Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord McLoughlin Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord McLoughlin (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register of interests, as chairman of Transport for the North and as a board adviser to Xrail. It is a great privilege to follow my noble friend Lord Grayling; I congratulate him on such a splendid maiden speech.

We were both appointed to the Cabinet in September 2012. Because it was an unexpected reshuffle—or one that had been kept quite quiet—I was told that we could not act in our positions until we had our seals of office. Of course, we were to receive our seals of office from Her Majesty. I was told that she was in Balmoral, while we were in London, and she was not coming to London—so we found ourselves making our way up to Balmoral one Monday morning, and having a Privy Council meeting there.

I was given my seals of office as Secretary of State for Transport first; they were in a very small box. Following me was my noble friend Lord Grayling, who had become Lord Chancellor. After he took his oath, Her Majesty looked at him and said, “Your seals of office are over on the side there. You can pick them up yourself; they’re too heavy for me to lift”. That was a very special occasion for us both. Unfortunately for my noble friend Lord Grayling, he then had to pick up all the mistakes that I had made in my four years as Secretary of State for Transport because he followed me into that position. I hope I did not leave him too many problems, but I certainly left him a few. With that story, I welcome him to the House, congratulate him and commend his speech today.

So that is three ex-Transport Secretaries almost in a row, as the old saying goes. As my noble friend Lord Young pointed out, because of the problems faced by the rail industry we perhaps forget what it was like pre-privatisation; that sometimes needs to be taken into account. There were approximately 700 million passenger journeys a year then. After privatisation took place, in the year before the pandemic, there were 1.8 billion passenger journeys. After what had happened before, you would not want to spend any time at places such as St Pancras, King’s Cross or London Bridge stations. They were horrible, dingy places. Transport had not been ignored by the Government but other priorities, such as health, education and defence, got more of a hearing from the Exchequer. It worries me, and the Government have to guard carefully against going back to that position.

I accept fully that this proposal was in the Labour Party’s manifesto and that it is therefore going to happen. However, we have not yet seen the main railway Bill, and will not do so for a little time yet. There are a number of questions to be asked about that because the balance between freight and passenger and the accessibility of both the freight industry and passenger transport—this was referred to in a way by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner—is going to be an important one.

I have always thought there should be a guiding mind for transport who is accountable. I thought that it should be mine because then I would agree with what I have been saying, but I assure the Minister that any guiding mind is still going to have to use the same capacity on the railways that we have today. That is one of the biggest issues. It was of great regret to me that the previous Government, in cancelling the second part of HS2, made a big mistake. HS2 was never about speed; it was always about capacity on the network. If we want to see more people travelling on our railways and more freight on our railways, we have to increase capacity. That is a key issue but this Bill does nothing at all in terms of capacity on our network. It talks more about the mechanics, but they will still have to use the same facilities that are required now. That will be one of the biggest challenges for the Government.

There is also the question of the transfer of liabilities. When we see the final Bill, it will be fascinating to see what happens in relation to transferring liabilities of pensions and different salary costs across the whole industry. It is interesting that, while we in this country are eventually going to go back to a single operator, in Europe, countries such as Spain, Italy and France are embracing on-rail competition between operators and competitive tendering to increase services, deliver newer trains, grow passenger numbers and reduce subsidies. Perhaps they looked at what we saw happen in this country on the railways over a period of time: a massive increase.

One of the reasons why the railways have become a lot more politically controversial, in a way, is that many more people are using them. Since the pandemic, we have seen quite a big change in the way in which the load of passengers is changing over the week. There is now a lot more use of the train service by passengers at weekends. Part of the problem is that, with the oldness of our railway infrastructure, any Network Rail engineering works taking place tend to be done on weekends because that used to be the time when fewer passengers were using them. That is not the case any more; it is one of the issues that will have to be addressed. There are still a lot of unanswered questions as far as both this Bill and the later one that we are told will come sometime next year are concerned. We need to see how the latter will address some of these issues, in particular investment.

The other area where the UK is changing is greater devolution to our regional cities. There will always be issues in terms of the big intercity lines: the line that goes from London up to Scotland; the line that goes from London to Manchester and on to Scotland; the line that goes down to Wales; and the line that goes down to the south-west. Those will always be of national significance and where the Secretary of State will perhaps want to have the most input, but what about local services in the West Midlands, in the city regions and in Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle, where much more devolution has taken place? How do we involve those devolved authorities as well? That is going to be one of the most important parts that we have to address.

Overall, we have seen huge investment take place in our railways. My noble friend talked about his involvement in the restoration of the Houses of Parliament and wanting to see that work. I came across an interesting fact at the weekend: when Sir Charles Barrie first got the contract to build the Palace of Westminster in 1835, he said that it would cost £725,000 and take six years to build. It cost three times that and took 30 years to build; he was dead by the time it was finished. The way we are dealing with restoration in this place, I sometimes think that all the people on the restoration committee will, I am afraid, suffer the similar fate of never seeing it completed.

However, investment in our railways is not short-term; it takes a lot of planning and a lot of pre-work enabling that planning to take place. A lot of the expense is increased if that pre-work is not done; we have seen many examples of that. This is the start of a debate; we have not yet heard all the answers from the Government. This is a manifesto commitment Bill. We will, I think, want to press much further on some of the more detailed issues when we see the next railways Bill. I know that there are two more maiden speeches coming, from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, and the noble Lord, Lord Cryer; we look forward to hearing them later.

I know how important the whole subject of good connectivity is to the Minister, particularly as far as Leeds and its neighbouring cities are concerned, and to the people for whom she spoke when she was the leader of Leeds City Council. These issues are wider. If we can move forward in a way that involves the private sector, we are much more likely to see greater investment take place. I worry about some of the implications of what is coming from the Government at the moment and worry that we will not see that private investment taking place in our transport, which, overall, has served the country incredibly well over the past 25 years in which we have seen major changes in our railway system.