High-speed Rail Services: West Coast Main Line

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, it is this side. I have been waiting for a train for 20 minutes.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for asking the first friendly Question on railways in the almost 10 years that I have been in this House. He hits the nail on the head. What matters is capacity; this was never about speed. Many times, you get on a train at Euston and the train manager says, “If we don’t leave in two minutes, we’ll be behind the slow train to Milton Keynes or Watford”, and, similarly, from Crewe. Will the Minister liaise with the elected mayors of Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham and keep trying to work with them? They are the people who understand more about the need to move people around for business, pleasure, leisure and life opportunities.

Also, in the spirit of glasnost, can the Minister keep this House involved in future progress? As the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, just said, the money must come from somewhere. It has been found for the pay offer for the rail drivers. Perhaps it can now be found for the public who travel on those trains.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Of course the combined authority mayors have a very important part to play in determining the rail services in their areas. This Government are absolutely committed to discussing with them, on the capacity of the railway, the balance between long-distance travel and travel needed within those areas to create growth, jobs and housing. On future progress, the Government must review the railway as a whole. It is a network. As we do so, no doubt we will be asked questions about it and this House will be fully involved.

National Networks National Policy Statement

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, as it seems compulsory in this short debate to quote Voltaire, perhaps I might take us to his wonderful creation, Dr Pangloss, who continues to assert:

“All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds”


even while the horrors are descending around him. I feel there is something of that in the statement; it is a bit Panglossian. As noble Lords have already said, we face a climate emergency and crisis, and this statement is not adequate to the seriousness of the situation that we are in.

In Greater Manchester, we have made a commitment through our combined authority to become a net-zero city by 2038. It is no good us doing that if everybody else is going the opposite way. My wife is a priest in a parish underneath a motorway interchange. Motorways are, of course, exempt from all the clean air regulations that apply to many other roads. We desperately need every policy to be thoroughly tested to ensure that it will get us to net zero in the time and at the pace that we need, and at the moment, this is not good enough.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is quite right to highlight the Government’s failure to carry out the systematic review of road projects recommended by the Climate Change Committee, and addressing the risk of insufficient environmental action by the Department for Transport that was highlighted. I just want to speak about the effect that has on the levelling-up agenda, which it links to. All these actions are interactions, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Young of Old Scone, are quite right to highlight the environmental impacts of these decisions. However, there are even bigger and more important issues, which I will highlight to the House.

As an aside, my need to stay for two nights in London to take part in this debate tonight is also relevant, as well as the thousands of people who were going to come London today but who cannot do so because of a national rail strike. That is not directly connected to this but it is symptomatic of how the Government are dealing with the people who deal with that infrastructure. After two years, ASLEF has still not resolved a pay dispute, but it is not all its fault. This is on the record: I am not having a go at Avanti trains tonight. The infrastructure—Network Rail—is to blame along the way as well. Trains are blocked and lines are down and not working. I can tell you where they are; people need to know where they are. If you go to Milton Keynes or Watford, lines are down. It affects the travel anywhere around that area and affects everything coming into London, including people.

Transport System: Failings

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Snape, on securing this timely debate on the failing transport system. We are normally limited to 30 seconds of quick-fire questions to the Minister, which are batted back. We need to give the new Minister time to understand the problems that the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, had. Now that she skips around the House of Lords without the responsibility of answering for Avanti, she looks about five years younger.

I think we would all agree that the UK’s long-term economic, environmental and social objectives are not being realised at the pace required, and transport has a key role to play in meeting those strategic objectives. It

“enables productivity and economic growth as well as quality of life and social well-being”—

not my words but those of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Mind you, as the noble Lord, Lord Snape, said, there are many forms of transport, and the roads are not much better. There are smart motorways with cameras not working and no safety lanes. If you are on a smart motorway and you break down, you wonder whether your life is literally in your hands. It is unacceptable. There are prolonged lane closures and endless repairs due to budget cuts. There are speed restrictions and, in Greater Manchester, bad design. The M60, the orbital motorway that runs around it, floods around Denton in heavy rain. If there is a motorway that floods, somebody needs to think about that.

There are bus services, again mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Snape. Greater Manchester has dealt with that problem now. That is the beauty of elected mayors: collective responsibility for local people making local decisions. They have taken the buses back into local ownership. Those bus routes will now reflect the routes that they need to run on, at a price that people can afford. They will give a better service and will be integrated with other services. In Greater Manchester, we are now working to try to integrate them with the taxis and trains, trying to get something like an Oyster card going.

