East Coast Main Line

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I give my hon. Friend an assurance that the Azuma trains will be joining the network later this year. They will deliver a fantastic new service for passengers, and they will indeed be LNER Azuma trains instead.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said that he was not aware of any problems with other franchises. Perhaps he was not in the House during Prime Minister’s questions, when problems with the Northern franchise were identified. Private companies are walking away from franchise bids in Wales and the east midlands. Is this not clear evidence that the rail franchising model is broken, and that the answer is a truly integrated railway under public ownership?

[Chris Grayling]

First, the number of firms asking for passports to apply for franchises is actually increasing, not decreasing. As I keep explaining to Opposition Members—they are causing as much trouble as they can for the Government over the European Union, instead of working together in the interests of this country—what they are proposing is illegal under European law.

Community Transport

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), the Chair of the Select Committee, for summarising a powerful case, which many Members across the House support. I also thank community transport providers operating in my constituency of Easington. In particular, I thank Angela Kent, the operations manager of East Durham Community Transport, who kindly contacted me and briefed me in advance of today’s debate.

As has been pointed out, community transport is a vital lifeline for many people, especially elderly and vulnerable people at risk of social isolation and exclusion. My constituency is semi-rural, and the quality of local bus services for many people is nothing short of lamentable. If commuters in London had to put up with the quality of public transport services operating in my constituency, there would be protests on the streets. The regulated, integrated, frequent and modern public transport network that is standard for the capital city is a million miles removed from the experience of my constituents. Communities such as South Hetton, Haswell, Haswell Plough, Hesleden, High Hesleden and Hutton Henry can be left isolated, with an infrequent, sub-standard bus service that does not operate in the evenings.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that the impact assessments conducted by the Department for Transport underestimate the impact of the proposals on very vulnerable people? The impact assessments led us to believe that the impact would be minimal.

[Grahame Morris]

That is a really important point; I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. The problem is that, as a consequence of the regulations, people will be denied access to local amenities, leisure facilities and employment opportunities. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South indicated the cost—some £400 million.

People are rightly angry and frustrated about the implications of the changes. I am angry about the quality of the transport infrastructure in my constituency, and this will simply compound that. The proposed guidance from the Government implies that community transport providers need to show that they are not blocking commercial operators that may wish to deliver a local service on a particular route—the section 19 and 22 recommendations that have been mentioned. However, community transport is plugging the gaps of a failing commercial network. The ongoing withdrawal of commercial bus services means that the community transport sector as a whole has gained growing importance in filling transport gaps, particularly in largely rural areas such as mine. Many voluntary transport services are financially fragile, and rely on donations and the goodwill of volunteers to continue.

The Government must realise that community transport is about so much more than simply moving people from A to B. It brings people together, teaches people new skills, makes disabled and elderly people in rural areas less socially isolated, improves physical and mental health, and makes communities pull together to tackle many issues that they face on a daily basis.

I share the reservations of community transport providers in my constituency that the Department for Transport, sitting in splendid isolation in offices in central London, may find it difficult to comprehend the service and support provided by community transport. I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South that the narrow and legalistic approach that the Government are adopting to community transport is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Rail Franchising

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)]

May I begin with the one thing on which we agree this afternoon? I thank the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) for his generous comments about my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), who has been a great servant of my Department and other Departments for a very long period. He has been on the Front Bench for 19 years, in government and in opposition. That is an epic career, and we all very much appreciate the work that he has done, particularly on legislation and on building bilateral discussions and so on, so I pay tribute to him for all that he did. I am grateful for the warm words from the hon. Member for Middlesbrough.

Apart from that, we have just heard about 25 minutes of complete nonsense from the Opposition. I suspect that you would say it would be unparliamentary of me to call them hypocritical, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will not do so, but I have no doubt that others in the know will be astonished by the gall with which they simply forget their actions in government; with which they pretend that their ideas will not cost a penny—I keep hearing that, but it is absolutely untrue—and with which they make inaccurate claims based on a lack of facts about subjects they appear not to understand.

Let me set out why the Opposition’s ideas do not stack up and why their positions do not add up.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

rose—

[Chris Grayling]

I will make some progress and then take interventions.

