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Already, an increasing number of your Lordships who travel down here from Scotland prefer the train to flying, and I have no doubt that more will follow their example as the reliability of the west coast line continues to improve. I hope that those who continue to fly will take account of air quality and climate change issues too. They should remember that the CO2 output per passenger kilometre on a rail journey from London to Edinburgh is 11.9; and that for an equivalent air journey is 96.4.
The renaissance of the railway in recent years has been remarkable and astonishing, and I pay tribute to the thousands of men and women who work as members of the railway community in our country. They are generally unappreciated, often abused and yet set the highest standards of public service. I remember warning back in the 1970s that if the country were foolish enough to imagine that it could do without its railway, it would come bitterly to regret it in 20 or 30 years' time. The fact that today's debate is about expansion, not contraction, shows just how far we have travelled in our appreciation of how vital the railway is.
3.42 pm
Lord Methuen: My Lords, I welcome this debate drawing attention to the growth in passenger and freight traffic, and I look forward to hearing more about the Government’s paper, Delivering aSustainable Railway.
I am particularly interested in the proposed infrastructure changes at Reading and Birmingham. It is interesting to note that the proposals for Reading
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I must express my disappointment that in connection with the now almost certain advent of the Crossrail scheme, there is no sign of any intention to electrify that part of the Great Western lines, as stated by the noble Lord, Lord Snape. I would have thought that Crossrail should merely be a precursor for a scheme similar to Thameslink, providing a through electrified service from at least Newbury, Swindon and Oxford, with a longer term goal of going even further west to Bristol and north-west to Birmingham and using Crossrail continuing east to Ipswich and Colchester.
Last week, as a member of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers, I had the benefit of attending a day-long seminar on ERTMS, the European Rail Traffic Management System, and ETCS, the European Train Control System. It was very well attended by some 200 people. The keynote speech was by a senior member of the Department for Transport. ERTMS has, since its inception in the 1980s, been the panacea for the European railway industry's problems.
The original idea was to provide the international train driver with a uniform presentation of information as to how to drive his train, irrespective of the signalling style of the country in which he found himself. Not only that but—due to the multiplicity of track-to-train communication systems, every European country having its own special non-compatible brand—an ERTMS-equipped train should need but one set of equipment.
ERTMS will provide interoperability, increased safety and, due to its moving block concept, increased traffic capacity—the answer to everyone’s prayers. The main problem up to now has been cost. In spite of that, a number of schemes are being implemented in Europe, and at last year’s railway signalling convention in Interlaken we were taken for a run on the Swiss SBB ERTMS train—so it actually works. As a passenger on the train, one was not aware that there was anything special about it, but we were shown the type of display the driver saw, which is what is significant for the operation. One of the problems of systems involving many manufacturers and different operating regimes is to ensure that everybody operates to the same standards and change level and does not go off and do their own thing, which has been common in the past. It has cost the Netherlands railways €30 million to overcome a problem due to the change in standard levels.
In the UK, our first ERTMS system is being installed on the Cambrian lines between Shrewsbury, Aberystwyth and Pwllheli. I will comment on some operator concerns about that later. ERTMS costs in the UK have up to now been too high, with the payback period being too long. A critical re-examination, the “red diamond challenge”, has recently taken place to establish a
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One benefit of ERTMS is expected to be increased track capacity, due to the provision of moving block capability. I am not convinced that that will be achieved in practice on a route handling a mixture of fast express trains, suburban services and freight. Another fact is that the system relies on GPS to provide train position. That is unlikely to be sufficiently precise in densely tracked areas such as London terminals, so it is likely that conventional track circuits will still have to be used in such areas, again reducing the cost benefits.
I would like to comment on the practicalities of implementing ERTMS, as presented to the IRSE’s seminar by an operational staff member who has to make it happen. He said:
That organisation, which has the Cambrian franchise, is not geared up to undertake a major project of this nature as part of the day-to-day job. He has to design, install and maintain a whole new set of signalling equipment on a train that was not built for it, which may result in loss of passenger accommodation to accommodate an equipment cubicle. He has to train drivers, gain safety approvals, maintain the service and manage the costs. There are a lot of practical questions. Where do you put the kit? Is there an adequate electrical supply on the train? What is the effect on traffic of releasing trains from a limited fleet for modification? Who pays for new driving techniques and new operating rules, and so on?