As I travel down to London daily on the two-hour grind—well, two hours on a good day, normally two hours 20 minutes upwards—I listen to podcasts. The last one I heard was from Transport for the North, which is chaired by the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, who is in his place today. They had Andy Mellors, the MD of Avanti, on. It is worth a listen. Mayor Burnham, and Mayor Rotheram from Liverpool, were questioning Andy about tickets sold for a Saturday service. They were asking him, “When are your trains cancelled for a Saturday service?” He said, “We cancel those trains on Friday afternoon”. They said, “When do you stop selling tickets for those trains on Saturday?” He said, “At 2 pm on the Saturday afternoon”. So Avanti was selling tickets for a train that was never going to run.

That particular Saturday, Chelsea Football Club—which I have no love for—was in Manchester to play a football match. There were hundreds and hundreds of supporters trapped in Manchester; you could not get back to London. Following that meeting, they asked the Minister to remove the franchise immediately. It is very funny: I think that that meeting was on Tuesday or Wednesday, and on Friday ASLEF was called in, and—surprise, surprise—£600 a shift was offered to ASLEF drivers to work weekends, which they gratefully accepted without any negotiation. That has made it a bit easier.

But trains are being cancelled. I got the 8.04 this morning; the next train and the one after that were cancelled. Had I not made the 8.04, I would not be stood here this afternoon speaking in this debate. I have heard today of Labour’s plans to run down the contracts of failing companies over five years, but I have to say that that will only add to the misery of thousands of travellers. I will try to explain why.

Avanti trains have three types of travel—actually, they have four. They have standard class, upper premium and first class. They also have another class: sitting on the floor from London to Manchester, which happens very often when trains have been cancelled and they declassify and allow complete overcrowding on them. I have photographs of me sat there. People who know me find it highly amusing to take pictures of me, sat on the floor, demanding I do something about it—which, unfortunately, I do not have the power to do.

If you go in standard class, you buy your ticket and sit down, and then the messages begin to come: “Today, we are not taking cash. Today, we are not taking card. Today, the coffee machine is not working. Today, the toilets are not working”. It goes on and on. These are new trains. You go to upper premium, which is a standard class ticket that you can buy in advance, pay £25 and sit in a first-class seat with a table and wifi. Unfortunately, in the last pay round, they put an extra £5 on that. It is now £30 to sit in the same seat you sat in last week, with no additional benefits. First class is apparently even better: “Chef’s not turned up today. No service. Food has not been delivered today. No service. Water leak in the kitchen. No service”. It is just unacceptable all around.

I wrote down a point about staff morale and the noble Lord, Lord Snape, has done it. I know that train operators do their best, but they do not: if you talk to train managers who have been there for 20 or 25 years, they will tell you that they are absolutely terrified of turning up for work. They have no idea whether the stock will be there and the kit will work, and they take abuse from the public, day in, day out. That is absolutely unacceptable. They do a great job and should be supported more. Just to say that the contracts can run down is an abrogation: thousands of people go up and down every day and they deserve a better service.

Finally, Trooping the Colour is this year, on 15 June. I know lots of people who have tickets and are going to it. Unfortunately, on that Saturday, there are no direct trains to London from Manchester: you can go via Wolverhampton or have a double diversion at Crewe. It is absolutely incomprehensible that this company can keep the contract. I hope the Minister will keep the pressure on—because I know, as we say up north, that he gets it—and does something to accelerate the removal of this contract or demands immediate improvements with huge penalties if that does not happen.

Train Operating Company Contracts

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, we will hear from the Liberal Democrats and then the Conservative Benches.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

From this side, we might rename the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, Baroness Mystic Meg. We are talking about contracts and railways, and, out of the hat, two days ago, Avanti has now decided to pay overtime premiums of £600 a day for drivers. Clearly, this is a last desperate act of the Government and Avanti trains to keep the contract. Last week, Transport for the North—chaired by a Conservative Peer—unanimously agreed with Burnham and Rotheram, the mayors from the north, that that contract should be taken away. This is clearly unacceptable. We talk about the NHS, care workers, firefighters and the police, and, as a last desperate act, Avanti is offering £600 a shift for driving a train at weekends—it is absolutely scandalous.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I can only repeat what I have said before in the House to noble Lords. The decision to award a contract to First Trenitalia was contingent on the operator continuing to win back the confidence of passengers. The Minister with responsibility for rail and officials regularly meet with FirstGroup and Avanti senior management to understand the challenges and to hold them to account for issues within their control. However, I hear what the noble Lord says.

