East Coast Main Line

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) on securing this useful debate. We can sing the praises of East Coast—I am happy to do so as someone who uses its services every week; it does not provide a bad service at all—but the idea that this is some way towards being a golden age compared with GNER, which first took over the line and provided an excellent service, is a myth.

As I have said, I am happy to congratulate East Coast, which gets us here every week, usually on time. Passengers want a clean, reliable, safe and reasonably priced service. When they sit back in their seat, they do not care whether the track is operated by Railtrack, Network Rail or a private operator, or whether their seat is in a private coach or a publicly owned one.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

To set the record straight, is it not the case that both GNER and National Express had to hand back the franchise, but this nationalised, directly operated rail service has handed £602 million back to the Treasury?

[Martin Vickers]

The fact that there is one failure—whether in the private sector, the public sector or wherever—does not automatically indicate a flaw in the system. The hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn) said that the change would be privatisation for privatisation’s sake, but the opposite is equally true: do we want nationalisation for nationalisation’s sake? That is certainly what Opposition Members seem to want.

In his opening remarks, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough referred to Northern Rail, but to compare it with East Coast is to compare apples with oranges—a regional operator with an inter-city one. Northern Rail provides a perfectly adequate service in my constituency, between Cleethorpes and Barton-on-Humber, but it does not serve such great metropolises as York, Darlington and Doncaster. The station at Thornton Abbey—in a beautiful, idyllic setting—actually serves two farms and an ancient ruin, and I think it had 13 passengers during 2009. East Coast is fine; it provides a perfectly adequate service, but it does not dash up and down between Newcastle and King’s Cross, so there is no comparison whatever.

I am happy to criticise East Coast when it makes mistakes, which it did when it redesigned its timetable last year.

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[Stephen McPartland]

I was disappointed to hear my hon. Friend say that he passes through Stevenage without stopping—I would prefer him to stop an awful lot more. However, I, too, congratulate the Government. This Government and the previous Government have done a lot of good work on the rail industry, and we could look at the way in which King’s Cross is being changed.

[Grahame M. Morris]

Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the privatised rail operators are costing the public purse—the taxpayer—£4 billion a year in subsidy? Since the east coast service has been nationalised, it has cost only £1 billion a year.

[Stephen McPartland]

I would not be able to acknowledge that, because I do not know the figures, but I can take the hon. Gentleman’s word for it.

Many people have said that the private sector ethos is not something we want to introduce to East Coast. In May 2011, I was fortunate enough to persuade East Coast to increase the number of services stopping in Stevenage by 18 per day. The number of services rose from 40 to 58 a day, which means an extra 9,000 seats a year. That all sounds great. It was the biggest rise in services to any location on the east coast main line. I did an awful lot of work on that. The individual I spoke to, who was the chairman of East Coast at the time, was previously the chief executive of First Capital Connect, and she took the private sector ethos that she received and learned at First Capital Connect and introduced it to the east coast main line. The reason First Capital Connect is important is that it shares the Stevenage station, effectively, with East Coast, and one of the main problems on a franchise that is 960-odd miles long is that it deals with so many other local operators. The point has been made that an interaction with local services would be hugely important and beneficial to many of our constituents. Fortunately for us, it works well in Stevenage.

Stevenage is only 30 miles from London, and the debate seems focused very much on services between London and the constituencies of some Opposition Members, and London and my constituency. A couple of years ago there were almost 40,000 journeys a year from Stevenage to Newcastle; a year ago there were nearly 50,000 journeys from Stevenage to Leeds; there are 11 services a day from Leeds to Stevenage and back. Stevenage is the capital of the UK space industry. We employ more than 10,000 scientists and engineers and build 25% of the world’s telecommunications satellites. A couple of days ago a satellite built in Stevenage went up, which will be responsible for broadcasting everything back to the UK. Interacting with a high-technology area such as Stevenage is important. People who engage in debate about this issue always seem to focus on the idea of a long-distance operator running the service, with Peterborough as the closest place people could get to—where they would have to change. As my hon. Friends have explained, that gives rise to the question whether it is cheaper to do that, or just to go on a plane or drive. Many of my constituents will drive to Heathrow airport and fly to Scotland, because that is cheaper than going by East Coast train. That is ridiculous. Sadly, it is faster. That is another problem. The debate and our efforts should focus on passenger satisfaction. Whether the service remains private or becomes public, or a mutual, that should be the whole idea.

In my final 30 seconds I have something to put to the Minister. Wherever the future of east coast ownership lies, it should include a mechanism for the removal—or, in today’s language, the recall—of the rail franchises, if any rail passengers are dissatisfied.

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[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) on the timely and comprehensive speech that he gave on this very important subject.

Government Members have accused Labour Members of making this an issue of ideology. Well, in Westminster Hall today we have a Minister who oversaw the architecture to privatise the NHS and who is now overseeing the privatisation of a successful publicly owned rail franchise in the north-east. Indeed, this process is an experiment. Under the previous Conservative Government, the rail network was broken up and a new model devised in a way that any objective commentator must acknowledge was a failure.

We have seen a decline in the quality of service, a lack of investment, higher public subsidies and inflation-busting fare increases since privatisation. In fact, a report by Just Economics showed that UK rail services were less affordable, less comfortable, slower and more inefficient than publicly owned rail services in Germany, France, Italy and Spain. British train tickets are now the most expensive in Europe. A typical season ticket in the UK now costs 14p per kilometre, compared with just 8p per kilometre in Germany, Holland and France, which are the next most expensive countries in Europe. So, if we are making comparisons on price or value for money, the privatised franchise model that we have here just does not stack up.

I do not wish to go off the rails in terms of time, Dr McCrea, but I am under a bit of pressure and we have had some first-class contributions from Members. I do not want to repeat what has been said. However, I am perplexed about why, after four years of stability, rising passenger satisfaction and significant returns to the Treasury, the Government are rushing through the privatisation of the east coast main line, if not for reasons of ideology and dogma, ignoring the evidence. Conservative Members ask, “Would you nationalise the industry?” Well, in public polling, not just of Labour voters, but generally, those in favour of nationalisation poll in excess of 70%, by MSN and NOP and 93% in The Guardian. There is nothing more ideological than privatisation for privatisation’s sake. This is a privatisation too far, and it is not fit for purpose.

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

Order.

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[Mr Burns]

I will return the compliment the hon. Gentleman gave me earlier by saying that he is on the reasonable wing of the parliamentary Labour party. I have to tell him, though, that Members from the more exotic wing of the Labour party were not saying that in their speeches; they want the east coast main line to be permanently in the public sector, not the private sector.

[Grahame M. Morris]

That is what the public want.

[Mr Burns]

The hon. Gentleman is a dinosaur in health, and he has now moved to transport. I hope he is not following me around.