Disabled People (Access to Transport)

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I am glad to have the opportunity to take part in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) and other hon. Members who have spoken in this debate on the powerful points they have made in support of the case for better access to transport for disabled people.

First, I take up the point made by my hon. Friends about the need for more and better audiovisual announcements on buses. I fully support the Committee’s recommendation that the Department for Transport should require all new buses to have audiovisual systems and for that to be phased in over no longer than 10 years—hopefully, quicker than that. Of course, that issue applies not just to England, but throughout Great Britain and perhaps Northern Ireland. It is certainly relevant to my constituency, and I hope that the Government will reconsider their refusal to make the provision mandatory.

The argument that there is no business case for the mandatory introduction of audiovisual systems—that a mandatory rule would place new financial obligations on operators in a difficult economic climate—is one that I do not think we can accept. First, no one can say that a transitional period of perhaps up to 10 years just for new buses will in any sense place excessive burdens on operators, unless the Government think that there will be a bad economic climate for the next 10 years; that is another issue.

Phasing such a system in will surely not be impossible for the vast majority of operators. We do not accept that buses can go around without having destination boards or numbers; it should be as automatic that new buses should have audiovisual information in them. I do not see that there is a case against that.

As many hon. Members have said, the provision of audiovisual information benefits not just passengers with visual or hearing impairments; the public as a whole benefit from such provision. We see that in London when we travel on buses. I represent another city that has many tourists. We can see how it benefits tourists, and others who are not used to the city, to have that information available. It is obvious to me that that should be mandatory. Another reason why it is important is that otherwise we will be penalising the operators that are prepared to put the facility in place.

I am fortunate, in that Edinburgh has Britain’s largest municipally owned bus company, Lothian Buses, which, like many operators in London, is increasingly providing audiovisual announcements on buses. On five routes, they are provided as a matter of course, and they will be added to other routes in the summer.

I am glad to say that the new Edinburgh tram system will be fully operational within a few months, and audiovisual information will be provided on the new trams as well. That decision has been taken by Lothian Buses itself. The company has not been made to do that by the Government and nor has it had any assistance—from the Scottish Government, in this case—in providing that help. It has made the facility available because, as a publicly owned operator, it has a commitment to providing as accessible a transport system as possible.

Indeed, Lothian Buses won an award from the Scottish Accessible Transport Alliance a couple of years ago for its work in this area. Of course, it is common sense to provide all passengers with the facility. There should be no difficulty in the Government making it mandatory for all new buses over a period.

My second point is about provision on buses for people with disabilities and particularly those who require wheelchair access. As we know, the regulations provide that all bus and coach operators will have to make their vehicles, both new and old, accessible to disabled people over a transitional period, but in practice that is taken up much more actively by some operators than others. I am glad to say that again, in Edinburgh, Lothian Buses has a good record in this respect: 100% of Lothian buses are now wheelchair-accessible and that will also be the case for the trams in the future. Again, that has been done without any assistance from any governmental source.

However, as we have heard, the situation is not as good in every part of the UK. I certainly support the recommendation in the Select Committee report that the Department for Transport should introduce financial incentives for bus operators to replace older non-accessible buses, particularly where no alternative bus route is available. We all know of cases in which a route is meant to be accessible, but then suddenly the bus operator, for some operational reason, puts on a service that is not accessible. That means that a person who wants to get on the bus with a wheelchair may have to wait half an hour or two hours or not be able to travel at all in a rural area, because the so-called accessible service has not been provided.

That takes me to my third and last point. Much more work must be done to create a seamless journey for all passengers, but particularly for people who have disabilities and especially, in this context, those who require access for wheelchairs, although not only them. For example, a passenger travelling in my constituency on one of the new No. 10 buses, with full wheelchair access, to Edinburgh’s Waverley station can look at the mobile app that has already been developed by Lothian Buses; it provides information on many of the issues on which the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mike Thornton) was looking for assistance on behalf of people with disabilities and travellers more generally.

The passenger gets to Princes street in the centre of Edinburgh, gets into the new lifts, which take them down to the platform, and gets on to a train with a wheelchair-accessible place run by East Coast Trains. They go to London, use the lifts at the new King’s Cross station and get on a wheelchair-accessible bus to wherever they are going in London in due course. Then, at the end of their journey, they find that they cannot get off a bus or they have difficulty because they cannot get to the kerb, as someone has parked in the way.