Avanti Trains

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

As I referred to in my opening response, no payments have been made to Avanti under the service quality regime thus far. The department considers the comments from the leak to be a very serious issue, and expects the highest standards of culture and leadership from Avanti’s operators and senior management. We are extremely disappointed by the tone expressed in the leaked presentation. Officials have met their counterparts at First Rail Holdings, Avanti’s parent company, and spoken to the managing director to convey the seriousness of this issue. The Rail Minister has also met the chief executive of FirstGroup.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, if the House were sitting for five days next week and the Minister had Questions every day, and he arrived six minutes late on Monday, eight on Tuesday, 10 on Wednesday, 12 on Thursday and 14 on Friday, with the remarkable phrase, “I apologise for my lateness to arrive at the Dispatch Box and hope it does not disrupt the House too much,” one of two things would happen. We would have a whip-round for an alarm clock for him, or the Chief Whip would be looking for a new Minister, because that is accountability. Is nobody holding Avanti trains responsible? Those times I have given to the House are times of trains being late that do not qualify for any payment whatsoever. The long-suffering public are putting up with this day in and day out. Does the Minister think I am overegging it? The 9.35 for Euston was 21 minutes late in this lunchtime.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

The decision to award the contract to First Trenitalia was contingent on the operator continuing to win back the confidence of passengers, but as with other operators, it is a combination of things. Its train crew issues are linked to its continued lack of driver overtime and ongoing industrial action. There are many issues that contribute to this. It is not always the operators’ fault.

Avanti West Coast

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Goddard of Stockport]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how they justify further extending the contract for Avanti West Coast, given its service record over the last six months.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

My Lords, Avanti was awarded a six-month contract in October 2022 to provide the opportunity for its recovery plan to yield demonstrable improvements. It has done this, with services increased and delays and cancellations reduced. In this next six-month period, Avanti will need to do more to win back passengers with a reliable and dependable service. With accountability comes the chance to put things right.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I thank the Minister for another magnificent effort in defending the indefensible. My question is quite simple. Will she agree to meet with me, as a frequent flyer on Avanti trains, to hear the other side of the coin? Tuesday’s Hansard reports her commenting that not all train delays are due to Avanti, which is true. The other side of the coin is that Avanti has completely changed the rosters and rotas for staff. They are now on 10 and 11-hour shifts, meaning that they have a 20-minute window at any station they land at before leaving it. If the train is 30 minutes late, there is no time to change. The next train is then late, and it is an ever-decreasing circle. This is affecting the staff.

The Minister also commented about sickness levels. Staff on Avanti trains feel undervalued and overworked, which cannot be a recipe for an outward-facing railway system. If Avanti cannot treat its staff with respect when all they want to do is give us a good service, somebody else should be looking after that railway system.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I would be very happy to meet with the noble Lord to discuss Avanti, but I hope to offer him something slightly better—a meeting with the Rail Minister. I will extend that offer to all noble Lords so that we might discuss the issues that they are experiencing on Avanti. He might be able to reassure the noble Lord that we are taking these issues very seriously and want Avanti to put them right.

Train Services: North of England

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for reminding me of that. I will go and give the Rail Minister a bit of a kick and see if we can get him on his way.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I think the Minister will agree with me that one of the ways the railways could be improved would be by stopping the strike action and getting things back to normal. On that basis, could she tell me whether, on strike days, the Government still pay subsidies to Avanti trains for providing no service whatever, or whether they withhold the subsidy that it gets on a daily basis for running the railways? I do not expect the number right now, but to within £10 million would be helpful.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am not sure about the subsidies to which the noble Lord refers. There are complex contractual arrangements around what Avanti is entitled to, and the Government make sure that we abide by those contracts. The key here—I do not think I have emphasised this sufficiently previously—is that we need to ensure that we get the workers back to work and get the workforce reform that we need. I am very concerned that rail workers are being led by their union leaders towards a point where there will be no long-term jobs for them, and no railway system for passengers either. It is not the case that when a railway worker strikes they lose their pay just for that day; we are also weakening the system as a whole for the future.

Great British Railways and Rail Services in the North

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Goddard of Stockport]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of their decision not to introduce a new Transport Bill on (1) the establishment of Great British Railways, and (2) plans to improve rail services in the north of England and Northern Powerhouse Rail.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I begin by thanking all noble Lords who are about to speak in this important debate, the Minister who will reply and the Library for its background notes. The transport Bill was intended to improve transport across the UK, deliver cleaner, safer services and enable more innovation. It would provide a new body, Great British Railways, with the powers it needed to act as a single national leader for railways. Can the Minister assure this House that legislation will be brought forward in the next Session—that is, 2023—to ensure this happens? Without Great British Railways, the future of our railways cannot move forward in a joined-up and cohesive manner.

Noble Lords may be surprised to hear that tonight I am not going to rant and rave about Avanti trains, no matter how tempting that might be. However, I will ask the Minister some questions later. I hope the House will also agree that my contribution will not be just another northern whinging exercise—far from it.

The north is proud of the giant steps we continue to take to deliver a comprehensive, integrated transport system. Genuine real-time integration of buses with trams and trains is enabling commuters to get to the new jobs being created, offering new opportunities for businesses to expand and grow, and allowing people access to much-needed green spaces and countryside. A successful rail service is vital to delivering those objectives. In Greater Manchester, 65% of journeys are still made by car and this is not helping our decarbonising agenda, which is another strategic objective.

