Taxi and Private Hire Licensing

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner]

I will come on to that point, because one of the headlines in the report is that we need consistent national standards; the question is the extent to which they can be tailored or lifted to suit appropriate local circumstances. First, however, let me say something about accessibility issues. Our London taxis have a fantastic record: all 21,000 are wheelchair-accessible, but the story is not the same across the country. I am told that in metropolitan areas outside London, 83% of taxis are wheelchair-accessible, but in some rural areas the figure falls as low as 15%. One of the challenges that we face is making our taxi and private hire fleet more accessible to people throughout the country.

There is a lot of variation in the approach to disability awareness training, which only 41% of local authorities require for taxi drivers and only 38% require for private hire vehicle drivers. Over the past few years, the percentage of local authorities that require taxi and private hire vehicle drivers to complete training on the subject of child sexual abuse or exploitation has risen to 70%, partly in response to some very sad incidents in some parts of the country. However, that leaves nearly 100 licensing authorities that still do not require drivers to undertake such training.

I became interested in the subject when I had the privilege of serving as a shadow Transport Minister for a couple of years. When I later had the opportunity to introduce a private Member’s Bill, I chose to try to do something about safety issues, on which there is cross-party consensus. Since I introduced my Bill—the Licensing of Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill—some 18 months ago, I have had the opportunity to discuss the issue with enforcement officers and officials from Knowsley to London and with taxi and private hire firms from Brighton to Manchester.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important and timely debate. The Select Committee on Transport recently visited Bristol, where we saw problems with traffic congestion, including the number of private hire vehicles from outside the city that were causing additional air pollution and congestion problems. He cited huge figures for the number of private hire vehicles—is there not an overwhelming case to cut the number outside London?

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend and I had a fascinating trip to Bristol with the Transport Committee yesterday and, from that, I observe that the same kinds of issue crop up all around the country in different forms. For some years before I came to the House, and then as a constituency Member, I tried to understand the complexities of the taxi and private hire industry in my own constituency in and around Cambridge. Exactly the same issues arose, with licensing standards in a city often set at one level, but many private hire vehicles came in from an adjacent area. We heard that yesterday in Bristol, where the vast majority of private hire vehicles are actually registered in South Gloucestershire, creating a conundrum for the people and local council of Bristol. That goes to the heart of one of the questions, and to the point made earlier by the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), which is that of national standards.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, we take all issues of safety very seriously, and the same is true in the case of the A19. I have visited the A19 and seen schemes at work. We have further work planned on it, always with safety in mind.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

The Transport Select Committee—

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman should ask his Question 17. [Interruption.] I could have linked it, I suppose, but I did not.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

17. If he will take steps to close the gap in transport expenditure per capita between London and the north-east.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Joseph Johnson)]

The Government are committed to investing in infrastructure to support regional growth, and that is why we are addressing under-investment in the north with the biggest investment programme for a generation. The Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s analysis shows that between 2018 and 2021, central Government transport spend per head is in fact highest in the north-west.

[Grahame Morris]

The Transport Select Committee has found that a disproportionate amount of transport funding is being spent in the capital, at the expense of the regions. What steps will the Minister take to close the gap and to specifically address issues highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn), including the “Safe A19” campaign, the Seaton Lane A19 junction improvement and ensuring that east Durham gets a rail halt at Horden?

[Joseph Johnson]

The Government are investing substantial sums in the north—£13 billion in the five years to 2020—and in the next control period for rail, we will invest £2.9 billion on the trans-Pennine upgrade alone. The hon. Gentleman, I am afraid, is factually wrong to say that Government investment per head in London and the south exceeds that of similar investment in the north. IPA analysis shows that for the three years to 2021, the north will receive £1,039 per head, which is £10 more than similar figures for the south of England.[Official Report, 9 July 2018, Vol. 644, c. 4MC.]

National Policy Statement: Airports

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

The critical word is that it “could.” That is the important point—not that it will, but that it is quite possible that it could. There is an awful lot of work to get from one place to the other.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is setting out a powerful case regarding the four tests. The Secretary of State said that one of the key selling points is connectivity with our regional airports, but that will be only up to 15% of the new capacity. He has already indicated there will be 100 extra flights a day from Scotland, and as that 15% of new capacity is for all the regional airports and the Crown dependencies, it does not sound like a very good deal to me.