I shall also set out why the Opposition’s policies make no sense for the travelling public and why their pronouncements on the east coast main line are wrong. I shall also explain why it is this Government who have set about the task of modernising and upgrading our railways—the biggest programme of investment since the steam age—after 13 years of a Labour Government who quite simply failed to deliver the infrastructure improvements that this country needed. It has taken Conservatives to begin to change that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

I will take one more intervention and then make some progress.

[Grahame Morris]

It is an interesting concept that the travelling public have got a good deal that is paid for by the private train operating companies. I just checked what it would cost me if I left the House of Commons and went to Durham now. It would cost me £153 standard class—or £236 first class, but of course we are not allowed to do that. A similar journey at the same time of day from Frankfurt to Munich in Germany would cost £39 and tuppence. How is it that our travelling public are getting a good deal from this fragmented privatised system?

[Chris Grayling]

In this country, under Governments of both persuasions, we have taken decisions about the right balance between the cost of the railways being borne by those who use the railways and those who do not. Yes, the hon. Gentleman may be quoting walk -up fares, but he can go and buy an advance ticket for the east coast route at a fraction of the cost that he described.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

We have rightly heard from the Secretary of State that there is record investment in the railways and a record number of passengers, yet Opposition Members are here to criticise the running of the railways. I am sure we will hear many tales of woe from Opposition Back Benchers, but the reality is very different. There are problems, and we have heard from my right hon. Friend about the Virgin Trains East Coast situation, which is not desirable, but of course, to some extent Virgin predicated its income projections on improvements to be made by Network Rail, and of course Network Rail, being a nationalised organisation, usually delivers late and over budget. The Secretary of State was somewhat critical of Virgin, and it clearly should have taken note of the fact that Network Rail failed to deliver on the promises made on the west coast route some years ago, so there is some legitimate blame on both sides.

Regrettably, I am old enough to remember the days of British Rail, a failed nationalised monolith and a watchword for failure. Until 1992 there were direct train services to my constituency, but British Rail cut them, and the new Minister, whom I welcome to his place, will be hearing a lot from me about the need for through services to Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

The Government support the rail network to an enormous extent. Many of the figures cited in an article in the 13 October edition of Rail magazine were repeated in The Times last week, including that £925 million was invested by the private sector in the rail network in 2016-17. The shadow Secretary of State failed to identify how any Labour proposal would bring forth that money. The reality is that cuts are made under all Governments and usually the first thing that goes is capital infrastructure expenditure. There is no way that a renationalised network under a Labour Government would be able to raise the approaching £1 billion that the private sector is currently investing.

[Grahame Morris]

What does the hon. Gentleman think the state-owned German rail company that owns a substantial chunk of our franchises does with the profit it makes here in our privatised system? It invests that profit in its own system, through subsidised fares there. That seems ludicrous to me and most of the travelling public.

[Martin Vickers]

Perhaps they are a little more free-market and capitalist-minded over in Germany.

At present, competition is for the franchise; what we want is more competition in the running of services, and one way we can achieve that is through open access operators. Hull Trains and Grand Central both run on the east coast main line and provide services to areas that in the main do not get a service from the main franchise holder. Indeed, I understand that Grand Central will shortly put forward a proposal for direct trains from King’s Cross through to Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Cleethorpes. I hope that the Minister will be supportive of that, because it would be a great boost to the local economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I have had to take the Beeching axe to my speech, but I will make a couple of points in the few minutes available to me.

I wanted to take up some of the points made by previous speakers, including the Secretary of State, with which I completely disagreed and which, frankly, were fake news. If we look at the evidence and compare train fares in the United Kingdom and European countries—their state operators own many of our franchises—the difference is stark. I do not accept that this is about particular fares in peak periods.

It is worth looking at the German-owned operators. Deutsche Bahn owns Northern Rail, which is the principal operator in my region. Some 42% of Deutsche Bahn’s revenue is made outside Germany, much of it here in the UK, but 93% of its investment is in the German railway, so the company is creating profits here to improve services back in Germany.

