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Mr. Tim Collins (Westmorland and Lonsdale): I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for his customary courtesy in letting me have an advance copy.
Let me begin with two points on which I hope there will be broad agreement throughout the House. First, many passengers would be prepared to pay more for a better service, and secondly, an expanding rail system would be better for both safety and the environment. However, surely it is clear that that is precisely what is not on offer and what will not be delivered by the fare rises that the Secretary of State announced. Is he not asking passengers and taxpayers to pay more and more for less and less? Is he not replacing fares that are falling in real terms with fares that will rise in real terms? Does he concede that British rail fares are already the highest in Europe and that he said today that he wants them higher still? Yet, is he not presiding over a halt—indeed, a reversal—of rail expansion as many major infrastructure projects are shelved as money for the long term is gobbled up by the complete collapse of day-to-day cost control of the maintenance budget?
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the cuts to Virgin Cross Country services to which he referred are just the start? Will he confirm that further cutbacks on other rail franchises are in the pipeline and tell us today which services will be chopped? Will he confirm that he has abandoned the target in the 10-year transport plan of a 50 per cent. increase in rail passenger numbers?
Why are there more late-running trains now than before? The Secretary of State cannot blame a lack of long-term investment, because train performance was much better three years ago than it is now. He cannot blame the Conservative party, because even 18 months ago his predecessor said:
- "There can be no more excuses. It's our responsibility. We can't blame the Tories any more."
The Secretary of State has come up with a new explanation. He says that trains are late because there are too many of them, so he is axing a lot. He might be on to a point, because even I cannot deny that a train cannot arrive late if it does not set out at all. Do passengers not deserve better than that? Surely the real truth is that trains are running later while we are all paying more because of the Government's botched renationalisation of Railtrack.
Network Rail is expected to overspend its budget by a staggering £12 billion in the period to 2006. Will the Secretary of State confirm the Financial Times report that if Network Rail accounted for its assets in the same way as Railtrack, its losses in the past financial year would not have been the reported £290 million but £2.5 billion? Does he agree with the verdict of the rail regulator that the problem with Network Rail is that a complete absence of financial discipline has produced an explosion in costs?
If passengers and taxpayers are wondering why all that extra money, all those extra fares that the Secretary of State has announced and all the money that he is spending like water are buying a worse service, not a better one, has not The Daily Telegraph this morning provided the answer? Does he expect Back Benchers on either side of the House to be happy to discover that his Department will be footing a bill for £58,000—more than any Back Bencher's salary—just for the taxis hired by one of his sets of advisers for the period when Railtrack was in administration?
Will the Secretary of State comment on the fact that one signalling company told me that under Network Rail it costs more than £50,000 to apply for a simple contract to move one signal box 6 ft? Will he recognise that, although Conservative Members accept that there can be no return to Railtrack—not least because of what his Government did to its shareholders—taxpayers, shareholders and fare-paying passengers alike deserve none the less something a great deal better than the shambles that Network Rail has become under his supervision?
Today the Secretary of State said that he will replace fares falling in real terms with fares rising in real terms; replace an expansion in train services with a cutback in rail services; and replace falling subsidies paying for more trains with rising subsidies paying for fewer trains. Under him, we have later trains, fewer trains, and now, vastly more expensive trains. Is that not the worst bargain in Britain? Is it not clear that we do not have the promised integrated transport policy, but instead a disintegrated transport policy? Do passengers and taxpayers alike not deserve the full-time energies of a full-time Secretary of State to sort out that complete shambles?
Mr. Darling: The hon. Gentleman would have a little more credibility—no wonder he is laughing—if he had a single policy to his name or a single strategy that he thinks would improve things.
