Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have much enjoyed listening to this afternoon’s debate, partly because of the excellent maiden speeches we have heard, and to have been present when the noble Baroness the Minister has been having her first big step-out on to the stage. Unlike almost all the other speakers, I do not consider myself an expert on the railways. I rise as somebody who has spent a great deal of time travelling on the railways, and that is the basis of my comments.

It is true, and I declare it, that I am president of the South Tynedale Railway, which runs for approximately 8 kilometres north from Alston towards Haltwhistle, which is about five or six miles beyond where we currently end—once we get to Haltwhistle, we are on to the British national network and the world is our oyster. Also, although I cannot in anyway emulate the vivid reminiscences of the noble Lord, Lord Snape, as a very small boy I changed the signals in the signal box at Bassenthwaite Lake.

As I got on the train this morning in Penrith, near where I live—it arrived two minutes late and arrived in London two minutes early—I realised, and I am not alone here by any means, that for the first few years I travelled on the railway the trains were pulled by steam engines. Just as the source of power has changed, so has the ownership of the railway system and the trains running on it. Over that period, the service has been variable. Under British Rail, I had good experiences and ghastly experiences. Under the privatised rail system, I have had ghastly experiences and good experiences. We want to be even-handed in our criticism of what might have taken place in the past. People might think it eccentric, but I am just going to put in a word on behalf of Avanti. It has had terrible press and a lot of justified criticism, but it is trying to get better and is improving the service, and that should be recognised, because if a rail service becomes a completely demoralised army it will end up delivering worse for the public.

The real problem with the politics of the railways—I use that phrase in a general, non-specialist sense—is that it is rather like the English football team: the less you know, the more emphatic are your views about what needs to be done. What we are talking about here is the implementation of a manifesto commitment of the new Government. Of course there is a commitment, but there is also an awful lot of detail that needs to be filled in before things actually happen. The reality of railways is that it is all very complicated. At the point of delivery it has to be delivered by experts, regardless of who owns the system, just as the National Health Service has to be delivered by trained, qualified doctors and medical staff, supported by specialist private sector businesses, science and technology. In addition to that, our rail services have to be delivered in the national, not a partisan or party-political, interest, regardless of ownership and regulative frameworks.

We all know that there are a whole series of criticisms, deficiencies and problems that relate to the railways system in this country today. Much of this results, either directly or indirectly, from our current wider national malaise of concentrating too much on consumption and not carrying out sufficient investment. That is something that we need to address nationally.

As a number of speakers have said, the Bill does not have all that many words in it compared with other Bills we consider in this House. We are assured that it presages real change that will bring improvement. What we cannot let it become is a kind of blank cheque to give the Government completely free range. What I think the public and Parliament want and need is a convincing explanation of how it will all happen and evolve. Soundbites are no good. For example, where I come from in Cumbria, where I have been chairing the local enterprise partnership, the railway system is a very important part of the infrastructure of that county and the businesses in it. The future prosperity of Cumbria materially depends on rail connection.

An important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is that if we do not get it right it will waste, and therefore cost, a great deal of money. That is something we must make sure we avoid if we possibly can.

As I have said, I do not know the answer to many of the problems facing our rail system, but we all need to know the kind of ways forward to deal with them that are being proposed by the Government.

In the debate on the King’s Speech, I said I was agnostic, as I am, about the forms of ownership of and control over our railway system. What I want is simple: I just want it to work properly. This approach was more vividly described some years ago, in a different context, by Chairman Deng, who said, “I don’t care whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice”. What I would like to hear from the Minister is not that she can give us an assurance that the new cat is a good mouser but rather how it will catch the mice, how much it will cost and how many it will manage to get.