenkin: The right hon. Gentleman is showing contempt for the process of capitalism, which is his only hope for delivering investment in the railways.
As a result, the companies on which the Deputy Prime Minister depends, against which he has briefed day after day since the election, will be less able to deliver the investment that they want. The SRA and the Secretary of State's powers will hugely increase the role of the state, crowding out the investment that the private sector wants to make.
Mr. Gerald Howarth:
My hon. Friend is entirely right. Is he aware that Railtrack has written to us all, saying:
Mr. Jenkin:
That is absolutely right, and what analysts will tell the Government. How can investors in Railtrack possibly have confidence in a company whose profits will be subject to the day-to-day decisions of Ministers and the Treasury? That is the way to wreck the privatisation that the Deputy Prime Minister inherited from the Conservatives.
Let us hear about the wish lists; every Labour Member who spoke had one. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), for example, wanted to re-open moth-balled lines. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) wanted Railtrack to invest in his footbridge. The hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Quinn) wanted to open a new rail link in his constituency.
Mr. Quinn:
What is wrong with that?
Mr. Jenkin:
Those are all laudable aims and projects, but the Bill will, once again, make the railway the plaything of politicians--a political football.
Old Labour--out in force today--has lost none of its anti-privatisation venom. Such an attitude has motivated the Government in proposing the Bill. The Deputy Prime Minister himself has no understanding of the private sector, but simply wants to play trains.
Labour inherited a railway system that was doubling investment and improving service to passengers. The Government are in danger of destroying everything that has been achieved by the industry in the past five years.
Mr. Jenkin:
I shall sit down--as it is about time that we heard from the Minister for Transport what the
The Minister for Transport (Mrs. Helen Liddell):
New Conservative; old arrogance--there has been absolutely no indication that Conservative Members have learned anything from the failure of their 18 years in office.
Some interesting points have been made in the debate, but among them I do not include those made by the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth)--who was enervated by plastic versus real flowers in hanging baskets. However, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) looks forward to when the Select Committee considers the Bill, so that it may debate whether the boxes contained geraniums or lobelia.
The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) and the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin), yet again, find themselves in a minority. I listened carefully to the 20 minutes of waffle from the hon. Member for North Essex, but did not once hear the word passenger. Ultimately, if we do not provide a rail service that meets passengers' needs, we shall have great difficulty. Despite all the evidence, Conservative Members continue to re-write history.
I noticed that at no point was the hon. Member for North Essex prepared to take on board the points made in the Public Accounts Committee's examination of the Railtrack flotation. On a number of occasions, he even tried to pretend that it was the previous Opposition's fault that the initial Railtrack share price was so low. I therefore commend to Conservative Members the PAC's Twenty-fourth report, which states:
Mrs. Liddell:
That was not in the report's conclusions. I have here the report's conclusion--[Interruption.]
Madam Speaker:
Order. The hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) should not be so churlish.
Mrs. Liddell:
Conservative Members do not like the truth. In the PAC report, the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), who must be at his aerobics class today--he spends so much time going from the Back Bench to the Front Bench--stated:
No one in his or her right mind would suggest that the railway is currently working fully in the public interest. I apologise to the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) for saying that, because, usually, he is in his right mind. However, he has failed to recognise the concerns of the travelling public and of those of us who are interested in the United Kingdom economy.
The Government inherited a fragmented system that had been privatised in a hurry by a Government driven by a narrow ideological perspective that frustrated proper thought. When we came to power, we found no strategic vision for the development of the network. There was a regulatory structure that even the previous industry regulator has acknowledged to be confusing and lacking in teeth. We inherited a railway system that was ill equipped to play a major role in our integrated transport policy and which was inadequately regulated.
The hon. Member for North Essex was anxious to quote--
Sir Teddy Taylor:
Will the Minister at some convenient time come down to Southend on the LTS--London-Tilbury-Southend line--and ask the passengers, but not me, what the service was like before privatisation and what it is like now? There has been a dramatic change. It used to be called the misery line and now I find that it is an excellent service.
Mrs. Liddell:
The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me on the fragmentation of the network and the patchy services that are to be found throughout it.
The hon. Member for North Essex was anxious to quote selectively from Sir Alastair Morton, who on 30 June said that he had found in his first three months
We have seen the hon. Gentleman and the official Opposition generally casting around for a fig leaf to cover their lack of vision. They criticise the procedures of the Bill--
Mr. Lindsay Hoyle (Chorley):
Is my right hon. Friend aware of Railtrack's lack of investment in the station at Chorley? The station has no public conveniences. When I sent a letter to Railtrack--my right hon. Friend may not be aware of the matter but I am sure that she will be able to take it up--to ask for public conveniences to be provided, its answer was simple. I was told that the local authority should provide conveniences on railway stations. That being so, the danger is that the authority should provide them at motorway service areas and everywhere else. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the lack of public conveniences is the result of Railtrack's lack of investment?
Mrs. Liddell:
My hon. Friend's point is one ofa sequence of points made to me this evening by
"Direct funding on a wide scale would make it more difficult for us to raise capital to fund our investment programme and would reduce the train operators' leverage on Railtrack."
Is that not the answer to the Deputy Prime Minister?
9.40 pm
"The timing of the sale was a factor in the poor value achieved, and the Department themselves acknowledge that the large increase in Railtrack's share price since flotation was because it had been undervalued and sold in haste."
Mr. Jenkin:
Paragraph 4 of the report states:
"Stated political opposition at the time to the sale . . . adversely affected investors' confidence and therefore the share price."
There the right hon. Lady has it.
"I suspect that this company was mis-sold. It was sold on the basis that it was a railway company with an uncertain future. In fact, it had a very certain future, it had a known income stream, it had a substantial property portfolio and yet it was sold at the top of the yield table".
That is a clear statement that the Conservative party has learned absolutely nothing.
"a battered, historically underfunded, previously non-growth system now in the process--the painful process--of transforming itself into a modernised, growth-oriented, larger and better system."
On passenger franchises, he said that his initial reactions had ranged from pleasure at the improvements that many had introduced through to concern at the performance gaps to unease at the weakness of "their posture towards Railtrack". If we quote selectively, we fail to get a proper picture of what is happening.
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