Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Debate between Lord Morgan and Lord Moylan

Committee stage
Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morgan (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to intervene because I frequently travel on the railways of France; my wife is French. The contrast between the railways in France—and, for that matter, in Italy—and those of this country is quite extraordinary. The railways were aptly referred to by my colleague on the Back Benches as a shambles and so they have been. It is therefore highly important that we have a properly integrated and effective service, which has been part of the tradition of infrastructure of this country for a very long time. I cite someone whose name will register on the other side of the House: Winston Churchill. He was, in his time, a strong supporter of the nationalisation of the railways, partly on efficiency and technical grounds, based on his experience in Lloyd George’s coalition Government of the First World War, and partly on grounds that, fortunately, we hear less about now—questions of labour and industrial relations; I think the railways were almost next to the miners in industrial conflict in that period. We suffer by comparison with our neighbouring country colleagues—and, I hope, shortly, allies—and therefore the social and economic rationale of this Bill is profoundly important.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I start by apologising to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, if I caused any confusion; I will try to do better. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, back to his place from his excursion, no doubt by rail, in foreign parts. We missed him at Second Reading, but we had an excellent substitute in the shape of the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds.

I will make a preliminary remark at this stage, which I intend to save me making it on future groups of amendments. It is that we are, essentially, at least as far as the amendments tabled by Members from the Conservative Party are concerned, seeking information from the Government in relation to this Bill. If the Government are candid with us and give us the information that we are looking for, we will have achieved our objective on behalf of the public, and that will be the end of the matter.

I turn to the debate that has taken place so far. The part that has sparked me most, which I felt I had to answer, were the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Snape. First, I agree with him about what a degradation it is that passengers have become customers when, of course, they really ought to be passengers. But there is also the question of ideology, which I hope to take out of the debate that we will have in Committee today and on Wednesday.

Of course there is always an element of ideology when one talks about privatisation and nationalisation. The railways, which, I think, are 200 years old next year, have been nationalised for only about a quarter of their entire existence. We must not think that nationalisation is the natural condition of railways in this country. They flourished and grew and were developed in private hands; we should always remember that. The truth is that in 1945-46, the railways were nationalised largely because, after six years of war, they were bankrupt. There had been no investment in them during the whole of that period, and they had deteriorated. Nor was there any prospect of their making sufficient profit that private capital could have been recruited to make up that deficiency.

Whether the then Government believed in nationalisation as an ideological matter or not, if the railways were to continue running at all it was going to have to be in government hands. Parts of the system were privatised in the mid-1990s for equally practical reasons—we discussed some of them at Second Reading. One reason was to attempt to improve customer service through competition; one was to recruit private capital into the railways on a consistent basis, which the Government had never been able to provide during the whole of the time they owned the railways—not enough capital and never enough consistency because no budget went beyond 12 months—and another was to try, frankly, to break the grip of the rail unions on pay, so that the astonishing disparities that exist between, let us say, a train driver and bus driver, which are entirely due to the monopoly supply of labour by ASLEF, might be evened out.

What we discussed at Second Reading, I am perfectly happy to admit, is that on some of these fronts privatisation has been successful, and on others less so. If the Government, who have won a majority on the basis of promising to nationalise the train operating companies, wish to give the other side of it a kick and see if they can make it work on that basis, I do not personally object—at least not on ideological grounds. But the House is perfectly entitled to have its practical questions about how this will work addressed. That is what the amendments in this group and many that will come before the Committee later intend to address.

The Government claim that this is a very small Bill. On the other hand, when they talk to the public it is a huge Bill, “because we are nationalising the railways”. They are not really nationalising the railways, because to nationalise something you normally have to pay for it and this Bill is not something where they are paying out to shareholders. All they are doing is letting the franchises that exist expire and then tying their hands and preventing themselves from renewing them except in emergency circumstances. It is, as I would have said at Second Reading if I had had more time, less nationalisation and more like dismissing your chauffeur at the end of his contract and deciding to drive the car yourself. At least you knew the chauffeur had a driving licence and some experience and qualification in driving the car, but now we will have the Secretary of State—we were told at Second Reading that she prefers to be known as the passenger-in-chief—as, in effect, driver-in-chief as well. We will see how that works out.

It is a big thing when the Government talk to the public—it is nationalisation of the railways—but when they talk to noble Lords it is a very little thing. All the big things, we are told, will happen in the next Bill— the train further down the line, expected in roughly a year or 18 months. That is the Bill in which many of our questions should be addressed, we are told—we should not ask those questions now. I think we should ask many of those questions now, for two very good reasons. The first is that the Bill presents us with a measure regarded by the Government as preliminary to that very large Bill, so it has long-term consequences. The second—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson—is that the Bill sets up a shadow structure that could persist in operation for four or five years or even longer because, first, it will take us a year or 18 months before we see the Bill that will make these great reforms; and, secondly, as anyone who has been involved in the railways or any other large organisation will know, implementing significant change as a result of that legislation is likely to take several further years. We will have to live with the shadow structures set up as a result of the Bill for many years, and their practical consequences deserve the most careful scrutiny.