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12 Feb 2009 : Column 485WH—continued
2.56 pm
Graham Stringer (Manchester, Blackley) (Lab): May I do something that I have never before done in this House, Sir Nicholas? I apologise to hon. Members that owing to a prior commitment, I will have to leave before the end of the debate.
When the Select Committee considered the White Paper and the Government response to the report, there were conflicting sets of statistics on the railways. One set was put out freely and regularly by the Government, because it makes a good case; they were less keen to publicise the other set.
The good story is very good indeed. Over the past 17 years, passenger journeys have risen by 52 per cent. and passenger miles by 47 per cent. to their highest numbers since 1945. Those who use the west coast main
line will know that it has become more reliable and faster, and the trains are better. We have benefited from £8.5 billion-worth of investment. The public performance measures of 89.9 per cent. are the best since those measures were introduced. We hear statements about such things from Ministers regularly. Today, the Secretary of State announced investment in rolling stock for the west country and the east coast main line.
The other set of statistics shows that we have the highest fares in Europe at twice the level of German fares and four times that of Italian fares. Whether comparing standard fares, which used to be known as second-class fares, or first-class fares, the ratios are about the same. To put that in context, a first-class rail fare from Manchester to London would buy an air ticket to Singapore or any European capital. That is extraordinary. A standard second-class fare would buy a flight to most European capitals from Manchester airport. That puts into context the high level of fares. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) mentioned, they are still increasing above the rate of inflation. That is not surprising because it is Government policy to transfer the burden of transport from the taxpayer to the fare payer. Unless there is a change of policy, that will get worse.
I mentioned that the west coast main line is now excellent. I have not checked every route, but on the rest of the Northern rail system the timetables are slower than when Gladstone was MP for South Lancashire, which is part of Manchester. In some cases, routes are slower by factors of 30 or 40 per cent. It is easier, as suggested by the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh), and sometimes quicker, to get from Doncaster to London than from Doncaster to Manchester. That is an extraordinary state of affairs. Some statements indicate that that might change, but the White Paper makes no plans for electrification or high-speed rail.
The Committee feelings about the White Paper are best summed up by Brian Cook, a witness from London, who said that the proposals to cater for the increase in demand between now and 2014 would not relieve the overcrowding; the extra capacity would provide only for the extra passengers. We agreed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside said, the Government’s response, particularly for the period after 2014, for which they are trying to put some structure into their proposals, was overcautious and not integrated, and its ambitions were modest.
How and why were they modest? The Government will invest the money where there are overcrowding problems on trains. As I said to my hon. Friend the Minister yesterday at the Transport Committee sitting, that is a profoundly reactionary policy. It means that investment in transport will go only where investment has already been made. In this country, that means London and the south-east. Whether in aviation, roads, trains or light rail, investment in new transport links has a dynamic impact. That vision is what the Government missed in the White Paper, particularly for the period after 2014.
Paul Truswell (Pudsey) (Lab): Before my hon. Friend moves on from that point, does he accept that overcrowding in some parts of the country, such as West Yorkshire and my constituency, matches that found in the south-east? Some of us cannot follow him all the way down the route that he is taking.
Graham Stringer: I agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, the rate of increase in overcrowding on commuter trains into Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham has been growing at twice the rate in London. However, despite that fact, the investment will go to the south-east. The first 1,100 new carriages will end up in this region. That is why I say that the policy is reactionary. We should consider the hard-headed figures; what we used to call pounds, shillings and pence but is now usually billions of pounds. Every candidate in the London mayoral election boasted of the £40 billion that would be invested in the London system—Crossrail, Thameslink, the new links to the Olympics and the PPP scheme for the tube. The total being invested in transport in Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds would come to only a small percentage of that.
Dr. Pugh: To reinforce that point, a sane way of replacing carriages—we applaud the decision on the new carriages—would be to replace the oldest first: to look around the country, find out where the oldest ones were and take them off the rails as quickly as possible. That is clearly not the strategy, though, is it?
