North of England: Transport

Lord Snape Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, like the previous speaker, I, too, was born and brought up in the north of England, although I suspect in somewhat different circumstances. Like my father, I spent my working life in the railway industry in the north of England, so I shall confine my remarks to the railway infrastructure in that part of the world and particularly to the two franchises, both of which have been mentioned in this debate—the Northern franchise and the First TransPennine Express franchise.

I have never really understood why the two franchises are separate. They were lumped together in one franchise prior to the Strategic Rail Authority deciding to split them around 2000. I have always been against franchises such as Northern, dependent as it is solely on subsidy. It is all too easy, as experience has shown, to point the finger at such franchises and say that too much money is expended on them. I go back to British Rail days when, under sectorisation in the mid-1980s, services that could not find a place anywhere else under PTE areas—and reference to this has already been made—were lumped into other provincial services. They were seen as ready targets for reductions in expenditure, because their continuance depended entirely on public subvention and money from the Treasury.

I would personally much have preferred the two franchises to be kept together. Indeed, from the point of view of the non-duplication of head office and managerial positions, it would surely be more sensible to have kept them together. However, separate as they are, the invitations to tender for the TPE franchise had to be submitted to the Department for Transport by 28 May and for the Northern franchise by 26 June. During the course of these debates, we have said on both sides of your Lordships’ House that the Department for Transport is occasionally too prescriptive about its requirements for railway rolling stock and locomotives. It is interesting to note that the invitations for tender insist on the tenders being submitted in the “prescribed font”, which is 11 or 13-point Arial, whatever that may be. It goes to show that nothing escapes the eagle eye of the department when it comes to franchising and submitting tenders for these franchises.

We expect a decision later this year on both those franchises, and I would like to ask the Minister early in my speech if he could give us any information as to whether that decision is likely to be made. After all, the franchises will commence next year, and the sooner we know to whom the awards have gone, the better. It is also interesting to see the short list of bidders. For the Northern franchise, the three bidders are Abellio, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dutch railways; Arriva Rail North, a wholly owned subsidy of Deutsche Bahn, the German railways; and Govia, which is at least 65% owned by a British company, Go-Ahead, but 35% owned by Keolis, which is responsible for much of the operation of SNCF, the French railways. It is remarkable that companies and nationalised industries from other parts of the world are deemed fit to run Britain’s railway lines, yet our own public sector was recently deprived of the opportunity to continue to run the east coast main line.

The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, was fairly scathing about his experiences on the TransPennine Express. I cannot say that I have shared those experiences, doubtful as he found them. If they were and are regarded as the cream of the long-distance commuter services in the north of England, perhaps he caught them on a bad day. I cannot say I share his views about the removal of roundabouts on Britain’s major roads. I remember pictures of him astride a motorcycle in, I think, one of the Sunday colour magazines. In those days, he used to burn his way up and down from London to his constituency. I hope I do not cause him any distress when I say that the sight of him in black leather was somewhat disturbing, and I hope I do not cause him any offence by saying that the sight of his good lady wife in black leather was a lot more alluring.

The electrification of the trans-Pennine line appears to be in some doubt. My noble friends Lord Woolmer and Lord Faulkner and the noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland, had harsh words to say about the likely delay in electrification. I think the Minister owes us an explanation about how long the delay is likely to be. “Indefinite” is a pretty ominous word. It has ominous connotations for the franchise bidders. What sort of rolling stock are they going to have to provide for trans-Pennine services if electrification is indeed delayed indefinitely? Electric trains without overhead wires will not take passengers very far, and there is a problem about ordering new diesel multiple units. For a start, there are very few being built at present, and I understand that none of those in service meets European emission standards, yet here we are embarking on the letting of two major franchises in the north of England with no real idea about what sort of rolling stock can and will be used on them.

Although we are all heartened to hear the Minister’s opening speech and how wonderful life is going to be for those of us who travel by train in the north of England, I think we are entitled to ask him what sort of trains we will have. Reference has been made to Pacer trains. The Government have left us in no doubt—indeed, the Prime Minister has left us in no doubt—that there is no future for Pacer trains. A junior Minister recently referred to the need for new diesel trains in the north of England. For too long, those of us who have used trains in that part of the world have had to suffer cast-offs—I can put it no higher than that—cascaded trains from the south of England. When the newly electrified line between Manchester and Liverpool was opened recently, the class 319 electric multiple units that were used were 25 to 30 years old. They had been refurbished and came from the south of England. Imagine the enormous row there would be if we decided to dispatch a shedful of Pacers to the south of England and invited Ministers and civil servants based in the south of England—indeed, the commuters of Wimbledon, perhaps—to ride on those somewhat uncomfortable nodding donkeys, as they are known. Joking aside, the fact that class 170 DMUs were removed from the trans-Pennine franchise and dispatched to Chiltern Railways to be used between Marylebone and Banbury does not augur well for the prospect of new trains in the north of England.

I shall refer to a couple of other matters in the last 60 seconds or so of what I have to say. There is a great deal of concern about the future of ticket offices in the north of England. People, particularly women, understandably do not like travelling through unmanned stations, particularly at night. As one of my noble friends said in an earlier debate, there is no recorded instance of a ticket machine ever coming to the aid of a passenger in distress on a railway station. The Government should not be proud of the destaffing and dehumanising of our railway stations. There was a similar story with the driver-only operation of trains, which, again, is in the specification for the franchise for the Northern region. Although DOO is by no means unknown, the rail unions have let it be known that without proper negotiation they will not be prepared to accept its imposition. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what plans the department has to see that it takes rail staff with it in the attempt to re-let the franchise in the north of England.

I conclude by wishing the Minister well. As my noble friend said, it was refreshing to hear him at the Dispatch Box. My noble friend Lord Faulkner paid tribute to some of his predecessors, but he missed out the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. What I always found refreshing about the noble Earl was that if you asked him a question and he did not know the answer, he told you that he did not know it. In the macho world of politics that is refreshingly different. He always made a point of writing to noble Lords on either side of the Chamber subsequently to answer their questions. I commend that approach to the Minister; we do not expect a whole string of answers to those questions at the end of the debate, but we do expect an answer in a reasonable time, otherwise all those honeyed words he has heard today might not last throughout his career.