Rail Timetabling

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I am very clear that once we know the full culpability for this situation, the appropriate action will be taken if it needs to be taken.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

The more the Secretary of State has described this afternoon some of the reasons why this disaster occurred—lack of preparation and lack of time—the more commuters and others on Northern and TransPennine, who have suffered so much misery, will wonder why the introduction of the new timetable was not cancelled, rather than their trains. It is quite clear that the Secretary of State had no idea what was going on. The question that he has not answered today is, why?

[Chris Grayling]

As I said, in the case of GTR I had the chief executive in my office three weeks before saying that it would be fine. In the case of the teams running the Northern branch, they indicated to my Department that it would be a difficult start, but not on anything like this scale. I have set up the independent inquiry into what has gone wrong because I am not alone in this. When I talk to other people—on the independent assurance panel and the board set up to oversee the introduction of the timetable, the Rail North team and other people on the Rail North board, and the chair of Transport for the North—it seems that nobody was expecting this. That is completely unacceptable. We need to understand why it has happened and ensure that it can never happen again.

East Coast Main Line

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I can give that commitment. I hope that it will become an even more excellent train line, though passengers may be tempted away, as tomorrow I will do the formal opening of the last link of motorway-grade road between London and Newcastle—something that should have happened a long time ago but did not happen in the 13 years when the Labour party was in power. It is this Government who are bringing better transport services to the north-east.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

This is the third time that a private franchise on this line has failed. The Secretary of State just told the House that when it is fully formed, the new LNER operation will be a partnership between the public and private sectors. Can he clarify that, until that time, it will in effect be a publicly run service? If so, he could have made a considerably shorter statement if he had just got up and said, “For the time being, I am renationalising the east coast main line.”

Rail Franchising

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

I will make a little progress, but I will take interventions later.

In 2016, the Department for Transport set out that its aims and objectives for rail franchising were

“to encourage a flourishing, competitive passenger rail market which secures high-performing, value for money services for passengers and taxpayers whilst driving cost effectiveness.”

The Department has clearly failed to meet those objectives. The latest collapse of the east coast franchise, which was announced in November, makes a mockery of the Department’s 2016 aims. Virgin-Stagecoach did not deliver and defaulted on their contract, and the Secretary of State has given them a gift.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Given that this is the third occasion in just over a decade that a private contractor has announced that it wishes to hand back the keys to the east coast franchise, was it not a fundamental mistake for the Government not to allow East Coast, which successfully ran the franchise for more than five and a half years and paid back £1 billion to the Treasury, to continue its good work? Instead, the Government ideologically said that anyone could bid to run the franchise except the state-owned company that had run it so successfully.

[Andy McDonald]

My right hon. Friend makes a perfect point. I have no doubt that that will be a consistent theme throughout this debate.

The Government should have followed Labour’s example. When the operator defaulted in 2009, Labour took the contract back into the public sector. If a company defaults, it does not deserve a contract. Taking a contract back into the public sector would mean that there is no reward for failure, and other companies in the industry would not expect the same treatment. In the light of what happened with the east coast franchise, what plans does the Secretary of State have to renegotiate the TransPennine Express, Northern and Greater Anglia franchises?

Transport in the North

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered transport in the North.

It is very nice to see a fellow Yorkshire MP in the Chair for this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time to debate this important issue. I thank the many hon. Members who sponsored the application, in particular my co-sponsors, the hon. Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy).

Over the past four months, the Transport Secretary has made a number of significant announcements on transport in northern England. On 20 July, he released a written ministerial statement cancelling a range of rail electrification projects, including Oxenholme to Windermere, and the whole line north of Kettering to Sheffield and Nottingham. The privately financed plans to electrify the Hull to Selby line had already been scrapped in November 2016, despite Transport for the North describing the scheme as:

“intrinsic to the story of transformation and provide necessary conditions to support the radical step-change required to deliver the Northern Powerhouse and strategic transport improvements to underpin this.”

The Department for Transport claims that bimodal diesel electric trains will realise

“the same significant improvements to journeys”

as electrification. On 21 July, the Transport Secretary, speaking to the press, cast doubt on the electrification of the trans-Pennine route and again talked about bimodal trains. Finally, on 22 August, he wrote in The Yorkshire Post boasting that there was to be a record £13 billion of investment in northern transport over the next Parliament, but that to secure further gains it was up to northern leaders, backed by Transport for the North, to realise the gains themselves.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, along with other hon. Members. She describes recent Government announcements. Do they not make our constituents ever more conscious of the significant disparity between investment in transport in the North, and in London and the south-east? Does she agree that if we really are to have the kind of transport infrastructure we require for our future economic development, we need both the money and the powers to take decisions for ourselves?

[Diana Johnson]

As ever, my right hon. Friend puts his finger right on it: we need the money and the powers.

Alongside many hon. Members on both sides of the House, I sought this debate to have the opportunity to hold the Secretary of State to account for the announcements he made over the summer. It is good to see a Transport Minister on the Treasury Bench, but I am disappointed that, on this very important issue for the country, the Secretary of State is not here to listen to and respond to the debate when it is his actions over the summer and in previous months that have prompted the debate.

I want to make the case for a much bolder and more ambitious transport strategy for northern England. Despite what has been claimed, Britain is becoming more, not less, regionally divided. The inequality between our regions’ economies is the largest of any country in Europe. The productivity gap between north and south is also widening.