Localism Bill

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this amendment, but I feel that I must reply to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. Like many here, I have great regard for the individuals at London TravelWatch and the work that they do. However, the very citation from ATOC carries its own message that, of all the groups in London, the train operating companies would prefer the body which they find they can more easily ignore to the one that they must take seriously. That is entirely in character with the functioning of the TOCs and ATOC. It is precisely to have a much bigger impact on behalf of passengers that it makes sense to make this move from TravelWatch, integrating it into the GLA.

I may have misheard the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, but he seemed to suggest that, if there was that integration into the GLA, there would be a fracturing of the transport voice. Yet the GLA is already holding TfL rigorously to account. I was on the board of Transport for London and I can tell your Lordships which body it was afraid of—it was very much the GLA. It is the ability of that body to pound away on behalf of the passenger that would be gained by this shift, so I support this amendment.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I hope that the Government’s reservations, to which the noble Lord, Lord Tope, referred, are indeed strong. This needs to be rejected. I do not want to repeat everything that my noble friend Lord Faulkner said but I would go for the fundamental point. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, since he is a battle-scarred veteran of the Public Bodies Bill, will probably recall my advocacy of separate representation for the consumer interest in publicly provided bodies and in those which are regulated publicly. The Government wisely backed off from including in lists various bodies, including Passenger Focus, which could have been abolished, while for those that they are going to change they have provided an alternative but still independent body, either in another quango or in the third sector. It is a central provision of public services or those that are regarded as public utilities in this country that we have a separate consumer organisation. That applied when we set up the nationalised industries, when we privatised and liberalised those industries and when we passed the Greater London Authority Act to set up that body. It should continue to apply.

I suppose that I should apply two past interests here, both as a consumer champion as chair of Consumer Focus and as the Minister who, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, will recall, brought the Greater London Authority Bill through this House. He will also recall that it was the second longest non-financial Bill ever—the absolutely longest, the Government of India Bill in 1935, was never implemented. The implementation of the Greater London Authority Act has left some problems but I do not believe that this is one of them.

It is important that we retain the distinction between the provider, and those who oversee the provider, and the consumer interest. The mayor is responsible for the provision and the London authority for overseeing that provision. In that sense, they are not much different from a private sector board as regards their consumers, so I am afraid that it does not impress me that all parties on the Greater London Assembly welcome and support this move. It is no more impressive to me than if there was a unanimous vote on the board of Thames Water to say that it wished to abolish the Consumer Council for Water, or that Michael O’Leary and the board of Ryanair said that they wished to abolish the Air Transport Users Council or—to go back to my past interests—that the boards of British Gas or npower should say that they wished to abolish Consumer Focus and any successor powers.

We must distinguish between the role of a consumer interest representative and those who are providing, or are part of the governance structure of those who provide, a service. Indeed, in London, predecessor bodies to this go back to the private company of London Transport, through the nationalisation process, through the GLC, through the abolition of the GLC, into the establishment of TfL and through to the London authority and the 1999 Bill. That was sensible. London Assembly members may well have reservations about aspects of this and may well feel that some changes need to be made—that might be right—but this clause does not say that, nor does it say that there should be some rationalisation between the London authority and Passenger Focus.

It might be conceivable that the transfer of this body into Passenger Focus was a rational move; I do not personally think so, but it would still provide an independent consumer voice focus. Actually, however, for the reasons that my noble friend points out, London is unique in this response. London is the only city in this country where the vast majority of people go to work by public transport. TfL has responsibilities way beyond the bus and train area—for roads, taxis and so on. As has also been pointed out, people outside London, and therefore with no voice in the election of GLA members, have an interest in this. So there is no principled argument that would call for the abolition of this body. I would be prepared to consider, and I suspect that the Government would be prepared to consider, something less than that, which allowed for easier changes, but the straight abolition of an independent consumer voice in the most complex, most difficult and in many respects most integrated transport system in the whole country would be a seriously retrograde move and I hope that the Minister will soundly reject it.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Kramer]