[Andy McDonald]

There are grave misgivings on the whole issue of regional connectivity, which I will address, but first I will deal with the tests.

Can the airport actually be built? It is not clear that it can. Heathrow’s borrowing costs depend on whether it can increase landing charges at what is already the most expensive airport in the world. The Government have provided no guarantees that landing charges will be held flat. Astonishingly, there are no details or costings on the upgrades to the M25 and the wider transport system in London and around the airport that are required for expansion. That uncertainty risks yet more transport infrastructure investment being sucked into the south-east of England at the expense of the rest of the country. It is simply staggering that this information has not been provided.

The cost-recovery clause that the Government signed with Heathrow, as highlighted by the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening), is an enormous liability for future Governments and represents a significant risk to taxpayers. For those reasons, Labour has concluded that the third runway is not in fact deliverable.

Ensuring the health and safety of our country for our children and grandchildren should be the most important priority for each and every Member of this House. Some 40,000 people die prematurely each year because of poor air quality. Despite the superficial public relations initiatives from the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, this Government have dithered and delayed on dealing with air quality and carbon emissions.

Confidence in the Secretary of State for Transport

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to support the motion standing in the names of my Front-Bench colleagues. I also wish to thank members of the Transport Committee for their informed contributions to the debate, and I am delighted that the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) is a supporter of keeping the guards on the trains—well done on that. [Interruption.] Perhaps it is qualified support.

As a member of the Transport Committee and a regular rail user, I have been following the recent regression of the rail service, particularly in my region, with great concern. The catastrophic May timetable changes seem to have been completely avoidable. The Secretary of State ignored warnings and failed to delay or phase in the changes.

Yesterday, my Transport Committee colleagues and I spent three hours asking questions of and taking evidence from representatives from Northern, GTR and Network Rail. I was quite interested to hear the Secretary of State say in response to a comment made by the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), that he made the decision to proceed with the changes in July 2017, because my understanding from what the witnesses said yesterday is that concerns were expressed at a meeting involving stakeholders and Network Rail in January, some six months before the ultimate decision was made. There was ample opportunity for the Secretary of State and his advisers in the Department to intervene and identify some mitigating actions, which could have included either delaying the implementation or phasing it in.

[Andy McDonald]

Given that GTR is a concession and is paid a management fee, could my hon. Friend cast some light on whether the revenue due to the DFT was a factor in the delay in the implementation of the decision?

[Grahame Morris]

My hon. Friend raises a good question. I asked the GTR witnesses yesterday whether revenue was a material factor, and their response was that all the revenue is collected directly. They intimated that there were no revenue implications, although I am rather sceptical that ultimately revenue may well have been a factor in the decision about whether to phase or to delay the implementation of the new timetable. Perhaps the Committee can pursue further whether that was the case.

We have heard from Opposition and Government Members about the impact of the terrible delays. In my area, at the worst times up to 43% of Northern trains have been cancelled or delayed each day. From 4 June, Northern cancelled 165 trains a day, including all services to the Lake district, as we have heard. Since 20 May, 11% of Northern trains have been delayed or cancelled each day.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that although this issue is concentrated in the north, the east and London, it is a national problem? Great Western has been going through its own dramatic problems, with a huge number of cancellations, driver shortages and all the other problems that have been mentioned. It is a national problem.

[Grahame Morris]

I am grateful for that thoughtful intervention, and my hon. Friend makes a good point. However, although there are national issues with the training of drivers and ensuring that they have the appropriate skillset, industry stakeholders pointed out to the Department and, presumably, the Secretary of State that it would normally take 40 weeks to prepare, identify training needs and ensure that drivers were in place, but in this case only 16 weeks were allocated and, if my memory of yesterday’s evidence serves me right, it was not until around two days before implementation, when they were drawing up the driver rosters, that they discovered that they had the wrong skill mix and that the drivers were in the wrong places to operate the new timetable. So although my hon. Friend makes a good point, Ministers and the Secretary of State must ultimately bear responsibility for the decisions that were made.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

It is quite simple in the industry: although experienced, train drivers need training on new routes and on the use of different rolling stock. Without that training, they cannot go into service.