Graham Stringer: It is not. It would be a good strategy, as it would stimulate industry and the economy as well as improving the transport infrastructure.
One can imagine how aggravated we were—irritated is probably a more accurate word—when, after the final announcement was made in October 2007 of the investment in Thameslink, it was announced there would be another study into the Manchester hub. I have lost count of the number of studies there have been. I am not cynical about Ministers coming to Manchester to make an announcement about a study when the huge amounts of investment in Thameslink had been announced; nevertheless, it was a cynical move.
Previous studies on the Manchester hub have shown what the problem is. It is a question of taking a decision on how to deal with it. There are 11 lines coming into Manchester Piccadilly, and investment in extra capacity is needed, either by putting extra lines above platforms 13 and 14 or putting in extra curves. The capacity problem can be solved. It will be an expensive business, but it will cost only a fraction of the money invested in the south-east. We should be getting on with the job.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab): I agree with my hon. Friend that it is not a question of taking money from London and the south-east and putting it somewhere else. His case for there being proper investment in rail networks in the north-west and other parts of the country is well made and should be supported. It is not a question of taking from London but of putting money into the whole rail network. He was right to say that the argument made at the time of Beeching was that everything should be London-centric. That, among other factors, is where Beeching was wholly wrong.
Graham Stringer: My hon. Friend makes a good point, but he cannot help it if those from the north gaze rather enviously at the investment being made in the south-east.
I believe that we should get on with the Manchester hub. Although it is called the Manchester hub, to take those bottlenecks out of the system will help to deal
with congestion in Yorkshire, Cumbria, Lancashire and the midlands. It will enhance the entire railway system.
I have some specific questions for my hon. Friend the Minister. I cannot make out from the high-level output specification whether the enhancements to Manchester Victoria station, and Salford Central and Salford Crescent stations, which form the simple part of the Manchester hub scheme, will take place in the specified period.
We heard a great deal about aged rolling stock from the hon. Member for Southport. When work starts on the Metrolink, on the Oldham and Rochdale line in north Manchester later this year, I seek a guarantee that there will be no loss of capacity or of carriages and rolling stock from the Greater Manchester area. We have been told that the Department for Transport has decided that even if the rolling stock on that route is not taken away but put on the Bolton line, other rolling stock would be taken away, yet Bolton MPs tell me that the commute from Bolton is shocking and that passengers cannot board the trains.
I refer again to the Transport Committee’s discussion yesterday with my hon. Friend the Minister. That took us back to the debate on investment in the north and the south. I understood my hon. Friend to say that I was wrong when I spoke of a per capita expenditure on transport in London and the regions, so I checked London’s figure against those for the Manchester area for 2007-08. London’s figure was £667; Manchester’s was £292; and for the north-east it was £244.
I accept—I wish I did not have to—that London is the capital city and that when it comes to education, health and transport, London has greater cost and that it will cost more to invest there. However, over the past 10 years, the gap in expenditure on transport in the regions and London has grown. As a Labour Government have brought overall expenditure up, in education and health it has risen at more or less the same rate, but in transport it has not. The gap has got wider.
We are now in many ways at a more interesting time in the history of railways than we have seen in the past 20 years. There are fantastic passenger figures, and the team of Ministers at the Department for Transport shows real imagination and vision, with talk of bringing in high-speed trains, which virtually every Secretary of State since we had a Labour Government has ruled out, and about electrification. That is to be welcomed. However, we are also hitting a recession, and I have some questions for my hon. Friend the Minister.
After the Public Accounts Committee hearings the Select Committee heard again from the train operating companies that the Department has given red lights to five train operating companies. I should like my hon. Friend to tell us, either at the end of the debate or in writing, what criteria are used for giving red, amber and green lights to the train operating companies. I should also like to know—as I am sure other hon. Members would—what action he will take if the companies fail in their franchises. They have been circulating papers around the train operating companies saying that for their failure they want to be released from their obligations on fares—to be able to put them up higher than they would under the RPI plus 1 formula, which I think is what is used. They want to cut carriages and they want to run the franchise on a completely different basis.
