Train Operating Companies: Yorkshire

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rachael Maskell

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Dame Cheryl; it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair—you have heard the sheer anger of our constituents about the state of our railways. Today’s debate could have been called, “Why we desperately need an alternative Government to run our railways.” We have a detailed worked-up plan that will address the real challenges that commuters face on a day-by-day basis.

My hon. Friends the Members for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) and for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) highlighted that this is not just about personal stories, but about lives having to change because of a failure of timetables and the governance of our railways. We know the particular difficulties that people have had because of the halting of the electrification programme, which has had a catastrophic impact. The timetable fiasco resulted from that—

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachael Maskell]

I will just begin my speech, if I may.

There are excessive fare hikes, poor infrastructure, franchise changes and no certainty for the future. The Williams review critiques how dreadful the whole infrastructure is and how it is imploding around our constituents, who want only to turn up at work in time and to live out their lives. This is a disgrace.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

Rather than calling for a change in Government, would our constituents not prefer us to work on a cross-party, constructive basis to try to solve the problems? Much of the debate has been very constructive. Would that not be a better way forward?

[Rachael Maskell]

The reality is that the Government are not interested in the detailed solutions that we have been working towards for eight years to put the railway system back together, working across the industry with all stakeholders. That is why we need to move forward. If the Government want to join us in that, we would welcome that conversation, but to date they have blocked us. There is a real difference in policy. I note what the hon. Gentleman says, but also what my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) says. We need to look at the penalties that should be placed on these rail companies, such as freezing fares where there has been rail failure. It is wrong that people pay more for more failure on the railways.

The reality is that the Government have failed. Their ideology that is driving this forward is falling apart. Under the new model of publicly owned railways that we will put in place, we will see long-term security, long-term planning, long-term investment and stability for the whole rail sector.

We know about the inequality. We have heard the statistic about how London and the south-east have had so much more investment than we have in Yorkshire. There are consequences when we do not see the resources there. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) said, let us think about the vitality of connecting Sheffield to Leeds and Manchester—connecting the major cities of the north. In fact, the connectivity between Leeds and Manchester is the same length as the Piccadilly line. Think about the frequency and the reliability of the Piccadilly line compared with what we see at the moment.

We have heard tales of woe from across the trans-Pennine route. We have had a downgrade of the downgrade that was already planned—that came out of the board meeting a week or so ago. That downgrade will have serious consequences, because the Government have removed vital reliability from the service. Not only have we lost freight elements, as my hon. Friends have mentioned, and journey time savings—my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) highlighted how journey times will extend with more stops on the line—but we have lost the reliability factor. That means that the only marker that will have an upgrade is capacity, because there are larger trains. Even then, we will not reach the potential on that line.

Dirty diesel is being put on the route as opposed to full electrification—the only thing that will deliver the reliability that is required. We have heard that this is all part of a stepped process: in control period 6 we will see some of the upgrade, and it will be completed in CP7. Will the Minister tell us what certainty there is that in more than 10 years’ time—we must remember that timeline, because we need connectivity today—CP7 will bring about that full upgrade of the trans-Pennine route? That is the crucial route for the north and we need the upgrade now.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North highlighted the appalling state of stations. We must remember that stations are places of service—they are where people wait and they need facilities. Public toilets are a basic public health necessity and they must be there to meet passenger needs. We need to make sure they are put in place. We also need to make sure that our stations are accessible. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen about the situation in Kirklees, where only eight of 16 stations are accessible. We have heard about Marsden station from my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker), and about Mirfield station. I was with Leonard Cheshire just last week at York station—even there, there was only one information point in the whole station. If a passenger is in need, where do they go? It is unacceptable.

We heard about the Equality Act 2010, but we must remember that it has been 23 years since the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which called on stations to make reasonable adjustments. Quite clearly, that is shameful. We are nearly a quarter of a century on and we still deny disabled people the right to access railways. It is not just physical adaptations that are needed; we need to change the environments to accommodate neuro diversity. I suggest that the Minister talks to the TSSA, which is a leader in this field, about how we can accommodate autism and other such things, and make sure that our stations are supportive of people with sensory impairments.