[Grahame Morris]

Absolutely; that is a key point. I am kind of long in the tooth now, but I remember the dreadful train accident at Ladbroke Grove, where 31 people were killed and 500 injured; a dear friend of mine was killed in the Southall train disaster, in which seven were killed and more than 140 were injured; and I remember another accident at Clapham Junction. What with the complexity of the new signalling systems at places like London Bridge, with large numbers of tracks, it is safety-critical that the drivers are fully aware of which signals actually apply to them. It is a mistake for the Secretary of State to imply that ASLEF, representing the train drivers, should somehow make a concession on the training to which its members are subjected. When I get on a train, I want to be absolutely certain that it is completely safe and that the drivers are familiar with the track and the signalling system. I also want to know that there is a guard on the train, so that if anything happens—if anyone is attacked or taken ill—or there is a disabled or blind person or a woman with children travelling, the guard will be able to assist. That is reasonable in such circumstances.

I agree with the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle about the GTR chief executive, Charles Horton, who seemed like a thoroughly decent man. He said that he was deeply sorry for the timetable disruptions. It is a bit unfair that he seems to be carrying the can, when I suspect the blame should be apportioned further up the food chain. The witnesses yesterday were well schooled in collective responsibility, but ultimately the buck must stop with the Secretary of State. It is not good enough just to keep saying sorry.

[Huw Merriman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Grahame Morris]

I am sorry; I am running very short of time.

It is another failure on the Secretary of State’s watch. We have fundamental problems with integration, lack of planning and decision making. The franchising model is broken. It is time for a new approach and a new driver at the head of the Department for Transport.

Rail Timetabling

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The work on Dawlish has already started, as the hon. Gentleman knows. In terms of the infrastructure period that is about to start, delivering that work is, in my view, the most important capital project in the country. The most important priority on my desk now is self-evidently to get this sorted.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

My constituents are also experiencing their share of misery. The hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) said that trains serving her constituency had four carriages, but most of the trains serving mine only have two carriages to begin with, so they are already overcrowded even before any cancellations. It is clearly a failure of planning and co-ordination and a lack of integration. Will the Secretary of State or his successor give an assurance to the travelling public that a similar fiasco will not occur with the next timetable changes in December?

[Chris Grayling]

We are working extremely hard to make sure that this does not happen again. We have to deal with the short-term problem. We also have to make sure that this is not repeated with the December timetable change or future timetable changes. Where major investment leads to a major change in services, we cannot have a situation where that causes chaos on the network again.

Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Any franchise that runs its full term is expected to pay the full premiums, but when National Express went under and there was a further £1.5 billion of premiums to pay, that money continued to be paid by the new operator, in the same way that the premiums that we are expecting will continue to be paid by the operator in this instance. This is my point: the hon. Gentleman does not understand how the finances of the railways work, and that is why the Labour party is so unfit to be in opposition, let alone to govern.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

rose—

[Lilian Greenwood]

rose—

[Chris Grayling]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) and later to the Chairman of the Transport Committee.

[Grahame Morris]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State. I hope that he will clear up that point about the last Labour Government and National Express. As a member of the Transport Committee, I heard a former Transport Secretary, Lord Adonis, explain that sanctions had been applied and that that particular operator was not permitted to bid for other franchises, which was a significant sanction.

[Chris Grayling]

If I am not mistaken, Lord Adonis actually accepted before the Select Committee that that did not happen. He thought that standing up in Parliament and saying that there would be a ban meant that there actually was one. I assure the hon. Gentleman that my Department looked very carefully at this and no evidence of any ban has been found. Moreover, a report from the National Audit Office stated that it had found no such evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame Morris]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Hammond]

I am mindful of the six-minute limit. I have taken two interventions, so I will not take one from the hon. Gentleman.

That private investment, which Labour so heavily opposes, is the very investment that will greatly benefit the people who travel on the trains, about whom all hon. Members should be most concerned. Under Labour proposals, that investment would disappear.

I applaud my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who has come to the House with a future rail strategy. It is a great start, but he knows I would like him to go further in a few key areas. I went to speak to the managing director of South Western, which runs the trains around my area. The reality is that Network Rail is causing the bulk of the delays. I am delighted to see public-private partnerships, but I urge my right hon. Friend to go further with his plans to devolve sections of Network Rail, which would provide local accountability and responsiveness to local passenger need. Let us not worry ourselves about nationalisation; let us make sure we get this right. It is ironic that the part of the railway that is most criticised is the nationalised part.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made the point about timetable delays and one or two other issues. The projects division inside Network Rail is responsible for many good works, but it is also responsible for a number of delays. I urge him to get the private sector more closely involved in the design and concentration of projects.