I do not know what my hon. Friend will say, but my advice to him is that if those franchises fail he should seriously think about putting in a publicly owned operator of last resort, so that within the rail system we can compare what a publicly owned train company would do, given that in providing a good service it would not have to make the excessive profits that some of the main transport companies have made. If he cannot do that, if the train operating companies default on their payments, and if he allows them to continue running those franchises—it is a question of billions of pounds, including a £1 billion payment expected from South West Trains and £1.25 billion, I think, expected from the eastern line franchise—the taxpayer, the public and the Government should get an equivalent stake in the equity of those companies for that failure, so that there is real public ownership.
Will my hon. Friend name the five companies that have been given a red light? It is claimed that that is commercially sensitive information, but the knowledge that there are five such companies is potentially damaging to all the train companies. It would be helpful, from the point of view of democratic accountability, as well as commercially, if we knew which companies were in trouble, and against which criteria.
Just under 10 years ago I took part in a debate in the House with Teddy Taylor, who was then the Member of Parliament for Rochford and Southend, East. We were arguing about the original privatisation of the railway. My contention was that the railways had been sold too cheaply and the public purse had been cheated. He argued that although that might be the case, the railways would cost the public sector nothing after 2000. There is about £25 billion of public debt on Network Rail’s balance sheet. The privatisation has cost the public purse a great deal of money. We need to make two decisions: first, to acknowledge that the public sector would probably be better at running the railway; and secondly, that the governance of Network Rail, by which its board in effect chooses its shareholders, to whom it is accountable, should be changed. I can think of no other structure or organisation that is set up on that basis. The £20 billion of debt locked up there—which is our debt, as representatives of the taxpayers—should give us all the more control, as far as starting to have a publicly owned railway.
The report that we are debating is the second major report on the railways by the Committee in four years. The first was called “The Future of the Railway”. Its conclusion was that the structure of the railway at the time was “not fit for purpose”. There has been some slight change. Network Rail is better than Railtrack and the Strategic Rail Authority has gone; but there is nothing in the operation of the railways in their fragmented form that makes them fit for purpose now. More public sector control would make a better railway system.
Sir Nicholas Winterton (in the Chair): A lot of hon. Members want to speak, and I hope to include them all. There are also the Front-Bench spokesmen and on a major debate such as this I like to give the Minister a quarter of an hour to reply, so I hope that hon. Members will be disciplined in their remarks.
3.17 pm
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh, North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op): I shall certainly try to follow your injunction, Sir Nicholas. I congratulate the Select Committee on its report, which makes some very pointed comments, and the Department on the White Paper. It has many good points, and we will all welcome today’s announcement, which shows a clear wish to start to deliver on the 30-year strategy.
Inevitably, in a debate such as this, it is tempting to concentrate on one’s own constituency shopping list. That is not a habit that I intend to break entirely today; I shall come to my shopping list in a second. However, as many rail issues are devolved, I shall deal only with those that are dealt with UK-wide. That will also allow me to deal with some of the broader policy issues behind the report and the White Paper.
To take the local dimension, long-distance rail is particularly important for my seat of Edinburgh, and for many parts of Scotland. It is important for Edinburgh because of the essential role that a good long-distance rail service plays in the tourism industry. In the current climate, it is more important for tourists to be able to get good fast rail access from the south to Edinburgh and elsewhere in Scotland and the north. It is important for business and for the many people with private reasons for travel, including study or visiting their families. That is one reason why I reiterate my welcome for today’s announcement about the new faster trains, which will benefit the east coast main line when they come into operation.
As I mentioned in my comments on the statement earlier today, the new rolling stock allows opportunities for faster journeys between Edinburgh and other places on the east coast main line and London. That is essential if we are to have the full advantage of the new rolling stock. Those of us who travel on the line know that average train times have increased, not decreased, over the past 20 years. With relatively small improvements in tracks and in the lay-out at key pinch points, the new rolling stock will allow for considerable improvements in train times, which will be important for existing travellers and in attracting travellers to rail from air and road travel.