It is clear that regulated rail fares have risen by an average of 32% since 2010, which is three times faster than the average median wage has grown. The Secretary of State said that fares increased more rapidly, or to higher levels, under the previous Labour Government, but we have to factor in average wages. The Conservative policy of raising regulated fares by the retail prices index ensures above-inflation fare increases every year. Compare that with Labour’s stance as set out in the motion, which I support. We would peg fare rises to the consumer prices index, which would save the average season ticket holder £500 over the course of a year. That would affect everyone’s constituents. Indeed, the annual cost of a season ticket for one of the Prime Minister’s constituents travelling between Maidenhead and Paddington has risen by £732 since 2010.

Passengers on our railways pay some of the highest fares in Europe for increasingly unreliable and crowded services, and that has been my experience. Passengers, our economy and our environment need affordable fares and reliable services, which I do not think the Tories’ policy is capable of delivering. Labour would take back our railways into public ownership as franchises expire and use the savings to cap fares, and we would upgrade and extend the rail network.

Rail Update

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is after not just the hors d’oeuvre but a second course. That second course will probably be the Crewe hub, on which we are working carefully at the moment, but I thought that he at least deserved an appetiser. I buy the argument that the present situation as trains head north from Wrexham is not right, and I am therefore delighted that the Chancellor agreed to fund the development work for that scheme.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I give the Transport Secretary credit for acknowledging the failure on at least two occasions of the private franchise running the east coast main line. My recollection is that when it was operated by the UK state-owned Directly Operated Railways it generated more than £100 million in profit for the Treasury, which could be used for vital public services. What assessment has he made of the additional costs of the private-public sector partnership, and would it not be better to use the profits to extend the Tyne and Wear Metro into Easington rather than swelling the coffers of privately operated train companies, often German, Dutch and Spanish Government-owned?

[Chris Grayling]

There is a curious conundrum in this. We hear so much uncertainty from Labour about what they think about Brexit: they seem to want to stay in the single market and continue to operate in the traditional way, but they do not want to work with train companies from other countries. That is a bit illogical.

I am delighted that we as a Government are finally investing—in a way that the hon. Gentleman’s party did not—in rail in the north-east. The investment in trains on the Metro and the plans to extend it are the right things to do to help his constituency and the economy of the north-east, and I am very proud to be able to deliver them. It is also worth saying that the private sector franchise on the east coast main line has been contributing more to the Treasury than the public sector one did.

Guards on Merseyrail Trains

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dan Carden]

Negotiations are of course critical to resolving the dispute, and I absolutely welcome the new trains. They are long overdue and something the unions have campaigned for. They will be publicly owned by the people of the Liverpool city region and are forecast to be 30% cheaper for the taxpayer than using the failed model of rolling stock leasing companies. ROSCOs are like the loan sharks of the railway, and it is right that they are rejected in Liverpool. The Minister might like to say a few words about why his Department persists in using them across the rest of the rail network.

There is not, however, a binary choice between having our new trains and keeping a fully staffed service. The two are not mutually exclusive. The new carriageless trains, with their more open structure, allow a guard to pass more easily through the length of a train. In fact, Merseytravel originally said it wanted both, because when the new train contract was first announced, Liam Robinson, the chair of Merseytravel, said:

“In an ideal world we’d like to have a second member of staff on every train, but there aren’t the resources to do that.”

I am grateful to Liam for his assistance in the lead-up to this debate.

Local politicians rightly speak up about the pitiful investment in public infrastructure in the north. Tory cuts in revenue support grants to local councils of the city region mean that the local transport levy has been cut by £32 million in real terms, which represents a third of the annual local transport budget being lost. Faced with those cuts, we must defend and maintain the standards we have, protect jobs and passenger safety, and expose unjustifiable profiteering from the travelling public. I will return to the role of local representatives, the transport authority and government later in my remarks, but first let me set out why I believe the first step to resolving the dispute is to agree the principle that keeping the guard on the train is essential, so that we can move to a more constructive debate that looks at solutions.

