Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gareth Bacon and Louise Haigh

Thursday 21st November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

Greater London is the most heavily populated and most economically active area in the whole country. It also has the highest level of bus use. In the last financial year, the level of bus subsidy in London amounted to £646 million. In the Secretary of State’s statement on Monday, of the £1 billion of funding that she indicated, £700 million will be spent on producing bus planning documents, and only £243 million is going to bus services. That will not touch the sides, will it? Is the truth not that, far from it being generational reform, it is publicly funded window dressing?

[Louise Haigh]

The way that the previous Government approached bus service improvement plans was to force local authorities to waste money on developing those plans. This money is going directly to authorities to make sure they are delivering public services. Public transport is a public service and it should always be funded.

Bus Funding

Debate between Gareth Bacon and Louise Haigh

Monday 18th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for delivering her statement to the House, and for advance sight of it.

It was, of course, the last Government who provided £4.5 billion of funding to the bus sector since 2020 alone. Some £2 billion of that was allocated to support every single local transport authority in England to deliver their local bus service improvement plans, helping to support buses following the pandemic and ensuring more frequent, more reliable and cheaper bus transport across the country. Conservative Members are familiar with the need to properly fund bus services, but simply spending a bit more money will not necessarily improve outcomes. As such, we would welcome details on whether and how the Secretary of State can assure the House and the taxpayer that the money allocated today will actually go towards the improvement of bus services in the long term. How will she ensure that the money allocated today, and the bus service improvement plans that go with this investment, will remain aligned with any possible future franchising?

If the Secretary of State cannot give assurances on these points, there is a danger that the Government are taking short-term action that avoids facing complex long-term problems. Unfortunately, in the four months that this Government have been in office, that has been their approach to every single major issue they have faced so far. Whether it is the winter fuel allowance, the family farm tax or the increase to the bus fare cap, the Government seem at a loss as to why their policies are so unpopular, and why—only a few months into this Government—they are so deeply distrusted by the British public.

Governing is tough, and it requires taking real responsibility and considering the consequences of decisions before they are taken. For example, the decision to increase the bus fare cap from £2 to £3 will cost users more—[Interruption.] Wait for it. It will cost users more and—perversely—put at risk passenger services on certain routes, because it could counter-productively drive bus ridership down. Between 2022 and 2023, the £2 bus cap cut fares outside London by 7.4%, and the rate was 10.8% in rural and non-metropolitan areas in England. That is an example of a policy that worked, which is why the Government’s decision to increase the cap by 50% is such a disappointment.

The right hon. Lady, in defending her decision to hike bus fares, has been making the argument—she has done so again this afternoon—that the fare cap was to run only until end of the year. But as she knows full well—her Back Benchers can be excused for not knowing this—it is standard Government practice to set funding arrangements until a given date. She has guaranteed the £3 cap only until the end of 2025 and has made no commitment to extend it beyond that. She is also well aware that it was a Conservative party manifesto commitment to extend the cap and maintain it at £2 for the lifetime of this Parliament.

Not extending the £2 cap was not inevitable; it was a decision that the Government chose to make. Why do the right hon. Lady’s Government claim that they cannot afford to retain the £2 bus fare cap, which is making a real difference to the lives of passengers and the viability of public services across the country, and yet she can give hundreds of millions of pounds in additional funding here without any guarantee of success in improving service or delivery?

While I await the right hon. Lady’s answer, I have a theory. She is set on an undertaking—the ideological drive for bus franchising—and, make no mistake, it is ideological. Bus franchising does work in some places, but by no means will it work everywhere. The Government claim that they will not impose franchises everywhere, but there is a danger that her push for bus franchising will force local authorities into feeling that they are expected to undertake this ideological venture—one that they say they may well be unprepared and unequipped for—which would lead to a worse outcome for passengers. I call on the Secretary of State to make clear her answers to those questions and assure the House and the taxpayer that all the money allocated will be held to account in delivering real and lasting service improvement for passengers, whose interests should, of course, be at the centre of all decisions made by the Government.

