Rail Services

Holly Mumby-Croft Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

First, the hon. Lady’s point about the timing is straightforward. The TPE contract expires on 28 May, and I noticed this morning that the hon. Lady, in another flip-flopping of Labour’s policy, knows that the contract expiry is a sensible point at which to take decisions because that is point at which she is going to nationalise rail services—she will wait for the contracts to expire. So that is a faux complaint.

Let me turn to the hon. Lady’s more substantive points. I will set out my position on industrial action very clearly. When I took this job, I changed the tone of the debate: I met the rail union leaders and ensured that the employers were facilitated to make fair and reasonable offers. On Network Rail, a fair and reasonable offer was made of pay and reform—importantly reform, which is how these offers are being funded. That was put to the RMT members who work for Network Rail and they voted overwhelmingly to accept. Those are not my words; they are the RMT’s own words—there was a 90% turnout and 76% were in favour. Fair and reasonable offers have been made by the train operating companies, under their umbrella group, the Rail Delivery Group, to RMT members working for the train operating companies: broadly comparable offers in value, also with reform. The RMT, for reasons I really do not understand, has refused to put those offers to its members. So offers are on the table and are waiting to be put to members, and the unions will not put those offers to their members. ASLEF has an offer on the table which would take the average salary of a train driver from around £60,000 a year to £65,000. So I have been doing my job. Offers are on the table; they need to be put to the members of those unions so that they can make a decision.

The focus from the hon. Lady is not surprising, however, because the rail unions have donated a total of just over £1 million to the Labour party or Labour office holders over the last five years. The general secretary of ASLEF is chair of Labour Unions, the group of unions affiliated to the Labour party, and sits on Labour’s national executive, and the hon. Lady said that she would be working hand in glove with ASLEF. She should suggest to ASLEF that it uses this opportunity to do rest day working—[Interruption.] I have made those points to the unions, but if the hon. Lady is working hand in glove with them, she should say that and tell them to call off their strike at the weekend. She should tell them to stop focusing on damaging the Eurovision contest that we are hosting for Ukraine and work in hand in glove with them on that. If she fails to do so, people will see she is all talk and no action.

[Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will know that the TPE level of service has caused absolute havoc for my constituents—I have had people struggling to get to college or to work—so I congratulate him on his leadership and on this decision. I am really glad he has taken this step, and I know my mum will be as well as she was stranded by TPE a few months ago. I understand that this is not a silver bullet: it will take time, and of course he will have my support, but can he say a little more about when he expects the service to reach the levels my constituents in Scunthorpe deserve?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend who has over a long period raised these issues on behalf of her constituents, and I thank her for doing so. As I said in my statement, we are not going to see overnight change. This is an important decision to reset those relationships; how quickly we can improve services will depend on the response of others to those reset relationships and how the new management of the company uses that. I hope we will see early results, but I have been clear to the House, both when I made my previous statement on Avanti and today, that there is not a magic wand, but I hope this is an opportunity to reset those relationships and get things moving in the right direction.