There are four railway stations in my constituency. The loss of 1,000 police officers and £100 million from Merseyside police’s budget since 2010 has had a devastating impact on our communities and the ability of the police to protect the public. Data released by the British Transport police shows that the number of violent attacks on mainline and underground trains has increased by 12.5% in the past year, with a spike in hate crime. Reported sexual offences on trains have more than doubled in the past five years. Figures obtained under a freedom of information request submitted by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers showed that in the past five years there were more than 1,200 on-train crimes on Merseyrail. The figures also show that almost 900 crimes, or 72%, took place before 8 pm, which was the time at which Merseyrail indicated that it would seek to keep a second, non-safety-critical person on the train. That begs the question that if Merseyrail acknowledges the need for a second person on the train after 8 pm, why not before? Just as the public are more vulnerable to crime when police numbers are cut, when frontline rail staff are removed passenger safety is jeopardised.

A report produced for Merseytravel by Passenger Focus in April 2014, titled “Future Merseyrail rolling stock—what passengers want”, was clear. It emerged that the most important factor identified by passengers was personal security on the train. The report showed that passenger satisfaction with personal security while on the train was high, at 86%, and said:

“this aspect is a strength upon which it is important to maintain focus and development.”

It went on to state that:

“the importance of this measure to passengers suggests that if satisfaction with personal security were to decrease in future, this would likely have a severe negative effect on overall satisfaction with the service as a whole.”

Subsequent polling by Opinium found that 84% of women passengers said that they would feel less safe without a guard, and the figure for people over 55 was 85%. Perhaps the best demonstration of how our guards are valued on Merseyside was the fact that a recent petition gained almost 25,000 signatures. It was started by Merseyrail passenger, Ellie Ward, who was assisted by a guard while in a vulnerable position. The guard took extra steps to make her and other female passengers feel secure.

Too much of the debate so far has focused on issues such as who will operate the doors and whether DOO can safely dispatch a train. I am afraid that these arguments are disingenuous and completely miss the point. Neither the Government nor the train company-financed rail regulators have made any assessment of the additional risk to passengers once the train has left the platform, with or without a guard on board. How can any decision on extending DOO claim to take passenger safety seriously before such an assessment has been made?

Train guards’ safety-critical duties include protecting the train, safely securing the doors, and dealing with emergencies such as derailments, evacuations, fires, driver incapacity and failures of train safety systems. On Merseyrail, following a collision between a train and road vehicle at the Crescent Road level crossing in Southport in August 2016, the guard placed isolating equipment on the track, isolated the electric rail and evacuated passengers to safety, while the driver remained in his cab, leading the communications with signallers. Without a guard on the train, such emergencies would be dealt with by controllers up to 20 miles away speaking to passengers via intercom. It cannot conceivably be argued that that is as safe or safer. There are many more such stories, but as I am pushed for time, I will move on.

Disabled passengers, people with visual or hearing impairments, and people who suffer from anxiety rely on the reassuring presence and practical assistance of staff on platforms and guards during their journey. Merseyrail’s current disabled people’s protection policy states that:

“our on-train staff are trained in the procedures to advise and help you”.

The vital role of the guards is also acknowledged in the Rail Delivery Group’s 2017 report “On Track for 2020? The Future of Accessible Rail Travel”. Moreover, it is worth fighting to keep good jobs for the future. Losing more than 200 secure skilled jobs from essential services is in no way progressive.

Despite several days of strike action, the public still overwhelmingly back the guards. Recent polling shows that 78% of regular passengers oppose the removal of guards from Merseyrail. The entire trade union movement and the north-west TUC support the guards, and the Labour party’s policy is clear: to oppose any extension of DOO. The Welsh Government have now guaranteed a guard on every train for future franchises, and Scotland has made similar long-term arrangements. The shadow Secretary of State wrote to train operators last week to tell them that a Labour Government would halt any plans to extend DOO. Merseytravel’s former chairman, Mark Dowd, remains fully opposed to removing the guards, saying that “common sense should prevail”.

It has never been clearer that we need a new structure for our railways. Labour would take back control by bringing our rail network into public ownership. By reinvesting the revenues that are currently disappearing into shareholders’ pockets, a Labour Government would ensure that we have affordable fares, state-of-the-art trains, safe staffing levels and an end to DOO. We would embrace technology while preserving good, skilled jobs.