[Louise Haigh]

I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for his questions, but I have to say that I will take no lessons from those on the Conservative Benches on good government. The approach to funding allocation is based on need, on deprivation, on population and on bus mileage, whereas his Government wasted millions of pounds in forcing areas to compete against each other, picking winners and losers, raising expectations and leaving some Tory-controlled areas such as Essex, where I was this morning, with absolutely nothing from the bus service improvement plan process. This formula and the funding allocated is a fair arrangement, ensuring that every area of the country gets the service levels it needs and can build the improvement plans that it wants.

I have to say that I will also take no lessons on ideology. For four decades, England outside London has experienced the failed deregulation of bus services, leading to a steady decline in passenger numbers. This funding is backed up by a once-in-a-generation reform to our bus policy, ensuring that we can deliver better bus services in every corner of the country, with public control backed up by funding and a Government who believe in buses.

Rail Performance

Debate between Gareth Bacon and Louise Haigh

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Louise Haigh)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I shall make a statement about rail performance. I welcome the shadow Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), to his place. I am sure the Opposition will be interested in what we have to update the House about this afternoon.

After 14 years of neglect, our inheritance was a railway that was failing its passengers, with cancellations at a 10-year high and punctuality that is consistently inconsistent across the network. Back in 2015, cancellations represented around 2% of all services, but thanks to our inheritance of extraordinary failure, that doubled to 4% when the last Government left office. The situation is holding back our economy, stifling our businesses and making life miserable for passengers. That is why, as part of this Government’s public service reform agenda, we are pushing ahead with the biggest overhaul of our railways in more than 30 years. I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to update the House on the progress we are making.

As Members will be aware, the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill is making its way through the other place. It will allow the Government to give three months’ notice to the first private train operating company to be taken into public ownership, which we will announce as soon as Royal Assent has been achieved. No one has ever pretended that public ownership alone is a silver bullet. The people impacted by delays and cancellations, who can no longer rely on the train to get where they need to, do not care who owns the trains—they care whether they are working or not. Under the model we inherited, no one could argue that they were working, so we will soon launch our consultation setting out plans for unification across the railway.

As part of that, Great British Railways, as the single directing mind, will plan services on a whole-system basis, to better deliver for passengers and freight customers, unlock growth and provide the services a modern, efficient railway should. That will lay the groundwork for the introduction of the railways Bill, later this Session, which will establish Great British Railways and end the fragmentation that has hampered our railways for over 30 years of privatisation.

But we do not want to wait for legislation. The Government are already making improvements and taking steps to deliver reform across the railways. I have appointed Laura Shoaf as chair of shadow Great British Railways, bringing together Network Rail, the publicly owned train operating companies and my Department to drive better integration now. Working with operators already in public ownership, we are seeking to drive savings by eliminating duplication and deliver the improvements that passengers want, such as allowing tickets to be accepted across those TOCs in public ownership during disruption.

Shadow GBR gives us the tools to assess the structure of the timetable, question resource plans and review performance measures and targets. We are using those tools to unlock the punctuality and reliability that passengers deserve across the country. For example, Southeastern is now performing much better. Its cancellations are low, with its punctuality ranking among the top five operators contracted to my Department, and that level of service will increase by 44 additional trains per day when the timetable is updated in December. That is what shadow Great British Railways is delivering now.

We are demonstrating what integration between track and train can deliver for passengers. Take those who rely on Euston station, for example. Indecision on HS2 left passengers with fewer platforms and greater overcrowding, victims of the so-called “Euston dash”. Convening Network Rail and train operators at Euston in the interest of passengers is an excellent example of the benefits that our reform agenda can achieve. Euston now not only has an integrated station management team, but a 100-day plan of rapid improvements that puts the interests of passengers first and individual organisations second. Platform announcements are made earlier, crowding has been reduced and, yes, the advertising screen has been temporarily switched off.