109: After Clause 217, insert the following new Clause—
“Transport for London: Rail Authority for London
(1) Section 196 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (power of Greater London Authority to give instructions or guidance to Franchising Director) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1), for “The Authority may give instructions or guidance to” substitute “Transport for London shall be”.
(3) Omit subsections (2) to (4).
(4) In subsection (5)—
(a) in the opening words, omit from “give” to the end;(b) in paragraph (a), for “prevent or seriously hinder him from complying” substitute “fail to comply”;(c) omit paragraph (b) (but not the “or” following it).(5) In subsection (6), for “the Authority” (in both places) substitute “Transport for London”.
(6) In subsection (7), for “instructions or guidance may be given” substitute “the Franchising Director shall act”.
(7) In subsection (8), for “the Authority” (in both places) substitute “Transport for London”.
(8) Omit subsection (9).
(9) For the title substitute “Transport for London to be the Franchising Director”.”

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, this amendment follows on nicely from the previous amendment. It also illustrates the general confusion over the structure of transport in the London area. The purpose of the amendment is to remove from the Department for Transport the responsibility for rail franchising within the inner suburban area of London and transfer it to Transport for London. It is wholly within the spirit of the Bill to take from the centre and give to a regional or more local body powers that it can exercise more effectively and more efficiently for the benefit, in this case, of passengers.

Noble Lords will know that at present Transport for London effectively either manages or in some way regulates the Tube, the Docklands Light Railway, bus services, river transport services and taxi services, but when it comes to rail, it has only a very limited purview. It directly manages London Overground, which is one very minor line, and it will have oversight of Crossrail once it is completed. However, when it comes to the inner suburban rail services that criss-cross much of the London area, Transport for London’s role is extremely limited. The Department for Transport lets and manages the franchises and Transport for London can simply specify and pay for either an increment to that service or—terrible bureaucratic word—a decrement to that service. Essentially, the consequence of that has not been very beneficial to passengers.

I would argue that London is different from much of the rest of the country when it comes to rail. Fourteen per cent of Londoners use the National Rail network to commute daily to work. Indeed, outside of London proper, in the south-east and east of London there are many more who use that rail network to commute to work within the London area. That makes it distinctly different from any other part of the country. There are 10 train operating companies, so it is a highly fragmented service. Demand in the area is so inelastic that the kind of competitive pressures that have effect in the rest of the country are virtually irrelevant when it comes to London, where demand is so high, capacity is constantly at breaking point and there is always a need for additional capacity. So the competitive issue that exists elsewhere is not relevant within London itself.

I said that there were 10 different train operating companies. That means 10 different brandings, 10 different fare structures, 10 different forms of marketing, 10 different commercial strategies and 10 different operating time horizons. As noble Lords will know, the McNulty review recommends that more power should go to the train operating companies and franchises should be longer. So trying to create an integrated London Transport service within this environment, where rail is so fragmented and Transport for London has so little direct power, is very significantly undermined. If your Lordships would like an example of what this does to, as it were, disadvantage passengers, I draw your attention to the Oyster card. I should declare that I am a former member of the board of Transport for London and was very involved with the rail side. Rows went on year after year to try to get any form of Oyster card available on National Rail. Then we got “pay as you go”, which most people have now enjoyed only for the past couple of years. Technically it could have been done very easily, but the issue was never high on the priority list for the Department for Transport, which had to be involved because of the franchising structure. The TOCs saw it as a way to leverage money out of London Transport. The whole process was very much to the disadvantage of passengers. If your Lordships want another quick example, just go down to Waterloo. The next time you are stuck on a train that is slow because there is no space to get into Waterloo station, you will see that there is an empty platform. When Eurostar moved to St Pancras, one of the international platforms was, at great expense to the Government, converted to domestic use. The department has never managed to get its act together to put that into play for passengers. That is another huge, wasted asset. Frankly, this is repeated all over London.

Sometimes I seethe with envy when I talk to transport friends in Berlin as they are able to work with the bus and taxi services so that late-night trains are met by a co-ordinated timetable of buses and taxis, ensuring that train passengers have a seamless journey. The battle in London has been to look at travel as a single journey, whether you use one mode or multiple modes to get to your destination, and to create that kind of integration. It has been phenomenally successful, but leaving out rail makes no sense.

