Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Andrew Snowden Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you will perhaps be relieved to know that I will not detain the House particularly long. I rise to support the Government, but also to say something in favour of the motion in the Secretary of State’s name relating to Lords amendment 2.

I read the Lords debate on their amendments 1 and 2, and I sympathise with the notion that passengers receiving the poorest service from a train operating company may wish its franchise to be terminated early. However, the point of this Bill is not simply to take over the worst franchises, but to recognise that the private operation of the passenger rail service has delivered a poorer service for passengers in general, and that the remedy is to return all passenger franchises to public ownership and closer control.

I say to Conservative Members that the British public spoke on this issue at the last election. If we look at any of the research and analysis on the passenger rail service, it is abundantly clear that not only do the vast majority of the British public want to take our railways back into public ownership and control, but the majority of Conservative supporters want the same thing. Perhaps that tells us a great deal about why the party opposite is the party opposite—why Conservative Members no longer sit on the Government Benches.

The hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) made many references to ideology. I do not know how many times he mentioned the word, but I ask him to cast his mind back to the Railways Act 1993: if ever there was an act of ideology, that was it. John Major took a step that even she whose portrait must be removed was not prepared to take—she recognised that it was a ridiculous step to take. I suspect that the mover of the motion in the other place was seeking a device to disrupt the orderly transfer of passenger rail back into public ownership, which is best achieved with the least cost to the taxpayer by doing so as each franchise contract expires.

I am heartened to hear Conservative Members be so evangelical about the issues of performance and punctuality. Where were they for the past 14 years? Why were they not doing anything about those issues?

[Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Andy McDonald]

I will certainly give way. I look forward to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Snowden]

The hon. Member has mentioned removing franchises based on performance and passenger satisfaction, but c2c—which operates with a 94% passenger approval rating—will be one of the first franchises to be removed. I actually think that Lords amendment 2 is quite sensible, in that it looks at how we prioritise. Some franchise operators operate very well-recommended and well-approved services.

[Andy McDonald]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to tell us where he thinks the dividends go when they ship out of the system. The Conservative party was quite content to see massive dividends paid out to Abellio, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Deutsche Bahn, and every other nation state on the planet that could subsidise its own transport system because of the ridiculous system imposed on this country’s railways by the Conservative party. Rather than serving passengers and performance, what we got was money shipping out of our system for decades, subsidising other nation states’ transport systems—if that is not a good example of barmy ideology, I do not know what is. We are correcting that, and rightly so.

The Minister in the Lords, my noble Friend Lord Hendy, said that

“the Government do not believe that we should either pay compensation for termination or keep paying fees to owning groups of train operating companies when we do not need to.”

He also clarified that some contracts may end early if their performance requires it:

“if we have the opportunity to put passengers out of their misery by ending a failing operator’s contract early and bringing their services into public ownership, we will do just that.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 November 2024; Vol. 840, c. 1519.]

The Government are clear that they are moving ahead with restoring passenger rail to public ownership. They have a clear plan to do so, but Lords amendment 2 creates obstacles to doing that. It is not in the interests of passengers, and I hope the House will throw it out when we vote later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I remind colleagues that their contributions should relate to the Lords amendments.

[Mr Snowden]

I want to speak to Lords amendment 2. I will briefly make a few points first, but I fully understand that I should not go through the debate we have already had on this Bill. That debate was about Conservative Members’ belief that we will drive improvement in the railways by putting the passenger at the heart of things, and by ensuring greater competition and private sector investment, while the Labour party argued through its manifesto that it can do that through the nationalisation of rail. We have had that debate, but Lords amendment 2 is about pragmatic ways in which the proposals can be better implemented, with the passenger at the heart of them. I fully accept that we are not having the debate over again; in fact, it is quite refreshing to see the Labour party not breaking one of its manifesto promises, but instead actually pushing on with the Bill.

As I said in my intervention, c2c has a 94% passenger satisfaction rate, but it is one of the first franchises that would lose its licence. Labour’s Lord Snape said on 6 November that it would make no sense to remove a franchise such as the Greater Anglia one, which has great public support for the way in which it operates its services. In response, the Minister said that amendment 1 would not make sense, because we could simply play the game of targets. However, the Government can play the game of targets whether or not the amendment is made. It does not really matter whether the Government can stack targets or cut data a certain way. We need to call things out, and put passengers and improved services at the heart of the Bill. Lords amendments 2 and 1 are pragmatic steps to take. We accept that the Labour party is implementing a manifesto promise, but the Lords have made reasonable recommendations on how things could be done better, and how we can put the passenger at the heart of the Bill. The amendments look at where passengers already get good services, and stage changes in a way that will not be disruptive to passengers who already get a good service on the railway network.

[Mark Ferguson (Gateshead Central and Whickham) (Lab)]

I wish to associate myself with the comments of the Secretary of State for Transport. Having heard what she said about some of the amendments from the other place, I can say that she is a far more generous person than I am. I have not been in this place long, but I can certainly tell mischief when I see it—mischief from the other place and, I am afraid, from the Opposition—because the intention here is not to put the passenger at the heart of the Bill. If Conservative Members, when in government, had genuinely wanted to put passengers at the heart of the railways, they might have acted differently over 14 years of abject failure. I spend a lot of time on the railways, as do many Members across the House when travelling between Westminster and their constituency. I see that failure daily, as I have done most of my adult life, at times when, regrettably, the Conservative party has been in government. Conservative Members cannot even explain how much the amendments would cost.

As I said, rail privatisation has been a failure. The Lords amendments do not seek to overturn the decision of this House—of course not—but they would cause considerable delay. However, rail changes made by this Government will be meaningful, unlike those made by the previous Government. Does anyone remember Great British Railways, which the former Member for Welwyn Hatfield was incredibly proud of? Except there was a problem: the railways were not great, and quite often they were not owned by British companies, although I suppose we do at least have to give him the fact that they were railways. Under this Government, there will be great British railways, with one single train operator, and we will deliver a fundamentally better service.

I come from a part of the country that is proud of our railway tradition. George Stephenson, the father of the railways, came from not too far from my constituency, and each week I walk over a high level bridge designed by his son, Robert Stephenson, which still carries trains to this day. The Stephensons would be appalled to see the state of the British railway system today. We transported railways around the world, yet those travelling across Europe or Asia today will see rail systems that are far beyond what we have in the home of railways. That is a national embarrassment.

Finally, Lords amendment 3 on the public sector equality duty is excellent, and I will support it. The point was well made earlier today, during debate on the ten-minute rule Bill, about the indignities that disabled people too often face on the railways. I thank Members from the other place for tabling that amendment, and the Secretary of State for indicating the Government’s support. Ultimately, the public sector equality duty is a high bar, as it should be, and as this Labour Government bring other services back in house, I would like that public sector equality duty to be applied to them.