Delays and cancellations were not the only inheritance. For two years, strike followed strike, and disruption followed disruption, in the longest industrial dispute on our railways. I have made it my priority to get around the table, reversing the previous Government’s antagonistic approach by resetting industrial relations and settling the pay disputes that saw the country grinding to a halt. I am working with the sector to speed up training and accelerate the driver recruitment pipeline, which will reduce the railway’s reliance on rest day working agreements and lower the burden on taxpayers. Settling this saga allows us to move forward with long-overdue negotiations on workforce reform, bringing our railways into the 21st century. That is what moving fast and fixing things looks like.

We are putting passengers first and, today, I can inform the House that since the resolution of the LNER driver dispute, we have seen green shoots emerging, with the number of LNER cancellations falling. Not only have cancellations due to a lack of driver resource dropped to near zero as a direct consequence of getting around the table with unions, but revenue is £15 million higher for the recent rail periods this year versus the same periods last year. Overall cancellations are down from 7% to 5%, and LNER has run 100 more train services in the last four weeks than in the comparable period last year.

Elsewhere, passengers will see a tangible impact on reliability on Northern Rail trains. Thanks to our agreement on rest day working, hundreds more driver shifts have been covered this weekend, cutting cancellations now and in the long run. At TransPennine Express, operator-caused, on-the-day cancellations averaged around 2% in the last year, compared to 5% in the year before it was taken into public ownership. On CrossCountry, we took immediate steps to implement a remedial plan to reduce its cancellations and get services back on track. Its reduced timetable has brought greater stability, and I expect even greater reliability in the long term as the full timetable returns today.

Those are early signs of what happens when a Government get a grip and put passengers at the heart of decision making. Resetting industrial relations is already having a direct impact on better services, but it will take time to pass all the benefits on to passengers. We have to be clear-eyed about the problems, but we are committed to full transparency. I can announce today that we will be fully transparent with passengers by displaying performance data at stations to demonstrate how the railway is working and to allow the public to hold us to account as we deliver change. That is important, because the railway is a promise—a promise to passengers from the moment they buy a ticket that the train will arrive on time, as the timetable says.

While there are encouraging signs, I am not naive to the reality that passengers will see only a broken promise so long as the departure board shows trains delayed and services cancelled. That is why I have approached the situation with the urgency it demands, including focusing on performance today; bringing together industry to make it clear that improvements that can be made now must be made now; and using every tool at our disposal to drive improvements as fast as possible.

At the same time, the root of the problem grows deeper. Decades of muddled decision making have left the railway fragmented. We have tolerated an unworkable system of track in one organisation and trains in another for decades too long. This Government will turn the page on that chapter of fragmentation. I have wasted no time in kick-starting the long-term reform that our railway desperately needs. We have wasted no time in bringing train operating companies under public ownership. As today’s figures show, we have wasted no time in getting around the table with unions and making change happen now. That is what moving fast and fixing things looks like, and I commend this statement to the House.

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for her statement and for sharing an advance copy. I agree that rail performance is a key concern to passengers throughout the country, and it is a fair criticism to say that several operators have consistently underperformed. That is why, when we were in government, we took action to improve performance on our railways, investing more than £100 billion to operate and enhance our railways since 2010, and electrifying more than 1,200 miles of track—compared to just 63 miles under the last Labour Government.

I am glad that the Government are taking forward the framework offered in the previous Conservative Government’s Williams-Shapps review. Having a more joined-up rail network should indeed deliver key improvements. However, it is disappointing that the Government have progressed with their plans for the effective nationalisation of the rail operators by ending private rail operator franchising, despite all the evidence pointing to the fact that that will be contrary to the aim of improving rail performance.