For Edinburgh, and anywhere else north of London, the long-term prize will be the development of high-speed networks, which is why I welcome the commitment in the White Paper to that network and the recognition that building separate lines, rather than forcing very high-speed networks on to existing lines, is the way forward. Having said that, there are still things that we can do in the medium term to improve long-distance rail lines. We should not lose sight of those possibilities as well.
Mr. Martlew: In an intervention, my hon. Friend mentioned the Barnett formula. After a high-speed line reaches Carlisle and enters Scotland, whether on its way to Glasgow or Edinburgh, how is it funded? Are they UK funds or do they come from the Scottish Parliament?
Mark Lazarowicz: If I have time, I shall try to deal with that question, although I suspect that it is more for the Minister to answer—I am sure that he looks forward to doing so.
We need not only faster journey times, but more frequent and later journeys—for example, the last train from London to north of Newcastle leaves at 6 o’clock, which is not useful for many people, especially Members of Parliament. Faster journey times are important, but we should not have to wait for high-speed lines from London to Edinburgh, or to Carlisle on the way to Edinburgh—should that route be chosen.
Even without faster journeys, however, we can make full use of possible improvements in the rail system. For example, better use needs to be made of the trains themselves. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) was right to compare UK fare levels with those in many continental European countries. Current UK fare levels with not result in the desired shift to the rail network. When that point is raised with Ministers, reference is made to the fact that if they are booked well in advance, very cheap train tickets for long journeys can be obtained, which is true. However, sometimes, particularly for journeys booked at short notice, it is much cheaper to fly than to travel by train. Bizarrely, trains will sometimes have many empty seats, even though tickets were being sold at the full price a few days before. At the very least, that suggests that the system for selling tickets is not flexible or efficient—compare that with some budget airlines where prices very much depend on the number of available seats. There is something wrong with the way that those train tickets are being sold, which needs to be addressed by the Government and those responsible for regulating the industry.
A point was made about the improvements on the west coast main line. The Government deserve credit for the £10 billion—I think—invested in bringing that line up to standard, which has already brought many benefits south and north of the line. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley mentioned local services such as Doncaster to Manchester. One of the difficulties with the west coast main line is that we do not make full use of the opportunity to provide improved and faster services on routes from Edinburgh—although this is true generally of central Scotland—along the west coast to places and cities in north-west England and the west midlands. It is true that services on the east coast main line are generally good and fast—although I would welcome further improvements—but on the west coast main line, despite many fast services from Glasgow southwards, few direct services from Edinburgh are provided. Where direct services are provided, times are unacceptable—it normally takes longer to get from Edinburgh to Birmingham than from Edinburgh to London, and it takes almost as long to get from Edinburgh to Manchester as from Edinburgh to London. It is not possible to get a direct train from Edinburgh to Liverpool: if unlucky, one might be sent on a 10 or 15-minute walk across Wigan to catch a connecting train. Very few train services run from Edinburgh to Leeds.
My story about Edinburgh could be told of other services from elsewhere in Scotland. As my hon. Friend pointed out, that represents a phenomenon that might apply to other parts of the country. Furthermore, such services, of course, compete with air services. For all sorts of reasons, it should not be attractive to anyone or necessary to undertake a journey from Edinburgh to Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds or Bradford by plane, yet many people have no alternative but to do so, because the rail services are not provided.
There is a gap in the focus of the Government and, to some extent, of members of the Select Committee. I wonder whether that relates to some of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) about the way in which rail policy in England is integrated with cross-border services, which I believe remain a reserved responsibility of the UK Government. Rail in Scotland, including the sleeper services, is devolved, which I am in favour of. However, cross-border services throughout the UK are not given as much attention as they should in regulation by the UK Government. It is time for that situation to change.
I shall give one or two brief examples of how that attitude is reflected in the White Paper. Page 17 contains a map of England and Wales. It reads:
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