High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Alison McGovern and Simon Burns

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Sir Simon Burns]

I do not want to enter a sour note in what have been harmonious proceedings so far, but I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s new clause. I am in good company, because the last two Labour Prime Minister’s shared my view: neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown ever wanted to re-privatise the railways while in power and they did nothing to re-privatise the running of them. He failed to answer my interventions on that.

I always find it slightly odd that those who—sadly, like me—are old enough to remember British Rail see it as the halcyon days when everything was wonderful: the trains ran on time; they were terribly cheap, notwithstanding the taxpayer subsidy of fares; and investment in improving the network overflowed. In fact, every time a Government—whether Labour or Conservative—was hit with an economic crisis, one of the first budgets mangled was that for nationalised industries and investment in the railways. That is why both the previous Labour Government and this Conservative Government have had to invest so much money in improving the rail network’s infrastructure: there was so little investment before privatisation.

The hon. Gentleman seems to think that it was a wonderful experience to ride the trains when they were publicly owned, but that was not the case. They were not more efficient and there was out-of-date rolling stock and collapsing infrastructure and, if we go back to 1963, a significant proportion of the network was closed down as a result of the Beeching report. I therefore really do not think that the answer is to turn the clock back to the bad old days as if they were some halcyon period that we should aspire to replicate today.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I do not mean to detain the Committee for any longer than necessary. I was not going to speak a word on this subject—I could speak on trains for about three long hours—but, given that we are talking about the past and the right hon. Gentleman alluded to his seniority in this place—

[Sir Simon Burns]

In age.

[Alison McGovern]

You say potato. I trust he will confirm that during the long years of the 1980s and 1990s when our rail system was starved of investment, he lobbied the then Conservative Government at every opportunity to invest in it.

[Sir Simon Burns]

The dates the hon. Lady chose are slightly selective, because it was not just in the ’80s and early ’90s that there was a starving of investment. I at least have the decency to spread the blame to all parties, not just the Conservative party. Rail was starved of investment in the ’70s. My first job was working in this place from 1975 to 1981, and four and a half of those years were under the Wilson and Callaghan Governments, when we ended up running to the International Monetary Fund because the country ran out of money—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady does not like the truth. The country had to go with a begging bowl to the IMF, and one of the major areas to suffer from public spending cuts was the railways.