We know that while in some cases it has been necessary in the short term to bring rail operators into public control, it has not made the difference in performance that the Government would have us believe. It takes only a cursory glance at passenger rail performance statistics to see that some of the rail operators operating under public control have done little or nothing to improve cancellations or delays in relation to other operators. For example, the Secretary of State mentioned TransPennine Express and a decrease in cancellations since the operator was taken into public ownership, but she made no reference to delays. Data from the Office for Rail and Road show that in the four years prior to the train operator coming under public control, passengers faced an average of 8,130 delay minutes per month. From period 2 of 2023-24, when the operator was brought into public ownership, up to period 4 of 2024-25, average monthly delays have increased by 1,677 minutes, to 9,807 a month. In addition, for the year ’23-24, data shows that train operators run by private companies in England had an average on time rate of 64.36%. For train operators in public control, by contrast, the average was 57.7%—a difference of just under seven percentage points.

Public ownership is not the panacea that the right hon. Lady claims, so it is disingenuous for the Government to argue that wholesale public control of rail operation will do everything to improve performance, particularly for operators that are already performing well. Under the Government’s plans to end private rail operator franchising, the first contracts set to expire and be picked up by the Government are some of the highest performing franchises. The Government risk making the mistake of taking credit for comparatively strong performance, which will occur not as a result of their measures but as a result of the successes of the previous private franchising. That would mean the Government drawing the wrong conclusions from their actions, and it would have implications for future decision making.

It should be appreciated that the role of open access operators has been one of the greatest success stories within our rail network. It is therefore incumbent on the Government to provide greater clarity to the sector on how their plans for the rail network will impact on open access operators. It is also essential that the Secretary of State finally clarifies the long-term plan for rolling stock under the Government’s measures.

I appreciate that in Labour’s brave new world, all decisions are reflected through the ideological prism of “public good, private bad”, but there is a fundamental risk that the Government are taking ideological action to the long-term detriment of rail performance. Among our counterparts in Europe, it is widely acknowledged that rail privatisation has been successful in increasing passenger numbers, encouraging investment and controlling costs. In Italy, for example, prices have reduced by 31%, and Austria has witnessed a 41% increase in service frequency. There is a serious risk that the Government’s plans will take us backwards on those key areas without offering any promise of improvement on performance, or improved journeys or fares for passengers.

We all fully acknowledge the difficulties facing our railways, and nobody should accept poor performance —we have, unfortunately, seen that in some areas of our network—but merely enacting demonstrative but counterintuitive measures designed to communicate action is no substitute for making measured and pragmatic choices. For example, the Government and the Secretary of State have chosen to offer inflation-busting pay rises with no working practice reform in exchange. Without substantial working practice reform, it is deeply unlikely that the cost of the pay deals will be offset by improved performance, and the failure to introduce working practice reform will mean continued performance difficulties on our railways.

Can the Secretary of State offer a guarantee today that ending private rail franchising without implementing working practice reform will lead to demonstrably improved performance? If she cannot offer that guarantee, the Government should shelve the ideology and take a step back to pause and examine whether their package of measures will truly improve rail performance. It surely makes more sense to learn from the performance statistics; to understand from the experience of the continent and our past the improvements that the private sector can bring; and to prioritise the practical over the ideological.

[Louise Haigh]

I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for acknowledging that we provided the statement in advance, and I suggest that next time he reads it before he responds. He will have heard me say that public ownership is not a silver bullet, hence why we are setting out a substantial package of reforms. As I also mentioned, that includes substantial workforce reform, including developing training policies—that is one of the ways in which the recruitment of drivers has been really held back—and reducing reliance on rest day working agreements.

The shadow Minister might also want to check the latest statistics on TransPennine Express. It had the largest increase in punctuality of any operator contracted to my Department, including all those in private ownership. We have been clear that open access should continue where it does not abstract revenue from the overall network and where there is capacity. There have been good examples, such as Lumo and Grand Central, and we are very happy to continue working with them. We will publish a long-term rolling stock plan in due course.