This Government, on the other hand, do not have a plan for our rail network. They are writing job cuts into rail contracts, and they stand by as private rail companies mismanage services while making eye-watering profits. Almost a quarter of Merseyrail’s income from passengers is swallowed up in profit. Merseyrail’s owners, Serco and Dutch state-owned Abellio, can expect to pay out average dividends of £6.7 million each. It cannot be fair that profits can be extracted from the travelling public to fund Dutch public railways while our own rail network pays the price by losing guards. Is it too much to ask that they take a smaller slice of the profit so that passengers—who fund their profits, let us remember—might continue to have a safe and secure service?

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the state-owned operator puts guards on its trains in Holland, but proposes to run a service without them on its Mersey franchise?

[Dan Carden]

I find that incredible. It is not good enough for the people of Merseyside to go without guards when companies that profit from the revenue from those people’s tickets provide guards in other countries.

Instead of pushing DOO, the Government could make passenger safety and the provision of safety-critical guards non-negotiable, before profits, at the top of contracts for all rail franchises. Better still would be to scrap the legislation under which only the private sector can run passenger train services. If the Minister wants to argue that this is a devolved issue and he cannot interfere, he must explain why Merseytravel is prohibited from running its trains in the public sector.

Transport in the North

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on securing this debate, which is really important and timely, and thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.

The A19 is one of the principal economic drivers—no pun intended—in my constituency. It is vital for the export-focused manufacturing businesses in my region, particularly Caterpillar, NSK Bearings, and—until it closes just before Christmas—the Walkers potato crisp factory. Many businesses are dependent on a functioning A19, which too often is left at a standstill for hours on end following multiple road accidents, which are almost a daily occurrence. The lack of investment, maintenance and upgrading of this vital economic highway is clearly holding back businesses in my constituency. I have tabled numerous questions on this, and I urge Conservative MPs who want to work co-operatively to sign early-day motion 267. The Government have yet to deliver on a proper investment strategy for this vital road. We need a Government with some foresight who seek to future-proof our infrastructure and support the development of our regional economy. The billions that, as colleagues have mentioned, are being ploughed into Crossrail in London, which already has an embarrassment of riches in terms of excellent public transport links, will see the capital pull further away from the regions, particularly the northern regions.

I welcome the Government’s decision to invest in the new railway station at Horden, which will create much needed links with towns all across the region. However, that needs to be linked with a new fleet of trains and improvements at Seaham station—and of course we need to keep the guard on the train. If we genuinely want to rebalance the economy, an airport congestion charge would help to lower airfares in under-utilised regional airports like our own at Newcastle and Durham Tees Valley while charging a premium to use the most congested and polluting airports like Heathrow. The Metro system is a fantastic service serving the people of Newcastle and Sunderland, but we need it to connect our entire region. I will never stop calling for the Metro to be extended into my constituency. However, this seems like a fanciful dream when we consider that the Government are still haggling over the replacement of the Metro trains, which are 47 years old, and rolling stock that is simply not fit for purpose. The Government need to replace their rhetoric with action.

The north-east is a fantastic region, neglected by Governments who have been unwilling to invest and support a better future. My constituency offers many hidden gems. We have a vibrant and active arts community, with the East Durham Artists Network. There are iconic public artworks such as the Tommy and Marra statues. We have an award-winning heritage coastline, with the England coastal path running through my constituency. There is the local nature reserve in Easington and our ancient woodland of Castle Eden Dene. These are hidden gems, and they will remain so until we have the infrastructure that will connect our past and our heritage to our future.

The north-east and east Durham have the skills, the history and the heritage to succeed in business, manufacturing, and tourism. What we lack is a Government who are committed to delivering real investment for our region. I commend Durham County Council and all the local authorities in the region for working around some of the most difficult budget cuts imposed by central Government, which have disproportionately affected my region and my constituency. The longer we allow the lack of investment to continue, the greater the economic divide between London and the south-east and the rest of the country will become. The Government need to future-proof our infrastructure, invest in our economy and reap the benefits of a more prosperous north-east.