Industrial Action on the Railways

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I recognise that my noble friend is trying to be helpful here, and I appreciate it, but the Government are committed to working with the train operating companies to put in place as many services as we can to minimise disruption to both freight and passenger operations where possible. Shutting the railway for the entire week would be shooting ourselves in the foot. We absolutely need to provide those services for as many people as possible, because we know that so many people are reliant on the railways.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I get the impression that this crisis has just occurred in the past week, but that is not the case. The trade unions have been talking about this for a long time; the Government have been talking about Great British Railways for a very long time. We do not really know the extent to which these two issues are combined and whether the noble Baroness’s wish for change and the examples she gave will be included in legislation, but it seems very odd that we are now waiting until the last day before anything significant is happening.

I do not buy this business that the Government are not a principal. Since Covid, for very good reasons, the Government have been micromanaging the railways, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said. They are not allowing the train operators or Network Rail to negotiate. I do not know whether they mind about that but if they do not, the Government should take it on themselves.

I ask the Minister: what next? We have three strikes this week and, if there is no solution, what happens next? She and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, mentioned agency workers, but the last time we had an issue with agency workers related to P&O Ferries. Ministers were quite critical of P&O, to the extent that the Secretary of State said that he would sack its chairman. Whether he actually had the power to sack the chairman is a different matter, but if this goes on and agency workers are brought in, how can the Secretary of State sack himself? That really would not work. I hope that next week or by the end of this week, whatever the reasons, the Government encourage everybody to sit around the table and start talking about change and how it can be implemented while keeping the services going at the same time. As the Minister said, in France—I have a lot of experience of what happened on the railways in France—there is a rule that the trade unions allow one train in four to keep going, whatever the strike, so that there is at least a minimum service.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked: what next? The most important thing, to my mind, is for the unions to come back to the table—to sit down with the train operating companies and Network Rail to reach a resolution.