Let me give the Minister a gentle reminder: guards are on trains not just to close doors, which is vital for passenger safety, but as the passenger champion to make sure passengers are safe—whether disabled or non-disabled—throughout their whole journey. It is vital that the Government get to grips with this agenda and ensure that passengers are looked after, as it is a public service, and that guards are back on our trains. It is an easy dispute to resolve, yet the Government seem so entrenched in their ideology that they do not want to move forward on this issue.

Our new model of public ownership will have the passenger at its heart. We will make sure that we take decisions in an integrated way, closer to where the passengers are, that power and resource are in the right place, and that we plan for the long term. We have a 30-year lifetime of infrastructure and rolling stock to make proper investments, to make sure there is a smoothing of skills, and to ensure good employability across the industry. Whether with operations, maintenance or enhancements, we will make sure that we timetable in such a way as to sustain our railway, so it does not fail passengers.

We want real investment in new technologies. It is heartbreaking that we go back to old technologies on our railway systems, because we see such advances taking place elsewhere in Europe and in the world. Yet in the UK, we are still stuck on Victorian railways. We have to move that agenda forward, because that will deliver the reliability that our passengers need and demand from this Government.

We have great opportunities ahead of us; we have heard Northern Powerhouse Rail mentioned. That will get the vital connectivity into Bradford if we have anything to do with it. We will make sure that the north is properly connected and has that modal shift where people move from road to rail—not just passengers, but freight. We have a real crisis with our environmental and carbon footprint. We have to see a modal shift. That will bring about the connectivity that hon. Friends talked about with bus services, making sure the whole system works together. We have the National College for High Speed Rail in Doncaster. I urge employers to make the best use of that academy as we move forward.

Finally, I want to talk about the franchising system. There is recognition that the whole system is broken. The train operating companies are self-serving; they have not provided the essential public service that, perhaps, was envisaged in the beginning; and they are certainly now orientated on profit. Rather than go through the franchising process, the Government have created 12 direct awards, and we clearly need to move on. We need real integration and Labour’s policies will be a catalyst to providing that essential connectivity for the sake of our economy and our environment, and to ensuring that people’s lives are restored and put back in order.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rachael Maskell

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister declared austerity to be over and the Chancellor downgraded the prediction to say that it is coming to an end, but the reality is that each Department is having to make 3% cuts, which hardly backs up those statements. Of course, the corporate giants will still enjoy their £110 billion corporate tax giveaway, while 1,000 people have seen their personal wealth increase by £274 billion over the past five years. For my constituents and many like them up and down the country, the harsh reality of services slashed and under increasing pressure and the daily experience of living in poverty or just scraping by was not addressed by this Budget. We all know that the money is going to the wrong places, and it will take a radical Labour Government to restructure and transform our economy to make sure that we invest in people’s future.

I want to turn to the high streets. On 8 March 2017, resulting from the valuation process and the sharp rises in business rates, we were promised a full business rates review, but it has not happened. Instead, temporary relief schemes have been provided to local authorities, badly managed by local authorities and then withdrawn. We did not hear on Monday about how all the temporary relief has been withdrawn from small businesses. That has had an impact on pubs, which are losing £1,000, and on other small businesses, as well as medium-sized businesses—the anchors of our high streets—which will not be eligible for the one third reduction in their business rates. Again, this will have a massive impact on our high streets, but we did not hear about that from the Chancellor on Monday.

The announcement on business rates was again a short-term one—just two years. All such funding is so short-term; it is about the crisis management of our high streets, although businesses have to sign long— 10-year—leases. They cannot make such long-term investments if the Government do not back them up. We are still seeing the inequality between our high streets and the out-of-town retail sector and between our high streets and online shopping, and they were not properly addressed either. Plasters were thrown out last year and bandages this year, but what we need is surgery—with real reform taking place—on our business rates system. I will not give up until we get real reform.

We need to address the causation of this problem, about which I have yet to hear from this Government. We have investors—mainly offshore investors—owning properties on our high streets, and while the revenue they get from tenants is helpful, it is pocket money compared with the scale of their investments in pension schemes and other investments. That has not been tackled, and until it is, we will continue to have a crisis on our high streets. The escalation in rental values in places such as York is extortionate. The Government are providing relief for such corporate greed, but we need to address the greed where it sits. We are seeing the creation of a bubble on our high streets, and when it bursts, there will be a real collapse. I therefore urge the Chancellor to address the real problem of business rates.

