Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Debate between Lord Snape and Lord Lansley

Committee stage
Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly ask the Minister a question for when he comes to respond.

I am very supportive of what my noble friend says in his Amendment A1—that we be clear about the purpose of this legislation—but the Minister will be aware that the Bill will substantially achieve that by amending the Railways Act 1993. Section 4 of that Act, as amended, sets out the general duties of the Secretary of State and the Office of Rail and Road. While they are listed in relation to the Office of Rail and Road, they are added as duties of the Secretary of State under Section 4(3)(a).

Section 4(1)(zb) says that it shall be the duty of the Office of Rail and Road—and, by extension, the Secretary of State—

“to promote improvements in railway service performance”.

Will the Minister confirm that nothing in this Bill would change the continuing duty of the Secretary of State to promote improvements in railway service performance?

Can the Minister also say that it will not change the duties of the Secretary of State and the Office of Rail and Road otherwise listed in that subsection, including

“to promote competition in the provision of railway services for the benefit of users of railway services”.

I am interested know precisely how the Minister and the Government propose to meet that general duty, which is not changed by this Bill.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I am always fascinated when Members of the party opposite attack proposals from this side of the House on the grounds that they are ideological. What could be more ideological than the privatisation of the railway system back in 1994? In my view, Amendment A1, to which the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, spoke earlier, would create another bureaucracy—something the Conservative Party are normally against. No one would say, and I certainly would not, that a nationalised railway will be the answer to all our problems. Having worked in it, I know only too well it will not be. On the other hand, I think if you asked the average rail passenger for his or her view of the current system, they would say that anything would be better than what we have at the present time.

When it comes to ideology, I followed with interest the words of the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, who talked about failings in the increased cost of electrification leading to the delay, and in some cases the cancellation, of various electrification projects. My noble friend the Minister, who will respond, has great experience of Network Rail, and he might comment on some of the costings—many of us would take an interest in those matters. I was surprised, to say the least, at some of the expensive projects that Network Rail has embarked upon and the failure of that organisation to work within the original estimates, as far as costs are concerned. I hope it will not upset the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, too much, but his sojourn as Secretary of State for Transport is not looked upon by the railway community with any great favour. His view that in some cases electrification was unnecessary and that what was needed was bi-mode trains did not particularly please passengers. I recently moved home, from the Birmingham area to Gloucestershire, where I now have the pleasure—doubtful pleasure that it is—of travelling on Great Western’s bi-mode trains. They are often subject to cancellation and, again, the usual view from my fellow passengers is that the sooner the railway is renationalised, the better.

My noble friend Lord Berkeley is regarded as an expert on railway costings—he shakes his head, but he should not be so modest; he certainly played a major role with his views on HS2 and its finances. He mentioned the Office of Rail and Road. In the context of this amendment, can my noble friend the Minister tell me what role is envisaged for the ORR in future? I hope he will not be too offended if I say it is a misnomer: it is certainly an office for railways, given that it intervenes on various grounds—in my view, improperly, because there are proper roles for those responsible for railway safety in the industry—but appears to play no role at all as far as the road network is concerned. The fact that something approaching 2,000 people are killed on our roads on an annual basis is not something that detains the ORR. I hope my noble friend can tell me what role he envisages for the ORR in the newly nationalised railway system.

Finally, just to hark back to 1994 and the privatisation Act, fundamentally it adversely affected the railway industry. In 1994—again, I apologise for the history lesson—the railway system in Britain was regarded as the most efficient and effective in western Europe; certainly the subsidies paid to the rail industry in those days were less than those paid in countries such as France and Germany. The sectionalisation of the railway industry in the 1990s, largely at the behest of a Conservative Government—I do not make any complaints about that, as Governments have opinions—led to a much more readily identifiable system of costings for the industry overall. For the first time, we saw exactly which parts of the railway were profitable, which were not and which needed perhaps more money spent on them in the future than had previously been envisaged.

The relationship between Sir Bob Reid mark 1, the then chairman of the railways board, and Mr Nicholas Ridely, the Secretary of State at the time, was an extremely fruitful one. I am not here to announce any great fondness for Lord Ridley but I think that he appreciated what the railway industry was doing, largely at his behest at that time. I understand—although I do not wish to attribute words to him long after his death—that he was more than a little concerned about the mode of privatisation envisaged by the Government at the time, largely because of the success that he felt he had had in improving and defining the railway industry’s relationship with the Government of the day.

I hope that, when my noble friend the Minister responds to this amendment, he will appreciate at least that, whether the railways are privatised or public, all too often railway passengers—or customers, as they are somewhat laughably known these days—do not feel that their views on the provision of the service are listened to or that there is a proper voice for them. It is some years since the transport users’ consultative committees were abolished. Can my noble friend say what plans he has for better passenger consultation in the future?

In conclusion, I hope that my noble friend will not get too bogged down in the bureaucratic desires of the party opposite. Future amendments that we will come to, from the Conservative Party or its Front Bench, appear to believe that railway management has nothing better to do than put together various plans, which no doubt will be torn apart by those who feel that the railways are not delivering the service that they should. I await with interest my noble friend’s response to the amendment. I know that he will bear in mind that we ought to be concerned about the passengers of the future—the passengers of the past having been sadly neglected.