Finally, I am pleased to say that this motion fails at the most basic level. It is wrong to censure the Secretary of State, who has followed the right processes. The last thing this country needs is to go back to the 1970s. It needs to look forward to the 2020s, and nationalisation can never be the answer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak in this important debate. I would like to recognise the expertise of many members of the Transport Committee, on which I have the honour of serving.

Listening to the debate, I cannot help feeling a sense of déjà vu. The shortcomings of privatisation and the franchising process are demonstrated by the private operators running the east coast main line. I was slightly amused when the former Rail Minister, the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), who is very affable, talked about the golden age of privatisation and how wonderful the new rolling stock was. I just checked the age of some of the rolling stock on the east coast main line. The InterCity 125 diesel-powered high-speed trains were introduced in 1976; the 225s, which were the mainstay, were introduced in 1989; and the Pacer trains on the Northern Rail franchise were introduced in 1984, so let us have a sense of realism.

This is the third occasion in a decade that the Government have had to accept back the keys to a failed east coast franchise. A failure once we can excuse and twice is unfortunate, but the third time is a cause for censure and for reflection. It demonstrates that the Government’s desire to privatise the east coast main line is nothing more than adherence to blind political ideology.

It is ironic that the Transport Secretary, as a leading Brexiteer and staunch privateer, now allows our railways to be run by any state-owned company except one owned by the British state. The right hon. Gentleman might like to dust off an old phrase to use in this context: “Take back control”. He would be in good company, as numerous surveys show that 70% of the public support calls for the railways to be publicly owned—run in the public interest, not as a cash cow for private operators.

I remind the House that, when in public ownership, the east coast main line returned over £1 billion to the Treasury to be used either to upgrade the rail service or for vital public services. In 2015, we were told that re-privatising the east coast main line represented “best value” for commuters and taxpayers, and I do not believe the Secretary of State has adequately explained how that can be reconciled with the decision to bail out Virgin-Stagecoach to the tune of £2 billion.

Why do the Government not hold such companies to their contractual commitments? The noble Lord Adonis, with whom I do not always see eye to eye, gave some interesting evidence to the Transport Committee. He questioned why it is acceptable for corporate entities to walk away from their commitment to us—the taxpayers—to my constituents and to the Government. We really should take a harder line with the private train operating companies. We should block companies that have corporate structures and base themselves in tax havens from bidding for public contracts. A decision to overbid on such a contract is simply corporate irresponsibility, and the taxpayer is being fleeced time and again.

East Coast Main Line

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I give my hon. Friend an assurance that the Azuma trains will be joining the network later this year. They will deliver a fantastic new service for passengers, and they will indeed be LNER Azuma trains instead.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said that he was not aware of any problems with other franchises. Perhaps he was not in the House during Prime Minister’s questions, when problems with the Northern franchise were identified. Private companies are walking away from franchise bids in Wales and the east midlands. Is this not clear evidence that the rail franchising model is broken, and that the answer is a truly integrated railway under public ownership?

[Chris Grayling]

First, the number of firms asking for passports to apply for franchises is actually increasing, not decreasing. As I keep explaining to Opposition Members—they are causing as much trouble as they can for the Government over the European Union, instead of working together in the interests of this country—what they are proposing is illegal under European law.

Community Transport

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), the Chair of the Select Committee, for summarising a powerful case, which many Members across the House support. I also thank community transport providers operating in my constituency of Easington. In particular, I thank Angela Kent, the operations manager of East Durham Community Transport, who kindly contacted me and briefed me in advance of today’s debate.

As has been pointed out, community transport is a vital lifeline for many people, especially elderly and vulnerable people at risk of social isolation and exclusion. My constituency is semi-rural, and the quality of local bus services for many people is nothing short of lamentable. If commuters in London had to put up with the quality of public transport services operating in my constituency, there would be protests on the streets. The regulated, integrated, frequent and modern public transport network that is standard for the capital city is a million miles removed from the experience of my constituents. Communities such as South Hetton, Haswell, Haswell Plough, Hesleden, High Hesleden and Hutton Henry can be left isolated, with an infrequent, sub-standard bus service that does not operate in the evenings.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that the impact assessments conducted by the Department for Transport underestimate the impact of the proposals on very vulnerable people? The impact assessments led us to believe that the impact would be minimal.