Such problems will occur just as much on the other major routes when ERTMS is rolled out nationwide over the next 40 years. The various ROSCO and ATOC contracts will need to take account of those considerations. ERTMS will take time to establish itself; I hope that it will be worth the wait.
Finally, when will something be done about the dreadful and disgraceful state of Derby station? It has been falling down for a very long time.
3.50 pm
Lord Greaves: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for introducing this debate. The noble Lord spoke eloquently of the success and growth that permeate much of the railway in this country. I want to talk about some problems, as other noble Lords have done, but we should not let the problems that exist detract from the fact that there is a real success story at the moment. My noble friend Lord Mar and Kellie said that he had been a train enthusiast for 43 years. I thought; only 43 years! What it is to still have the joys of youth.
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I want to talk about some aspects of the north of England. A lot of the growth that has taken place and a lot of the proposed investment as the Government and the industry chase that growth have occurred and are occurring in the south of England, particularly the south-east of England and, as other noble Lords have said, in Scotland, where a different political system has produced a more ambitious approach to rail openings. Not everything in the north of England is gloom by all means. The services to London are now incredible and would have been unimaginable in the days when I used to stand as a train-spotter at Wakefield station. Northern Rail took over a very difficult franchise that was thought to be a basket case and went through an inquiry which many people thought was going to result in a lot of service reductions. However, Northern Rail is really doing quite a good job. The growth in traffic that is taking place in the north of England is a credit to it, as is the improvement in services and reliability. The new TransPennine franchise, against the expectations of many of us, is turning into quite a success, with the fancy new class 185 trains.
Nevertheless, there are still many examples of lack of a joined-up railway and a lack of connectivity, as people might say, partly due to the continued fragmentation of operational services and partly due to the dismantling of large amounts of the railway that took place in the 1960s and progressively in little ways for the 30 years afterwards. I will not talk about the need for a high-speed railway to the north of England; other noble Lords have mentioned that. The two glaring examples where electrification is needed in the north are strategic lines; the Leeds to York line and the Manchester to Preston line, which are an integral part of the east coast and west coast operations—and they could be far more so if they were electrified, not least as diverting lines. We can dream and look ahead to the future to the electrification of the Settle and Carlisle and what that could do. Not very long ago, we were all campaigning to stop people closing that line down.
On a much more local level, here is an example of a lack of common sense in the operation of services. I often get the 20.30 from Kings Cross to Leeds when I am going home. That has an advertised connection at Wakefield Westgate with the last train to Huddersfield. Time and again, passengers are advised to stay on the Leeds train and take a much longer journey to Leeds, because the Leeds trains are a few minutes late and the Huddersfield train is going to leave on time from the other platform across the station bridge. People sit on the train watching the Huddersfield train set off while they are still on the Leeds train. This last week, people were advised to stay on the Leeds train, and a few enterprising people got out, raced across the bridge and got on the Huddersfield train. Others were sitting watching them do that. It is crackers. It is all to do with the fact that they are under different ownership and because there are tight targets on punctuality. It is the last train at night; that train is not going to hold anything else up. It is just about a lack of common sense in providing the good service that could be provided.
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I give another example. On Monday this week, my daughter went to Colne station for the Preston train, on her way to work in Manchester. It should have left at just after seven o’clock, but it did not arrive. There were no indications or announcements on the Tannoy to say that it was not going to arrive. There were 20 passengers waiting at Colne to go to work who had to wait an hour for the next train, because it is only an hourly service. Why? It was because the train had been late getting to the section of line between Gannow junction and Burnley and Colne, an 11-mile single-track siding. Once a train is on it, no other train can get on it for the best part of an hour, so the trains are turned around early. It is madness. How on earth can you persuade people to take the train regularly and not find other ways of travel when that happens more often than it ought to? It seems to happen about once a month. The answer is to reinstate the passing loop at Nelson, where there is an island platform and where, even after they singled the whole line from Gannow junction, there used to be a passing loop. It is common sense that that should be reinstated to allow a proper, flexible and reliable service. Otherwise, how on earth do you expect people to use that line to go to work?