I want to highlight the suggestions that have been made about a turnover or profit-based tax, which is far fairer and will create the greater equality that we need. I want to mention one of my streets, Coney Street, in York. We have about 50 empty properties in York, and footfall in Coney Street fell by 9.3% on the previous year and by 15% in the past two years. That is just short of 27,000 fewer shoppers.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachael Maskell]

I am sorry, but I do not have time to give way. The hon. Gentleman had the opportunity to put in to speak in the debate.

Since September 2016, there has been real decline on Coney Street: this year alone, 12 stores have closed. Unbelievably, that—a place where there is no traffic—is where the WH Smith that is meant to be hosting the new post office is based. The current post office, on a prime site in Lendal—the busiest thoroughfare of our city—is to close. It has been there since 1884. That is the most perverse decision, and I urge the Business Secretary, who is listening, to consider the case of York and reverse that decision so that we can have a vibrant post office, rather than losing that public service in a good place on our high streets. Yet another year passes. The Government are ducking the real challenges on our high streets. We need a Labour Government to revive our high streets and communities.

Privatisation of NHS Services

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rachael Maskell

Monday 23rd April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am very grateful for that historical clarification. One thing I used to say in my business to any people who came to me with new ideas was that ideas are 10 a penny. What matters is how we implement things. What matters is how we implemented things then and how we implement things today. That is what makes the critical difference in whether something will succeed or fail.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to be able to make an intervention, but will the hon. Gentleman not recognise that the Lansley reforms, which brought in a new funding formula, have completely broken the NHS? I am talking not only about the fragmentation, but about the fact that the funding fights against itself, and therefore it is a complete distraction from providing a planned NHS service, which is the solution that is needed in the system.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention. I absolutely think that funding needs to be fair. There are certain instances we can look at as to whether the funding for certain CCGs in York and north Yorkshire is unfair. We need to ensure that the funding is got right wherever people are. It is incredible that we have a postcode lottery for healthcare in this country; things differ in different parts of the country, based on many of those issues. They are issues that we absolutely need to resolve.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is only corrosive if it is not in the patient’s interest. There are clear commissioning rules that it must be in the patient’s interest for this commissioning to take place. The key is what is right for the patient. I do not doubt that the hon. Gentleman may be right that some of the commissioning is wrong, but whether it is private or public should not be the overriding principle; it should be what is right for the patient.

[Rachael Maskell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I will make some progress, having given way a number of times. Some years ago, when I first became an MP, I met the chief executive of York Teaching Hospital Trust, Patrick Crowley. He talked about the fact that private providers are providing care in York—in the hon. Lady’s constituency—just as they are in my constituency. He was very comfortable with the relationship between the public sector provision at York Hospital and the private sector provision at Ramsay Health Care, where I have experienced treatment. It was incredibly efficient, and the people I spoke to who worked for that organisation spoke very highly of it. There should not be this ideological rejection of the private sector.

I want to make some key points. According to The Health Foundation’s report, more than 50% of people said that the NHS often wastes money. That is not a criticism but a reality in an organisation with 1.7 million people working for it. The way to try to reduce waste—again, this is our responsibility to the taxpayer—is to ensure that we eliminate it wherever we can. The public sector does a brilliant job in the NHS. I am not calling that into question. However, in my view, good businesses—I have been in business all my life—can have a positive impact on healthcare provision. Good businesses focus on the customer first, and therefore the patient first. They make the most of their most precious resource, which clearly is their people. They are good at innovating and reducing waste, and they should deliver at the best possible value. After all those things have been taken into account, a good business should then consider whether it can still make money, and if it cannot it should not enter that field. The principle should be what is right for the customer, or the patient.

I met one of the nation’s most successful and prominent business people, who told me—to illustrate how we can drive out waste and bureaucracy from a service—that he was approached in 2007 or 2008 by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and asked to look at reshaping the health service to make it more efficient. He came back to them and said that he would be prepared to take this project on. He said that the first thing he wanted to do was to give all nurses a 30% pay rise—this is a private sector business man; I am not saying that Brown and Blair were going to privatise the NHS—but that he wanted no more money from central Government. He would put matrons back on the wards. He would put in a clinician-first approach, with admin and management second, and strip away the bureaucracy, which must be music to the ears of every nurse and doctor working in the health service. He planned to reduce admin and management by 20,000 people. He was also going to look at the purchasing system in the NHS.