[Grahame Morris]

That is a really important point; I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. The problem is that, as a consequence of the regulations, people will be denied access to local amenities, leisure facilities and employment opportunities. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South indicated the cost—some £400 million.

People are rightly angry and frustrated about the implications of the changes. I am angry about the quality of the transport infrastructure in my constituency, and this will simply compound that. The proposed guidance from the Government implies that community transport providers need to show that they are not blocking commercial operators that may wish to deliver a local service on a particular route—the section 19 and 22 recommendations that have been mentioned. However, community transport is plugging the gaps of a failing commercial network. The ongoing withdrawal of commercial bus services means that the community transport sector as a whole has gained growing importance in filling transport gaps, particularly in largely rural areas such as mine. Many voluntary transport services are financially fragile, and rely on donations and the goodwill of volunteers to continue.

The Government must realise that community transport is about so much more than simply moving people from A to B. It brings people together, teaches people new skills, makes disabled and elderly people in rural areas less socially isolated, improves physical and mental health, and makes communities pull together to tackle many issues that they face on a daily basis.

I share the reservations of community transport providers in my constituency that the Department for Transport, sitting in splendid isolation in offices in central London, may find it difficult to comprehend the service and support provided by community transport. I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South that the narrow and legalistic approach that the Government are adopting to community transport is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Rail Franchising

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)]

May I begin with the one thing on which we agree this afternoon? I thank the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) for his generous comments about my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), who has been a great servant of my Department and other Departments for a very long period. He has been on the Front Bench for 19 years, in government and in opposition. That is an epic career, and we all very much appreciate the work that he has done, particularly on legislation and on building bilateral discussions and so on, so I pay tribute to him for all that he did. I am grateful for the warm words from the hon. Member for Middlesbrough.

Apart from that, we have just heard about 25 minutes of complete nonsense from the Opposition. I suspect that you would say it would be unparliamentary of me to call them hypocritical, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will not do so, but I have no doubt that others in the know will be astonished by the gall with which they simply forget their actions in government; with which they pretend that their ideas will not cost a penny—I keep hearing that, but it is absolutely untrue—and with which they make inaccurate claims based on a lack of facts about subjects they appear not to understand.

Let me set out why the Opposition’s ideas do not stack up and why their positions do not add up.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

rose—

[Chris Grayling]

I will make some progress and then take interventions.

I shall also set out why the Opposition’s policies make no sense for the travelling public and why their pronouncements on the east coast main line are wrong. I shall also explain why it is this Government who have set about the task of modernising and upgrading our railways—the biggest programme of investment since the steam age—after 13 years of a Labour Government who quite simply failed to deliver the infrastructure improvements that this country needed. It has taken Conservatives to begin to change that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

I will take one more intervention and then make some progress.

[Grahame Morris]

It is an interesting concept that the travelling public have got a good deal that is paid for by the private train operating companies. I just checked what it would cost me if I left the House of Commons and went to Durham now. It would cost me £153 standard class—or £236 first class, but of course we are not allowed to do that. A similar journey at the same time of day from Frankfurt to Munich in Germany would cost £39 and tuppence. How is it that our travelling public are getting a good deal from this fragmented privatised system?

[Chris Grayling]

In this country, under Governments of both persuasions, we have taken decisions about the right balance between the cost of the railways being borne by those who use the railways and those who do not. Yes, the hon. Gentleman may be quoting walk -up fares, but he can go and buy an advance ticket for the east coast route at a fraction of the cost that he described.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

We have rightly heard from the Secretary of State that there is record investment in the railways and a record number of passengers, yet Opposition Members are here to criticise the running of the railways. I am sure we will hear many tales of woe from Opposition Back Benchers, but the reality is very different. There are problems, and we have heard from my right hon. Friend about the Virgin Trains East Coast situation, which is not desirable, but of course, to some extent Virgin predicated its income projections on improvements to be made by Network Rail, and of course Network Rail, being a nationalised organisation, usually delivers late and over budget. The Secretary of State was somewhat critical of Virgin, and it clearly should have taken note of the fact that Network Rail failed to deliver on the promises made on the west coast route some years ago, so there is some legitimate blame on both sides.