Those are just examples of joining up missing links on a very small scale. For the rest of my time, I want to talk about the railway line between Colne and Skipton. Of course, it is not a railway line, because it does not exist. It is a missing link. It was closed down in 1970. Since 2001, when the campaign group SELRAP, the Skipton East Lancashire Railway Action Partnership, was formed, it has had tremendous success; indeed, a number of noble Lords in this Chamber have signed up to the campaign. Some 10 years ago, pretty well everyone thought that the line was a lost cause. It is now being looked at as a serious proposition. If anyone wants to know more, they can Google SELRAP and will find a most impressive website.
It is topical today, because tomorrow in Skipton there will be the official launch of a SELRAP study, commissioned from independent consultants JMP Consulting, into the business case for reopening the railway line. If people tell me that reopening railway lines is not a possibility and a hopeless dream, I merely produce in evidence my noble friend Lord Mar and Kellie, who will wax lyrical, when asked, about the reopening of the line to Alloa, with which he has had something to do. We are talking about increasing patronage of railways by passengers. SELRAP has made its own small contribution to this. On 1 April this year, a special train called the Missing Link was commissioned by SELRAP to travel from Colne to Skipton. It had to go a long way around and took five hours. It was the subject of a cartoon in the local newspaper, the Colne Times, showing a drawing of a train at Skipton station with the following caption:
“We apologise for the 37-year delay to the Colne train. This was caused by vandals removing 11 miles of track”.
I hope that I live long enough to see the service reinstated.
The 70-page report is embargoed until tomorrow, but I have permission from SELRAP to tell noble Lords a little bit about it today. The study was carried out at the suggestion of the Department for Transport
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Many of the Government’s policies on railways seem to be based on what, in road terms, has been discredited as “predict and provide”. Clearly, if there is increasing rail traffic in some areas, you have to provide for it, but there is also a need to use investment in railways as part of regenerating areas. The regeneration of East Lancashire—in housing terms, the Elevate area, now branded as Pennine Lancashire—is absolutely crucial. Reinstating the Colne to Skipton rail service can play a real part in the regeneration of the old Pennine Lancashire textile towns. According to the study, the cost is between £43 million and £81 million, but the cost-benefit analysis suggests that there is real potential. The study mentions a positive cost-benefit ratio for single track reinstatement with potential for a positive cost-benefit ratio on a double track, wider economic and social benefits for employment, new businesses, visitors to the region and to the Yorkshire Dales, and a positive environmental impact with a net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. I commend the report to the Government and to all your Lordships who are interested in these matters, and we look forward to its launch tomorrow.
4.01 pm
Lord Dykes: My Lords, the principal difference between my humble contribution to this debate and those of the previous speakers is that they all know a great deal about the railways in seriously profound detail and I sometimes pretend to know a little about it.
There is also an emotional content to what I have to say, forced on me compulsorily by my very close friendship with the late Robert Adley MP in the other place. He became one of the most famous pro-railway characters in British political society as a result of his noble campaigns and very interesting visits to foreign railway systems, including in China, where I was the humble PPS and equipment carrier. He, the artiste, took dramatic photographs of wonderful locomotives and train sheds and so on, and I was lumbered with carrying the heavy equipment. None the less, it was a privilege. In those days, a tiny number of Conservative MPs were pro-railway in a practical as well as an emotional sense and they wanted to see it succeed. Like me—I was a Conservative MP then as well—they
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I remember those days very vividly but shall reminisce only briefly because it was a long time ago. I remember how shocked people were to see the plundering of state assets that went on with these schemes for railway privatisation. New companies were launched together with the original infrastructure company, and company ownership and control changed hands several times. There were a number of examples of that, of which the Great Western Railway was just one. Although I shall not say who it was, just by chance I happened to know a non-executive director of the board of the first company that was then sold on to another buyer. He said, “I know nothing about railways at all but have just made £850,000 clear profit as a result of this transaction”.
