Industrial Action on the Railway

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She and the whole House will have noticed that while the Opposition were singing the praises of other parts of the Union, including what they call Labour Wales—I do not think it is Labour at all, but Labour runs the Administration—for not striking, they failed to mention that their own Mayor of London has had 53 days of strikes. The truth is that we need to move ahead with automated trains on parts of the London underground; the metro in Paris has them and it is time we got on with it here.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Earlier, the Secretary of State waved around a document relating to 28 areas of reform that he thinks need to be implemented to modernise our railway. Has he stipulated that they must be agreed before rail operators can negotiate pay?

[Grant Shapps]

I will recount, but I think it was 20 areas, and no, I have not done that, but it is the kind of modernisation we would expect. For example, I was just looking at the list, and one working practice means that paysheets have to be done on paper, whereas it would clearly make sense to do them electronically. It would save a lot of time and a lot of money, and I cannot really see why anyone would be against it, but it is a working practice that is not allowed. I mentioned being able to move between different very similar roles but only where somebody is fully qualified, and those kinds of flexibilities in rostering do not exist.

It is pretty much like trying to run an orchestra for Network Rail, but it does not know who is going to turn up or which instruments they will bring, and it has no ability to tell them where to sit—and then it is supposed to make the railway run. We have to modernise our railways.