Regrettably, I am old enough to remember the days of British Rail, a failed nationalised monolith and a watchword for failure. Until 1992 there were direct train services to my constituency, but British Rail cut them, and the new Minister, whom I welcome to his place, will be hearing a lot from me about the need for through services to Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

The Government support the rail network to an enormous extent. Many of the figures cited in an article in the 13 October edition of Rail magazine were repeated in The Times last week, including that £925 million was invested by the private sector in the rail network in 2016-17. The shadow Secretary of State failed to identify how any Labour proposal would bring forth that money. The reality is that cuts are made under all Governments and usually the first thing that goes is capital infrastructure expenditure. There is no way that a renationalised network under a Labour Government would be able to raise the approaching £1 billion that the private sector is currently investing.

[Grahame Morris]

What does the hon. Gentleman think the state-owned German rail company that owns a substantial chunk of our franchises does with the profit it makes here in our privatised system? It invests that profit in its own system, through subsidised fares there. That seems ludicrous to me and most of the travelling public.

[Martin Vickers]

Perhaps they are a little more free-market and capitalist-minded over in Germany.

At present, competition is for the franchise; what we want is more competition in the running of services, and one way we can achieve that is through open access operators. Hull Trains and Grand Central both run on the east coast main line and provide services to areas that in the main do not get a service from the main franchise holder. Indeed, I understand that Grand Central will shortly put forward a proposal for direct trains from King’s Cross through to Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Cleethorpes. I hope that the Minister will be supportive of that, because it would be a great boost to the local economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I have had to take the Beeching axe to my speech, but I will make a couple of points in the few minutes available to me.

I wanted to take up some of the points made by previous speakers, including the Secretary of State, with which I completely disagreed and which, frankly, were fake news. If we look at the evidence and compare train fares in the United Kingdom and European countries—their state operators own many of our franchises—the difference is stark. I do not accept that this is about particular fares in peak periods.

It is worth looking at the German-owned operators. Deutsche Bahn owns Northern Rail, which is the principal operator in my region. Some 42% of Deutsche Bahn’s revenue is made outside Germany, much of it here in the UK, but 93% of its investment is in the German railway, so the company is creating profits here to improve services back in Germany.

It is clear that regulated rail fares have risen by an average of 32% since 2010, which is three times faster than the average median wage has grown. The Secretary of State said that fares increased more rapidly, or to higher levels, under the previous Labour Government, but we have to factor in average wages. The Conservative policy of raising regulated fares by the retail prices index ensures above-inflation fare increases every year. Compare that with Labour’s stance as set out in the motion, which I support. We would peg fare rises to the consumer prices index, which would save the average season ticket holder £500 over the course of a year. That would affect everyone’s constituents. Indeed, the annual cost of a season ticket for one of the Prime Minister’s constituents travelling between Maidenhead and Paddington has risen by £732 since 2010.

Passengers on our railways pay some of the highest fares in Europe for increasingly unreliable and crowded services, and that has been my experience. Passengers, our economy and our environment need affordable fares and reliable services, which I do not think the Tories’ policy is capable of delivering. Labour would take back our railways into public ownership as franchises expire and use the savings to cap fares, and we would upgrade and extend the rail network.

Rail Update

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is after not just the hors d’oeuvre but a second course. That second course will probably be the Crewe hub, on which we are working carefully at the moment, but I thought that he at least deserved an appetiser. I buy the argument that the present situation as trains head north from Wrexham is not right, and I am therefore delighted that the Chancellor agreed to fund the development work for that scheme.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I give the Transport Secretary credit for acknowledging the failure on at least two occasions of the private franchise running the east coast main line. My recollection is that when it was operated by the UK state-owned Directly Operated Railways it generated more than £100 million in profit for the Treasury, which could be used for vital public services. What assessment has he made of the additional costs of the private-public sector partnership, and would it not be better to use the profits to extend the Tyne and Wear Metro into Easington rather than swelling the coffers of privately operated train companies, often German, Dutch and Spanish Government-owned?

[Chris Grayling]

There is a curious conundrum in this. We hear so much uncertainty from Labour about what they think about Brexit: they seem to want to stay in the single market and continue to operate in the traditional way, but they do not want to work with train companies from other countries. That is a bit illogical.

I am delighted that we as a Government are finally investing—in a way that the hon. Gentleman’s party did not—in rail in the north-east. The investment in trains on the Metro and the plans to extend it are the right things to do to help his constituency and the economy of the north-east, and I am very proud to be able to deliver them. It is also worth saying that the private sector franchise on the east coast main line has been contributing more to the Treasury than the public sector one did.