Railtrack was a disaster for the railways. If privatisation was bad, what Railtrack did in the years when it was in charge was disastrous. There was no proper cost control and it did not understand its assets. We have to get on and deal with that legacy. Network Rail, to its credit, is doing things that Railtrack never did. For example, it is getting proper control of the costs, understanding the state of the network and ensuring that it can deliver a safe and reliable railway. Of course that will take time and of course people are frustrated, but the hon. Gentleman did not have a single word to say about what he would do except to hark back, rather fondly I thought, to Railtrack. The friends of Railtrack are a very small group, even smaller than the present Tory parliamentary party.
The hon. Gentleman rightly said that if passengers are to pay more, they should expect improvements. Let me give examples of improvements. On London commuter lines, brand new rolling stock has replaced the old slam-door stock on the London Victoria to Brighton line. Something like 2,000 new railway carriages are in place, with more on order. In addition, a new electricity supply is being installed south of the river. I mention that because it comes back to Railtrack's performance. Anyone who knew that brand new, more powerful trains were coming on to the line should have thought
about the electricity supply that was installed in the 1930s and asked whether it would be capable of running modern trains. Of course it was not capable of that, which meant that Network Rail had to find another £1 billion to put things right.The west coast main line is receiving investment now. The improvements are disruptive while they take place, but as a result of the decisions we took last year, the work will be finished two years earlier than expected. An hour will be taken off the Glasgow journey. There will be a two-hour running time to Manchester and four trains an hour to Birmingham. That is an example of how improvements are coming on.
The hon. Gentleman asked about changes to Virgin services. It is essential to have a timetable that works, but not all the delays and problems of reliability are caused by congestion. Issues such as fleet reliability must also be taken into account. For example, when GNER completed the upgrading of all its locomotives on the east coast main line, it improved reliability dramatically. Frankly, the railway is doing now what it should have been doing years ago: managing the system as one railway.
It is pretty clear from what the hon. Gentleman said that he is against fares increasing. That is a credible position to take, but one of two things follows from that: either taxes have to go up to pay for the investment or, more likely, wholesale cuts in services—perhaps of 20 per cent.—will be necessary. At some stage, he will have to face up to reality. The money for the railways comes from two places: the fare-paying passengers or taxation. If he is against fares increasing, either taxes have to go up or services have to be cut. One day, perhaps he will tell us which it is.
Mr. Don Foster (Bath): I welcome without reservation the Secretary of State's proposals for a national discount rail card, which is long overdue. However, given that rail fares have already risen significantly above the rate of inflation, and the cost of motoring has fallen, how can he seriously believe that further fare increases will persuade people to get out of their cars and on to rail so that we start to reduce the remorseless increase in congestion on our roads? Where is the joined-up thinking? Have not rail passengers in the south-east already seen a significant increase in fares as a result of changes to the network rail card? That was a fare increase by stealth.
Surely the Secretary of State must acknowledge that he is giving the impression that he wants to manage the railways to improve reliability by significantly reducing the number of trains, and to reduce costs by significantly reducing the number of passengers by constantly ratcheting up the fares of those services. In the case of managed franchises and those non-managed franchises through the fares incentive adjustment programme, surely he must also acknowledge that the vast majority of the money from increased fares will go directly back into the SRA.Will he at least give an absolute assurance that we will not have a grand announcement from the Secretary of State some time in the future about yet more Government investment in the railways, when everyone knows that that money will have come from fare-paying passengers?
The Secretary of State says that we must face up to realities, so why is his statement devoid of any reference to the urgent need to address escalating costs within the railways? Is he not aware of the significant increase in the number of managers within the train operating companies? Is he not aware of the significant increase in the number of staff and in the use of consultants by the SRA? Is he not aware of the astronomical costs that are charged for renewal and maintenance on our railways? He himself acknowledged that it costs four times as much to build a lift shaft on the railways as it would to build it anywhere else. Why is that not the crucial and first priority of the Government when they tackle the problems on our railways?
We may well have one of the worst rail services in Europe. We certainly have the highest fares in Europe, if not the world. Yet under this Government, train cancellations have increased by 50 per cent. and delays have doubled. Surely if we are to increase rail fares further above the rate of inflation, passengers will simply pay more and get significantly less.
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