Rail Fares

Kwasi Kwarteng Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The Opposition are out of touch. The speech largely failed to talk about how we can tackle the underlying problem in the rail industry, which is the cost. The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood touched on that point and I will come to it later. The industry was passed over to this Government with a high cost. I want to tackle that cost, but the previous Government did nothing to tackle it in 13 years. One of the most important things that the Government and I have to do is to get to grips with the high cost of the railway industry. That must be part and parcel of the Government’s overall approach to getting a grip on our public finances.

At the heart of the Government’s clear determination to do that is giving ourselves the best possible chance of keeping interest rates as low as possible for as long as possible to help families and businesses with loans and mortgages. It is not just the taxpayer who is paying through the nose for debt. We must keep interest rates as low as possible for people across this country who rely on that for their household finances to make sense. Let us be clear: if we had taken the advice of the Opposition to spend more and borrow more, which is what they have been talking about in this debate, we would be talking not about the cost of rail and bus fares, but about an International Monetary Fund bail-out to keep our country afloat, and we would be living in a country facing bond yields and interest rates like those of European countries such as Greece. That is the situation that the Opposition want to swap for.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend have any idea why the perennial problem of rail costs was not tackled in 13 years under Labour and why she and her Department have had to deal with it?

[Justine Greening]

My personal view is that there were two key reasons—a lack of ability to tackle the problem, because Labour simply did not understand how to do so, and a lack of willingness. Tackling the problems means that we need to have some difficult discussions about the work force, and as we saw in the vote that has just taken place in the House, the Labour party shows no willingness ever to stand up to its party pay leaders, the unions.