Future of Rail (Passenger Experience) Debate
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Lilian Greenwood
Main Page: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)Department Debates - View all Lilian Greenwood's debates with the Department for Transport
Future of Rail (Passenger Experience)
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Marion Fellows
Yes, I shall do—I apologise, Sir Edward. It is important for the Minister to understand that it is possible to improve things and move them forward. As part of the process of making things better on the English railways, if I can put it that way, he may also want to look at taking powers to nationalise them again, as we did in Scotland, so that Government organisations and national organisations could bid for franchises. That happened on the east coast main line, and it ran very well.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I want to come back to the hon. Lady’s point on further fragmentation of the rail network. How does she feel the passenger experience of travelling on the railways would improve if the management of the infrastructure were further fragmented by having part of it devolved to Scotland, even though many franchises operate in both Scotland and the rest of the UK?
Marion Fellows
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I could speak of a personal constituency issue: there were real difficulties with the electrification of the Glasgow to Edinburgh line. Transport Scotland was responsible for part of it, but some of the issues were being dealt with down here with Network Rail. That made it difficult to get real accountability. The Scottish Government wanted to be accountable for everything, but they could not be because Network Rail is not devolved. That is why we ask for it to be devolved.
Lilian Greenwood
The hon. Lady is being generous with her time in giving way. When we consider some of the services that operate on the west coast main line and the east coast main line that cross the border, does she not accept that it would be even more difficult to operate a seamless passenger experience if those operators had to deal with both Network Rail in England and a separate network rail in Scotland?
Marion Fellows
I see where the hon. Lady is coming from, but no, I would not agree with that; at the moment it is working well. I see no reason why the Scottish Government would make life difficult for Network Rail in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I am sorry, but I cannot agree with her on this occasion.
I will end there, Sir Edward; thank you for the opportunity.