Network Rail

Debate between Anne Main and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Kelvin Hopkins]

It is not my experience. I have had many contacts with those who have worked in the rail industry over the past 15 years and before, and I have heard a stream of criticism from people fearful of being exposed because they would be victimised if their names leaked out. To illustrate that point, I deliberately forget their names, but I have heard a lot of very disturbing details.

I have a passionate interest in railways and have supported them since I serviced the TUC transport committee in the 1970s. I have been a rail commuter on Thameslink for 43 years, and have travelled through St Albans in that time. I have always believed that railways are the transport of the future, which was not the view of the Department for Transport until recently—quite unexpectedly as far as it is concerned, there has been an enormous surge in rail passengers in recent years. Despite higher fares and travel problems, people have chosen to use the railways, which confirms my view that they are the transport mode of the future. There has been much investment over the past 15 years, which has been expensive, but we need a lot more of it.

Privatisation has been a hugely expensive mistake. Indeed, a Department for Transport official was heard to say privately at the time that privatisation was intended to facilitate the decline of the railways. That was the Department’s view then. It was thought that the railways were a diminishing form of transport and that eventually we would all move to our cars. The great mistake, of course, was to divide the railways between Network Rail and the train operators—to separate track and train. No other country in Europe has chosen to privatise their railways. They have seen the mistake that we made, and the problems that that caused. There have been accidents and there are serious safety problems, even now, and of course there has been a massive increase in costs.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), the Select Committee Chair, said, Railtrack was an appalling organisation. In the foyer of its headquarters it had an electronic indicator showing its share price. That is what it was concerned about—not serving the public, or safety. Eventually, of course, the previous Government were forced to abolish it and to come up with another solution. I understand that a private conversation took place in Downing street for several hours, between Stephen Byers, Tony Blair and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Tony Blair got bored after a certain time and walked out, saying “Well do what you have to do, but no nationalisation.” So they came up with the strange beast called Network Rail, which is neither nationalised nor privatised, and has no effective accountability at all. We have had not just privatisation but fragmentation—but that fragmentation was based on some economic theory, which was once explained to me by an economist. I said, “Costs were supposed to go down, but they went up massively.” “Yes,” he said, “our theory didn’t work.” Well, why do they not just reverse what they did and reintegrate and renationalise the railways?

There has been a massive increase in costs, in both public subsidy and fares, and, as Sir Roy McNulty concluded, at one point, our railways were up to 40% more expensive than continental railways. I have said in the Chamber, and to Sir Roy, whom I have met twice with my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), that the big difference between continental railways and ours is that the continental ones are publicly owned and integrated, while ours are privately owned and fragmented. I do not think that he was listening to me, because he clearly had his card marked, “Whatever you do, no public ownership: find another solution.” One of the things that he has done, which I completely disagree with—the railway unions have made the point—is to consider staffing cuts. The staff on the front line have apparently been judged very efficient. They are not the problem, or the ones who cause the costs, but they are the ones who will have to pay the price, because in place of a challenge to what Network Rail does, there will be cuts to staff in stations at night.

Network Rail is a dysfunctional organisation. It is expensive and bloated, and is a law unto itself. I have met David Higgins a couple of times, and I have a high regard for him. He is a decent person, but he has taken over an organisation that is out of control. He has had great difficulty in penetrating that appalling organisation. Network Rail is a rogue organisation, and impenetrable. I have described it as an entrenched management mafia. I understand that within the organisation David Higgins suffers a degree of hostility, because every time he tries to change anything he is resisted. That is not just within the management structures; even at board level he suffers from those problems. It is down to the Government to back him up when he wants to do things, and to break the stranglehold of the corrupt management that has been there so long.

The vice-like grip of the old guard stems back to Railtrack days, and even though it was abolished some of the same people—and the same practices and culture—carried on. As I have said, I have had dozens of conversations over 15 years with staff and former staff, and they are all fearful of being whistleblowers, and I can understand why.

[Mrs Main]

The hon. Gentleman is making a valid point. Some people have said to me that Network Rail is just Railtrack by another name, but with a large bung from the Government.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Indeed, and without any proper accountability. As the hon. Lady has said, there is no means to control it.