Sometimes people say that people from outside London use the services so they must not be too London biased. We can give them a voice by putting some directors from outside London onto the relevant board within Transport for London. It is also true that the department will continue to have a voice, but the balance needs to be shifted towards an entity which has a genuine interest, in a detailed way, in the quality of service, as Transport for London does.

[Lord Spicer]

Is the empty platform at Waterloo, which the noble Baroness has been describing, the reason why plays are being put on there now?

[Baroness Kramer]

Plays are not taking place on the adapted platform but it would be better to use it for a play than nothing at all. It is absolutely ridiculous.

I have two more points to make. Some people say that there must have been a lot of thought about how the franchises should be divided up and a reason for not giving far more influence over the rail franchising process to Transport for London. The rationale was, “We don’t like Ken Livingstone”. When the GLA Bill went through this House, particularly when TfL was under review, there was an attempt to minimise the London influence. We had the disastrous Tube public/private partnership, which was a key part of the structure and which ensured that Transport for London really could not manage the system as a whole.

There was very little appreciation of the benefits of integration. That is one of the other pieces, if you like, which came out of much of that kind of thinking. We have all moved beyond that and recognise the benefits of integration and the benefits of regional management. I argue that at this time, when the transport infrastructure in this area is desperately overstretched, when we really are in a situation of economic recovery in some areas of London and you practically have to strap people to the roofs of transport carriages, we need to maximise the use of that infrastructure. Therefore, the logic is to change the franchising responsibility, which is what this amendment attempts to do.

[Lord Berkeley]

This is an interesting amendment. I was particularly seized of the way in which the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, proposed it because, following the previous amendment and the discussion about London Travel Watch—I am sorry that I was not in the Chamber at that time—I was sent a map of the extent of London Travel Watch, which goes well beyond the GLA boundary in many areas. I do not think it goes all the way out to Banbury but it goes quite a long way in that direction; it also goes a long way west and a long way south. It made me think that if this amendment were accepted, one would end up with the same kind of problem. On the main network, not many trains terminate within the GLA boundary. I believe Croydon must be near the edge—I am no expert on Croydon but perhaps some of my noble friends could confirm that—but I do not think that any services that go through East Croydon terminate there. So there will be a debate between those who want long-distance services as frequently as possible, stopping as infrequently as possible, between Croydon and the centre of London, for example, and those who live within the GLA boundary who want a regular stopping service.

The other problem, which is particularly evident on the lines south of London, is that in many places you can get to two or three different London termini by train. It is a lovely service if it works—it usually does—but it is a very complex network. It compares strongly with the Underground lines which, on the whole—apart from the Northern line—may serve two destinations at each end, but not three or four. I can see a time when Transport for London might say that it would like to rationalise the services south of London, for example, by making them more frequent, but going to fewer destinations, and having cross-platform interchange in some places, because it thought that would be better for its electorate.

I mentioned the question of through-services and the debate regarding them and the shorter-term. There is also the question of access for freight—I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group—although there is not much freight south of the Thames, so we can probably forget about that. However, I also recall a big debate during the many Crossrail debates, because when TfL thought it was in charge of Crossrail and the Great Western, it started off on the basis that it would have the sole use of the slow lines, to Maidenhead or Reading, and all the other trains could have the fast lines. TfL thought that was a brilliant idea, because it would run a very frequent service—there would probably be those lines of heavy cables that you see between London Underground lines—but it completely forgot that those lines are run as a network of four tracks. If anything goes wrong on one track, the trains are immediately switched to the other ones to keep the service going. I did a calculation at the time, which indicated that if Crossrail had got its way the passenger operators would have had to cut their service frequency to places such as Cardiff, Oxford and Bristol by at least 50 per cent, if not more. Only half the freight trains would have gone up that line, and when one of the lines was dug up, they would just have to stop.