These are a series of interconnecting plans to give the public and business the greatest chance of recovering from the pandemic and at the same time improve the quality of life for all our people. Despite everything, including massive disruption, train usage is rising faster in the north than in any other region. Of course, funding is the key to any improvements and comparing funding for the north with that for the south must make difficult reading for any compassionate Government committed to levelling up. London has seen £19 billion for Crossrail and £6 billion spent on subsidising London Underground during Covid, to name but two. Compare that spend with any other region in the country, never mind the north, and noble Lords will see our frustrations.

I shall ask the Minister four questions regarding northern railways. First, will the Government permit train operators negotiating freedoms to resolve rest-day working so a reliable services can be restored with immediate effect, especially in the vital pre-Christmas and new year period? Secondly, will the Government consider publishing a public assessment—in mid-January, for instance—of whether Avanti West Coast and TransPennine Express, both run by the same company, are delivering on the promised service restoration? For the avoidance of doubt, Avanti has promised, from 11 December, three trains an hour from London to Manchester without fail. Thirdly, will the Government, with immediate effect, place TransPennine Express on similar notice if, as with Avanti, its December timetable is not delivered? If they fail, both should be stripped of their contracts. Sooner or later, the Government must act. When will the Government bring forward legislation for the reforms set out in the Keith Williams report 18 months ago, which will bring track and train, profit and loss, and revenue and costs together, enabling meaningful devolution to combined authority mayors?

Everyone agrees that the railway needs investment and modernising, and increased investment has a price to be paid. We know that modernising may mean fewer people and different working conditions, but have we learned nothing from the 1970s and 1980s? Head-on confrontation benefits no one, and the people who suffer are the usual suspects—the hard-working general public. Surely, the role of government is to govern: is it too much to ask, in 2023, to have a functioning, reliable rail service for the UK?

West Coast Main Line

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

It is the turn of this side; noble Lords from other parties have had three questions on the trot.

Can the Minister be brought back to the here and now? There should have been a national strike tomorrow; it has been transferred to next week, which is the run-up to Remembrance Sunday. On Monday, there is rail strike and a Tube strike; on Tuesday, there are no tickets for sale for the north on Avanti trains; and on Wednesday, there is a national strike. I spoke to the manager of the Union Jack Club this morning, who told me that this is going to have devasting effects on bookings by people trying to come down for Remembrance Sunday. So what can the Government do to stop this indiscriminate guerrilla strike action that is bringing misery to hundreds of thousands of people at the very time of remembrance? This is a time when people want to remember the freedoms we got from people who died in the First and Second World Wars and other conflicts throughout the world: freedom to move, freedom to associate with each other and freedom to come to remembrances. These union barons must be held to account for at a whim changing these strikes to make it more difficult for people to travel at times when they need to travel—it has to stop.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Perhaps the noble Lord would like to cross the Floor.

The noble Lord is completely right: strikes are hugely disruptive to people who want to come to Remembrance Sunday and related events around that time, and to those who want to go to school or work. We remain committed to trying to resolve these strikes; we do not want them to continue. However, we must have an agile and modern workforce so that we can deliver a modern seven-day railway. If the unions stand in the way of that, we cannot the deliver the passenger services that are required.

West Coast Main Line

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I hope that it will not be me personally, as I am not the Rail Minister, though it will be the Government. However, Great British Railways will be a body set up specifically for all those things that the noble Lord has pointed out, which will be to the benefit of passengers and freight since it will bring everything under one overarching umbrella. Will the Secretary of State and any Rail Minister at that time micromanage the network? Absolutely not. However, there will be one guiding mind. That is our ambition for Great British Railways.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I fear the Minister will never be able to see the virtues of Stockport, which is a vibrant community and is business- friendly. On Saturday, eight trains to Manchester were cancelled; on Friday, two; and on Thursday, one. The 2.40 was cancelled at short notice today as well. Every time a train is cancelled, hundreds of real people are disadvantaged. Is the Minister certain that there is not a sensible alternative to handing over HS2 to Avanti, as the noble Lord, Lord Snape, spoke about? You would not put Herod in charge of an orphanage, would you?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, Avanti West Coast is not the only train operating company currently facing difficulties, which are principally due to the uptick in Covid, as I suggested. There is a downward trend in the public performance measure and the moving annual average across all train operating companies, but it is expected that this will be proactively mitigated. The DfT will actively manage this process through the schedule 7.1 sections in the franchise agreements to make sure that we hold people to account, get the performance data, and understand why things went wrong and what we can do to fix them. Our goal is to deliver for passengers and for freight.