The bullying culture in the organisation was appalling. Anyone who stood out against, challenged or criticised it, or said that things could not be done, was sorted out by a head of human resources, who has, I think, recently been paid off with a substantial sum, rather than sacked. For years he was protected by senior management. On several occasions he sacked people and, when threatened with a tribunal, settled out of court, eventually. Just to pay off staff whom he had sacked cost many millions of pounds. Eventually he was paid off to go elsewhere. He was symbolic of a culture that was about control and bullying, and making sure that individuals looked after themselves within the organisation.

High Speed 2

Debate between Anne Main and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to have an opportunity to speak in this debate and congratulate the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on introducing it. We have had debates on the subject before in Westminster Hall, and I shall have to make some of the points that I made in those debates again, because they are significant.

I am a passionate believer in railways and have been for decades. Even when railways were unfashionable, I believed that they were the transport mode of the future, and so they have proved to be. Indeed, there is absolutely no doubt that we will have more railways in future. I believe that we should invest heavily in railways and in additional routes, but I remain a sceptic about HS2. I applaud in particular the speeches by the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry)—who has just left the Chamber—and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr Godsiff), who made many important points that I will not necessarily repeat.

The scheme is expensive, but if it was worth while I would support that expense. It also has an opportunity cost: we should be doing things now, not in decades to come. As the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire said, even getting on a train to Milton Keynes is a problem now, let alone finding a seat, and the same is true elsewhere. We need heavy investment in all sorts of railway schemes, but not necessarily this one, which will come a long time in the future, not now. However, it will not be necessary even in the future. The point has been made about Britain being a densely populated country, and many towns that need to be served by high-speed trains would not be. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) is quite right that he would not benefit at all from HS2. Indeed, getting to and from the station is a much more significant problem for those living even on the outskirts of Birmingham than getting from Birmingham to London.

We need more capacity, but for that we need to upgrade existing routes. For example, there is no question but that the east coast main line needs to be upgraded; indeed, I had a long talk about that with the chief executive at our recent conference. However, all we need is an additional viaduct to quadruple the track at Welwyn, a passing loop at Peterborough and a crossover at Newark, and then we will have no problem at all with 140 mph trains running from London to Edinburgh. To build a high-speed line carrying no more than two or three trains a day that far would be nonsense. We have the capacity now, provided we upgrade the route a little.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I completely concur with the hon. Gentleman. The same train line goes through our constituencies. I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) that we should be looking at many other areas in which to invest. We could move many more passengers around the country. The hon. Gentleman is making a perfect argument for looking at this matter again.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I thank the hon. Lady for her support. We have neighbouring constituencies and share the rail route that runs through our towns.

In the end, the problem comes down to the west coast main line, which needs the signalling to be upgraded to the most modern standard, more train paths, and to get the freight off the line. Freight and passengers do not mix. Freight trains move more slowly, and they damage the track more than the lighter passenger trains, so we need to invest in a dedicated freight line running up the backbone of Britain, from the channel tunnel to Glasgow, linking all the major conurbations. I have supported that scheme for a long time, and it would take 5 million lorries a year off the roads, as well as removing all the freight traffic from the east and west coast main lines. The passenger routes need to be separated from the freight routes and upgraded to improve capacity. I believe that that is what we need, and that is why I am sceptical about the HS2 scheme.

That freight route could be built in four years for as little as £6 billion, and it would cause no environmental difficulty because it could use existing under-utilised routes and old track bed could be brought back into use. That, and a couple of tunnels, would make the whole thing work. I have made this case time and again in the Chamber over the past 14 years, and I have mentioned it to the Minister of State. I have presented a paper on it to the Transport Select Committee. I also know engineers who have worked on the scheme and worked the details out. It just needs to be done. Fifteen of us had a meeting with the Secretary of State for Transport in the previous Government to put our case for the scheme, but the Department was so hostile because a small section of our proposed route overlapped the route it wanted to use for HS2. Even if HS2 is built, the lines could be paralleled at that point. There would not be a problem.

We need a freight route that is capable of taking full-scale lorry trailers on trains. That could never be done on existing routes without incurring the prohibitive cost of raising all the tunnels and bridges throughout the network. We need a track that has the capacity to take double-stack containers. Most of our existing routes cannot even take standard 9 feet 6 inch containers. We also need a track that has the capacity to take continental trains, which currently cannot get through our platforms because they are too wide, the gauge is too big. We need to be able to accommodate trains travelling from, say, Rome to Birmingham carrying San Pellegrino water.