Then there were the leasing companies that suddenly sprang up. They made enormous supernormal profits from an artificial situation involving state assets. The taxpayers wrote off all the debts to ensure that they were in a perfectly good, pure and pristine state for flotation and issue, and they were then released on to the market. South American politicians were heard to comment in various countries, “Gosh. I wish we could still do that kind of thing in South American countries like we used to in the old days, but fancy the British doing it!”. Therefore, the country that invented railways went through a very sad and sombre time, with City-oriented plundering of assets for private gain. To be fair to the eccentric thinkers who sat in boxes with people pushing food through twice a day asking, “How are you getting on with that scheme for railway privatisation, Cedric?”, they were producing a slightly dotty scheme, to say the least, for separating the infrastructure company from the train services as a way of bringing about the tension of competition and therefore cost-reduction pressures on the assets coming from the interlinking of these activities. It was all theory, written by Friedman and others in a sort of miasma of nightmarish ideas of right-wing economic theory rather than practice. It was a horrible initial period that lasted for many years; it took years for new trains to come along. Before ceasing to be a Conservative MP in 1997—
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I am interested in the noble Lord’s horror story, but is it not a fact that he was a Member in another place and a supporter of the Government who put that hotchpotch through?
Lord Dykes: My Lords, I am on the record with a small number of other colleagues who proposed a series of amendments to try to mitigate the effects of the legislation. The pressure is very great on Members because of the Whip system, but the most important amendment that we tabled was to allow British Rail to carry on as an entity and main, principal franchise applicant. We had no chance because no one else would support the amendment of a small group of colleagues, of which I was one. British Rail would
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Later on, just before I ceased to be a Conservative MP, I remember pleading with a number of Opposition spokesmen who dealt with transport matters in the other place to try to reverse the policy as soon as possible when taking over. Tellingly, they all refused to do anything of the kind as ultimately it would have been that great department of state—the Treasury—that would determine the amount of money needed to bail out bona fide shareholders in these companies, and all the rest of it, which would have been far too expensive. I foolishly and naively had a session on a plane to Hong Kong with the then shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury who wisely refused to listen to my blandishments. He was a shadow Treasury spokesman who became Chief Secretary later on.
Rightly too, as the Government—accidentally, I suppose—have a success story in one or two aspects. What has happened to the railways is a genuine, real success story, which to some extent is chance but also because of the Government’s actions since then. I commend the Labour Party in government since 1997 for the wise way in which the Government said that they would think about the matter long term to see what happened. I know that they had an emergency to deal with when they had to replace the old infrastructure company with Network Rail. That was a genuine emergency, and they rightly nationalised it. I was pleased about that; at least it was partial deprivatisation.
They took on the rest of the issues and gradually new trains came along. I suppose that subsidies are beginning to taper off now, although they got larger in the initial period after the plundering and flotations of those artificially constructed companies, which City investors loved to the utmost degree, as did their international friends, in buying the assets of these new companies. The situation has improved over a long period with a lot of patience from the Government, which is why they should be commended. The Minister deserves the same plaudits as his other colleagues in that the Government have patiently and gradually persuaded the companies to improve their management, including all the technical people who run the railways—those in between the senior managers and the strategic board—the people lower down who do the physical day-to-day work.
I do not think that the subsidy system will ever be satisfactory, as my noble friend said. Indeed, railways have to have financial input to some extent to succeed. That is the pattern everywhere. If you do not do it, as in the United States, you have a truncated, limited system of a few long-distance services, and then the dense network in the north-east around New York city.
We have to think about the future. I believe that the public want to travel more by train than by car. Even if they own their car—there is a psychological need for ownership—they recognise the need to restrict its use both in urban and intercity settings. That is the great example that we have, and there is an opportunity to do something.
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