East Coast Main Line

Debate between Ian Mearns and Sheila Gilmore

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) on securing the debate. It is important that we continue to raise and debate the issues on the east coast main line, with a view to persuading the Government, I hope, that they have gone down the wrong track. It is not too late to go into reverse. I am a regular railway traveller, but this is one time when I will be more than happy for the train to stop and go backwards.

It was not such a joy to arrive at Newcastle station a couple of weeks ago and be told that the best advice was to get off the train and go home. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) and I were so determined to get here that we ignored that advice and soldiered on to Peterborough. That delay was due not to the train operator, but to the stormy weather; the line was certainly not the only one affected on that date. Some might suggest that East Coast let us down, but we were clear that that was not the case. Indeed, when we tried to take other lines to get from Peterborough to London, we discovered that they were all affected, whether they were privatised or not.

Things like that will happen in any travel system, but the service has—many regular travellers will say this—improved over recent years. People enjoy their journeys. I have said this before and I will say it again, because it is important from a Scottish perspective and an environmental perspective: the improvements are making inroads into getting those important business travellers, who otherwise might always travel by air, to use rail. If we are serious about creating a modal shift in transport, we have to make rail both attractive and reliable to get that kind of traveller. That is one thing the service has done extremely well.

I have taken part in at least four of the several debates that we have had on the east coast main line. As well as the Westminster Hall debate referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West, we had a Backbench Business Committee debate in the Chamber in which many colleagues spoke. We have had many opportunities to ask oral questions, and we have all taken them up. At this stage, one might think that we should find something new to say and look at the matter from some new angle, but the problem is that our questions have never been answered. It is important that we go back over those questions. Perhaps on this occasion we will get responses to some key points.

[Ian Mearns]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Ministers might ask why the public have so little confidence in the re-privatisation of the east coast main line, and the answer is simple: for the bulk of the time since the railways were privatised, the franchise has been in the hands of the private sector. The orders for new rolling stock on the line have only been secured since the franchise has been in the public sector. Much of the existing rolling stock is 35 or 40 years old. For the bulk of that time, it has been in private hands with little investment, apart from a lick of paint.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for making an important point on East Coast that speaks to how we run the railways. A lot of the public assumed that privatisation would mean that investment would be brought in and that everything would be brought up to scratch. That was the selling point.

The track investments are necessary and we need to see considerable improvement in the infrastructure on the east coast main line, particularly with the overhead lines, which have caused a lot of the recent problems. We need to see that crucial investment and we need to see the rolling stock upgraded, but none of the onus will be put on those who are being asked to tender for the service. Whatever investment there is will come from all of us as taxpayers.

The notion that we have to privatise to get investment was the selling point at the beginning, which people perhaps swallowed. They probably thought, “Yes, if that is a way of improving things, we will at least give it a try,” but that investment is not happening and will not happen in this case either. All the things that desperately need to be done will not get done through this privatisation process, which is, in many ways, a distraction from the measures that could lead to a real step change. We have talked about improvements and we are not complacent. We do not think that everything is perfect. We want to see a step change in the line, but it will not come through this process.