Rolling Stock (North of England)

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) on securing this debate. She is a long-standing campaigner for better rail services in her constituency. Alongside others here today, she lobbied to secure funding for the northern hub project. She gave a powerful speech, and it is entirely fitting that she should lead this important and timely debate. There is clearly an extremely high level of interest in this subject, reflecting the importance of rail services to constituents across the north and parts of the east midlands as well.

I would like to take this opportunity briefly to pay tribute to Bob Crow, who tragically died yesterday morning. No one could ever doubt Bob’s tenacity and effectiveness on behalf of the workers he represented. I met him a number of times in my capacity as shadow rail Minister. From talking to people who sat on the other side of the negotiating table from him I know just how deeply respect ran for him in the rail industry, from his opponents and supporters alike. He was a pragmatic fighter and a doughty defender of RMT members, and our national life will be poorer without him.

A year and a half after the collapse of the west coast mainline and Great Western competitions, we are witnessing another consequence of that debacle. The facts have been well covered by hon. Members. As a direct result of its 10-month franchise extension, TransPennine Express has found itself unable to negotiate new leases for its rolling stock. Its Class 170 trains, which make up 13% of its fleet, will be transferred to Oxfordshire, and we learn from the industry press that Class 158 trains may be taken from the Northern franchise to make up the shortfall.

As the Rail North group has said, the short-term direct awards appear to be causing potential and actual problems for the rail network. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is clearly not the solution that passengers need, so I have a number of questions for the Minister, which I hope he will answer when he sums up. First, for how long exactly has the Department been aware that TPE’s trains could be transferred to Chiltern? Did the Secretary of State consider exercising his section 54 powers in this case, and if he did, why did he decide against using them? Finally, will the Minister confirm that there is no protection against a similar fate for the remainder of TPE’s fleet? What is to stop the Class 185s, which are used on the majority of TPE’s services, being transferred to other operators?

I have to declare an interest in this debate as a constituency MP. Although, like the hon. Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham), I represent a midlands seat, Nottingham station is served by Northern Rail—by the same Class 158s, in fact, that could be transferred to other franchises. Although I welcomed the decision to electrify the midland main line, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) has previously said, we still do not know what rolling stock will be used, including on the line to Sheffield.

We already have real uncertainty over rail projects. The Todmorden curve is a case in point. Restoring that 500-metre section of track will enable new, direct services from east Lancashire to Manchester. Funding for the infrastructure was secured following a cross-party campaign, which included my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones). The track itself will be completed by May, but, incredibly, no trains will run on it until December, despite previous assurances that sufficient trains could be found. As Josh Fenton-Glynn, Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Calder Valley, has rightly said, that is

“an inexcusable piece of incompetence about which local people are justifiably angry.”

I pay tribute to the work he has done to bring the issue to national attention.

Northern Rail said in October that

“there are no spare trains on the market at the moment”

The case illustrates both a failure to plan, and the lack of available rolling stock for expanded services. In the meantime, the strong growth in demand for rail in the north, ably described many of my hon. Friends, has resulted in severe overcrowding on some routes.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

rose—

[Lilian Greenwood]

I am sorry, but I am not going to give way, as we have limited time.

We heard powerful examples of the difficulties commuters face from hon. Members from across the House, including the hon. Members for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and for Southport (John Pugh), my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) and for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) and, briefly but eloquently, my hon. Friends the Members for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi). As First TransPennine Express has said, even a relatively small reduction in the size of its fleet could have a profound impact on services. The company said:

“Our timetable from May 2014 through to the end of our current franchise term requires all of our existing fleets to be able to deliver the significant capacity increase that we have committed to provide. Similarly, the same total number of vehicles would be required to sustain the same level of service into the new ten-month franchise extension period from April 2015.”

If replacement rolling stock is transferred from Northern Rail, the same problem will be repeated. Passengers, transport authorities and operators now face years of uncertainty over rolling stock availability before electrification is completed. Drivers cannot be trained and new services cannot be planned. If still more trains are lost, those problems will only become more unmanageable.

I understand that Chiltern’s agreement to operate the Class 170s contains a sub-lease that would allow the trains to remain in use on the trans Pennine routes until replacement rolling stock can be found. I also understand that the Department for Transport, First TransPennine Express and Chiltern Railways are parties to that lease. Will the Minister tell us whether the sub-lease can go ahead only with the full agreement of the Department and Chiltern Railways? It is important that we have an answer to that question and to the other questions that hon. Members have raised today.

When the Minister responds I hope that he is not tempted to downplay the issue by saying that this situation is simply part of the normal process of cascading rolling stock. If that is so, why is the industry press reporting that the loss of the Class 170s is

“likely to produce a serious reduction in capacity”

on the TransPennine routes? As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), who chairs the Transport Committee, has said,

“this issue is causing considerable uncertainty over the future viability of TPE’s timetable.”

The Minister might say that this is simply a matter for the market to decide, and, of course, the split between infrastructure, train operators and rolling stock companies was established in the botched privatisation by the previous Conservative Government. However, if it is simply something for the industry to decide, why has the Department been involved in discussions between Chiltern Railways and the rolling stock leasing company at every stage in the process? He might try to insist that the situation is simply business as usual, but after today’s debate, that simply would not be credible. The problem is the direct consequence of the panicked direct awards programme introduced following the collapse of the west coast competition. In turn, that was caused by Ministers imposing their new franchise model on one of the most complex routes in Europe. At every stage, Ministers are directly accountable, and they will be accountable for any reduction of services that results from that chain of events.

The truth is that, for all the talk of cutting red tape, the coalition will leave a record of five years of disastrous decisions in Whitehall, a top-heavy failure to manage key projects, and a huge expansion in the Department’s involvement in the rail network. I accept that the Minister may be an unlikely occupant of a Marxist universe, but perhaps we should not be surprised by the coalition’s switch to old-fashioned command and control. After all, last year, the Business Secretary said that a “rail revolution” was taking place. With services threatened and rolling stock taken away, we now know what the rallying cry of that strange revolution—it unites MPs across party boundaries—will be: “Passengers of the north, unite! You have nothing to lose but your trains.”

Season ticket prices have risen by an average of 20% since the election. Passengers deserve better than this. The Government must face up to the scale of the problem, set out a clear plan for meeting the north’s rolling stock requirements and get the improvements in the region’s rail services back on track.