Clearly, the private sector can look at these issues and drive out waste in whatever capacity as long as it is in the interests of patients. Waste in purchasing is a key element. John Abercrombie, the consultant who looked at purchasing in the NHS, established that one trust was paying £126 for a wound protector and another was paying 36p. There clearly are private sector providers that could come into this sector and help to reduce waste, delivering a better deal for the taxpayer.

My final point is about the long-term funding settlement. I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester. We need a long-term funding settlement not just for the NHS, but for social care, because they are inextricably linked, although we need different funding settlements for the two different elements. Unless we have that long-term funding settlement, whatever we discuss today, because of demand—and more money is going in—we will just be shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic. It should be cross-party and take into account rural needs. I have constituents who have seen services centralised to the point where they have to travel long distances to access healthcare. An elderly couple in Scarborough have to go to York for treatment because heart treatment has been centralised into York from Scarborough. They do not drive, so they have to take a bus to York and stay in a hotel overnight to get to the consultation appointment on time. The quantum needs to be greater and we need to ensure that we keep delivering our services right across the country, including in those rural areas. I agree with my hon. Friend that we should look at a hypothecated tax—either direct or indirect taxation—to increase the quantum of money to a significant degree.

The Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government looked at the German system of social insurance for social care, in which people make a small payment from their monthly salary on a pay-as-you-go system. When they need care, instead of suffering the catastrophic cost in later life, on the basis of an independent assessment, that support can be provided through third-party care, or they can draw down the money and pay it to relatives to look after them in their own home, which can have a positive social consequence.

We need to look at these things in detail and on a cross-party basis. I believe in a taxpayer-funded system on the basis of the best outcomes for patients and the best deal for the taxpayer, and that we should move towards a long-term funding solution, so that ultimately we can let the clinicians get on with the job.

[Stewart Hosie in the Chair]

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[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I apologise for not being here at the start of the debate but I was serving on a statutory instrument Committee. I am grateful that you are allowing me to speak in today’s important debate about our NHS.

I felt motivated to speak when I entered Westminster Hall and listened to the debate, particularly on the assertion that privatisation is not such a bad thing. I want to draw out the issue of NHS funding. The funding system is broken. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me recently to discuss the real challenges in York’s funding system. I look forward to hearing that progress has been made as a result of that, but there are real challenges within the funding system and I want to challenge some of the assertions made about that.

We must understand that the NHS was designed to work as a whole. The types of services that move to the private sector are low risk and high volume, such as hips, knees and cataracts. If we add those together, someone can cream a profit—I would prefer a reinvestment—off the top of providing those services. The NHS used to take the additional money and reinvest it in the more expensive parts of the NHS, such as intensive therapy units, the renal service, for which the drugs are very expensive, and A&E. The fine balances of NHS finances worked. However, when we remove those opportunities, because the hips and knees are being delivered by another organisation that makes a profit out of the NHS, although the risk is left with the NHS, NHS finances collapse because the cross-funding is not going into those services, which is exactly what we are seeing at the moment. I first had that debate with Andrew Lansley when he put his proposals forward, and it has come to pass that NHS finances are not working because that balance has been taken out of the finances. The opportunity for the NHS to generate the resources that are vital for the critical care parts of the NHS is removed.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady makes a good point, but the reason the NHS is under pressure is hugely increased demand. There is more money going into the NHS, and we would all concede that we need to put more money in, but demand is the essence of the problem. It is not because we have private sector companies operating within it.

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[Rachael Maskell]

The hon. Gentleman is right that demand on the NHS is huge, which takes me to a further point that I will raise shortly. We recognise that we need more resource in the NHS, but the fragmentation and the fact that so much money is taken out for contract management as opposed to reinvestment into health services creates challenges. We now have lawyers and managers managing those contracts in the NHS instead of the money filtering through to healthcare, as it would in a planned health system. Of course, when we have fragmentation, we have to work with multiple systems across multiple agencies, and trying to get the organisations to talk to each other also puts pressure on the system.

We have a growing ageing demographic and increased pressures on the health service, but, because we now see a disconnect between some of the NHS’s other services, such as prevention and public health, we do not have the levers in the system to drive better health in the community, and more risk therefore ends up back at the door of the acute services. As the situation escalates, the acute system is more and more challenged, not least because of the different funding mechanisms and interests of the CCGs and the acute trusts. If we look at a tariff system versus the CCGs’ interests, we see that they clash with each other, which then means we have a waste of resource.

