East Coast Main Line Franchise

Lord Beith Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid), but it is more of a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend—and namesake—the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris). I know that that can sometimes be confusing, particularly when we speak consecutively.

I congratulate those hon. Members who are sponsoring the motion on their success in getting the Backbench Business Committee to agree to its being debated today, and particularly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), the lead sponsor. The whole House will be aware of her tenacity on this issue, and I commend her on her opening remarks. As she mentioned, she is a regular user of the east coast main line service from Edinburgh Waverley to London King’s Cross, as I am. So we have both been made aware at first hand, as I am sure other hon. Members have, of the benefits of the service to Scotland, the north-east of England, Yorkshire and beyond. I am sure that, like me, she appreciates the general reliability, frequency, excellent customer service and value for money the service provides to its passengers.

As a state-owned service, the ethos of putting the customer first and ensuring the most effective and efficient use of public resources is the prime objective of the company. Of course, private companies can be just as good, but their first loyalty is to their shareholders, and any profits not reinvested go on share dividends, often to the fat cats of the City of London. The difference with East Coast being a subsidiary of Directly Operated Railways, a holding company owned by the Department for Transport, is that its surpluses are paid back to the Exchequer. As Labour Members have said throughout this debate, £800 million has been returned to the taxpayer since 2009. Moreover, East Coast has invested some £40 million in the service, including in infrastructure and asset improvements. It also has the best punctuality there has been on the line since the service was privatised, and all passenger surveys and polling indicates that the overwhelming majority of people are satisfied with the service and wish it to remain in public ownership. So why are the Conservative-led Government, supported, as we have heard, by their compliant fellow travellers in the Liberal Democrats, intent on reprivatising what is evidently a most successful, lucrative and popular public service?

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman say why the preceding Labour Government’s policy was to reprivatise this service?

[Graeme Morrice]

We will hear shortly from the Labour Front-Bench spokesperson on what our policy is on this matter, but I know what it is and I concur with it: retaining this service in public ownership.