That is the logical consequence of splitting responsibilities. There is work to be done with TfL and the Department for Transport to take into account the needs of people who live within the GLA area and then we can have a big debate on how the available capacity is shared out between the department’s view, which is, one hopes, long-distance, and TfL’s, which has a local view. As for giving the train operators—all 10 of them, as the noble Baroness said—more responsibility, I think that is a bit dangerous when so much co-ordination is needed. It is a debate that we need to have. I am not sure whether this is the right amendment, but I think it is very useful to be having this discussion.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I was tempted to speak by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, as she was tempted to speak by me on the previous amendment. I have a great deal of sympathy with the points she is making. I will start with a correction—also for the noble Lord, Lord Spicer—that it is not only one platform at Waterloo that is out of use; it is platforms 21, 22, 23 and 24. I think I am right in saying that it is 21 and 22 which are being used by the production of “The Railway Children”, which I can recommend unreservedly. I speak as a trustee of the National Rail Museum, as it is very much our play.

[Baroness Kramer]

Without being a train wonk on this, there is only one platform that has been converted for domestic use. The other platforms could be, but that work has not been done.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, is quite correct. As I said, I have a great deal of sympathy with the point she makes but my concern is that the introduction of a new franchising authority, which the amendment proposes, would be in danger of creating greater fragmentation of the railway than we have at present. I agree with her that there are probably too many train operating companies. It is the Government’s intention that franchises should be longer than they have been in the past, and I strongly support that. However, to introduce a new franchising operator could lead to confusion and fragmentation. My noble friend Lord Berkeley refers to services that serve London but go well beyond. The classic example of that is the Thameslink line, which starts in Bedford, goes through Luton and St Albans—none of which is covered by Transport for London or the GLA—and then goes south from Croydon to Brighton.

Services like that need to be looked at in a regional context, and I am not certain that looking at them in a London context would make a great deal of sense. However, I pay tribute to what Transport for London has done in the development of its Overground service. The opening up of the East London line is an extraordinarily successful venture. The trains are very popular and they provide new journey opportunities for people who probably did not make those journeys, or tried to do it by car, or struggled on buses. It deserves to be commended for that.

I agree with my noble friend that it is helpful to have this debate, but this amendment is not quite the way that we should go.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I understand the intention behind my noble friend’s amendment; namely, that the mayor and TfL should have greater control over London’s commuter rail franchises, given their wider transport responsibilities. As my noble friend Lady Hanham said in her letter following the Committee stage, TfL already plays an important role in relation to London’s commuter rail services. It already has, as pointed out by my noble friend, effectively full franchising powers over the London Underground concession, covering a number of key routes across London. It works closely with the Department for Transport in the development of other rail franchises affecting London, with the mayor having the ability to pay for outputs over and above those that the DfT specifies. By the way, I undertake to look up in the dictionary the definition of “decrement”.

The devolution of other London commuter rail franchises to the mayor and TfL is not a straightforward matter. The geography of London’s commuter rail network does not sit well with London’s administrative boundaries, with many lines extending well into neighbouring counties, as pointed out by many noble Lords. Furthermore, capacity on much of the London commuter network is limited, and there are inherent conflicts between London-area and non-London services that need to be balanced in the best interests of all users, and to keep overall costs down.

I am afraid my noble friend did not satisfy me in how the balance would be struck between the needs of commuters who live in London, and who elect the mayor and the Assembly, and those living in Luton, Brighton and Woking, who do not. There is a real question of a democratic accountability deficit if other London commuter rail services are devolved to the mayor, as many commuters do not live in London so do not have the opportunity to participate in the elections.

Nevertheless, the Department for Transport is happy to engage TfL further about the devolution of local rail services, in the context of Sir Roy McNulty’s independent study on rail value for money earlier this year. This study suggested that more local control of rail services could contribute to the development of lower-cost regional railways and, in line with the Government’s localism agenda, we are considering options for more local control of some rail services in other parts of England. We will also continue to encourage operators to work more closely with TfL. The new working arrangements, put in place for the South Central franchise which was let in 2009, appear to be working well.

On this basis, I urge my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I am delighted that I have been able to stir up some debate on this issue and see it get some attention—rather than slip to its usual place at the bottom of everybody’s priority list—because there are some genuine issues here.

I say to those who are concerned about passengers outside the London area that most people have London as their destination and are therefore intensely important to TfL; they are not marginal. Also, most people who come in contribute in some way to London’s economic viability, either through business or entertainment, and so are very much a concern to Transport for London even though they do not actually live within the area. Again, we can also bring in other board members.

I am delighted to have sparked off some of this debate. Given that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 109 withdrawn.