I can give examples of how the funding is broken and not working within York. I have had discussions with the CCG and the acute trust. The CCG has to fund tests and other services that are not picked up elsewhere in the tariff system. Where do those services go? They go out to the private sector, so there is a cycle of decline and trying to manage a system where the fundamentals of how NHS funding works are not addressed. I suggest to the Minister that if we brought together a planned health service with proper funding, the rest of the system would fit in place, but we have to take out the private motive within the NHS, which is clearly why many organisations are involved.

We have only to look at some of the services that are provided. I think of the Serco contract in Cornwall, where only one GP was in service for the whole of the county. I think of Serco again in Suffolk and how it provided community services. When it was not generating a profit, it said, “We’re off. We’re not interested in this service any more”, leaving some of our most vulnerable people in the community high and dry, with the NHS of course picking up the cost every single time and picking up the pieces. That is no way to run a critical health service in our country. That is why we need to move to a fully planned health service in public hands.

I want to draw on one other example of a private company: Virgin Healthcare. It was first of all an incubator within the forerunners to CCGs, seeing what was coming along the tracks and the opportunities there. I can cite many services provided by Virgin Healthcare and how it has looked to profiteer and cut services. I was head of health at Unite overseeing sexual health workers. Virgin cut sexual health services and as a result there was a rise in the prevalence of sexual disease. The services also became fragmented. The community was not provided with a service, and there was a complete failure to achieve the objective of the service.

Elsewhere, we see Virgin suing the NHS because it is not winning contracts. The business of Virgin is about generating as much money out of the state as it possibly can. Private companies use the NHS for their own interests to fill the pockets of shareholders as opposed to supporting patients. We must take the profit motive and private companies out of the NHS because that model is completely broken.

I will move on to two other issues. The first is staff in the NHS. I worked in the NHS for 20 years, so I know what it feels like. People do not want to work for private companies. They want to have one set of terms and conditions, and to engage with one set of training. They want one set of rules, and most of all they want the pride of working for the NHS.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachael Maskell]

No, I will make some progress. People want to work in the interests of patients. It is important that we maintain that, because it is healthcare workers who give all the hours of unpaid overtime that nobody ever talks about. Why would they want to do that for a private company? They do it because of the sense of public service that comes from our country’s greatest pride: the NHS. We therefore need to listen to what our NHS staff say. That is why I take issue with the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who spoke about union leaders shouting off. They represent more than 1 million people working in our NHS. They are the voice of people working in the NHS.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

rose—

[Rachael Maskell]

As a union leader who spent 20 years working in the NHS, I certainly spoke up for all my members, who were deeply concerned about the destruction of the NHS because of the privatisation and fragmentation that was happening across it.

The second issue is what is happening to NHS buildings. We know that buildings were moved into NHS Property Services, which is a wholly owned company with one shareholder: the Secretary of State. He is looking through the Naylor report, which is not included in legislation at the moment, to reduce the estate. There may be some good cases for that, but profit should not be at the head of the argument. We should look at how the estate can be reinvested for the benefit of the community.

Parkland at Bootham Park Hospital in my constituency would make a fantastic public park and would address some of the mental health challenges in our city, which was the purpose of the hospital. I ask the Minister to take a further look at that opportunity. Under Treasury rules, the building and the parkland have to be sold to one private provider. Clearly, that would not work for my city. With regard to the rest of the estate at Bootham Park Hospital, it would be great to see the old mental health hospital converted into key-worker housing to support the rest of the NHS. York is in real crisis with regard to recruiting staff, because they cannot afford to live in the city. If we had key-worker homes on that estate, it would create a sea change. That is about putting public interest at the front, not private profit.

Finally, I want to talk about the future, because I am aware that time is moving on. I truly believe that the only way forward for our NHS is to have one planned public service, with full integration of mental health, physical health, public health and social care, provided in the interests of the community. We need play-space to look after the community, and no more fragmentation. It is ridiculous that we have so many regulators and so many different providers. The whole system is fragmented and fighting against itself. If we had one planned system, it would not only simplify the system, but ensure that the money is invested back into the heart and needs of patients.