Alternatively, the passenger gets off the bus without difficulty but then has difficulty getting across the road at a pedestrian crossing because of the limited time allowed for pedestrians to cross. As hon. Members, we all know the Streets Ahead Campaign, which began recently and which, among other things, wants to extend the amount of time allowed for pedestrians and others to get across pedestrian crossings.

We must have an integrated approach, a seamless approach, to travel planning. That means, in particular, much better integration of the needs of disabled people into planning at an early stage, tackling issues such as street clutter, thoughtless parking and broken kerbs, which are, in their own way, just as important to providing accessibility to transport for people with disabilities, because that is all part of the whole travel experience. I therefore strongly support the Select Committee’s recommendation on the need for co-ordination in this area.

I would like to conclude by recognising that the Government did think again on the abolition of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee. I was one of the hon. Members who raised that issue with the Minister’s predecessor and I am glad to say that the Government reconsidered the proposal to abolish the DPTAC. The issue was raised with me by campaigners in my constituency. As someone who is always ready to criticise the Government when they do the wrong thing, I am also prepared to recognise when they have done the right thing.

I am glad that the Government have listened to disabled passengers’ organisations and other groups that wanted the DPTAC to be retained. I hope that they will now take the next step forward, which is to listen to the views expressed by disabled persons organisations and transport organisations generally and to make the changes that will improve the transport experience for passengers with disabilities in the way that the Select Committee has recommended.

I urge the Minister in particular to change the Government’s stance on audiovisual announcements on buses. That is an easy thing to do. The necessary legislative changes could be made quickly and would make such a difference to so many passengers—those with disabilities and others—throughout our country. I urge the Government to think again on that point in particular.

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[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

Let me begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) and her Committee for a striking, effective and comprehensive report. I cannot do full justice to the report in the time available, but I would like to comment on some of the pressing issues that the Committee has highlighted. I commend the excellent contributions that have been made across the Chamber, particularly by my parliamentary colleagues including my distinguished predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick).

More than one in five people with a disability have experienced difficulties using transport, according to research by the Department for Work and Pensions. In rail alone, the number of journeys made by disabled people is estimated to have increased by 58% over the past five years. The Labour party is proud of its work in government on accessibility issues, which included updating the Disability Discrimination Act in 2005 and working on rail, aviation and access to taxis and minicabs in the Equality Act 2010.

Nothing stands still, however, and it should not do so under this Government. The Transport Committee’s report is comprehensive, with 107 written submissions and 34 witnesses interviewed. Difficulties using transport affect about a fifth of the population. My disappointment at the Government’s response, which is shared by several hon. Members present, is that they have not engaged adequately with many of the Committee’s key recommendations. The tone of much of the response drifts between complacency, defensiveness and world-weariness about the whole issue. We accept that the problem presents complex challenges, but surely it also provides opportunities to increase disabled people’s ability fully to participate in society and in the economy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) ably pointed out.

The Department for Transport had to be taken to task by the Transport Committee for the lack of information it provided on the accessibility action plan. The Department finally released the report on progress on Christmas eve, but if it thought it was playing Santa to disabled people, it was deluding itself. In the same way, the Department gave a dismissive response to the perfectly sensible suggestion for a cross-government working group on accessibility—a response that might be characterised as “carry on silo-ing.” I hope the Minister does not share that world view, as I am sure he does not.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside, the Chair of the Transport Committee, has stressed—as have so many other hon. Members—the importance of phasing in universal audiovisual systems over the next 10 years. The response so far, as we have heard, has been to encourage bus operators to adopt such systems voluntarily, and to say that the business case has not been made. Disabled bus users make it clear that such systems are key as they make journeys, and the statistics from Guide Dogs have already been quoted. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) described, from a sighted person’s perspective, his own experience of how hugely dangerous it can be for a blind person to be left stranded in an unfamiliar area.

It is fine to encourage voluntary take-up—as the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), did—but has it been successful? Guide Dogs suggests that only one operator has responded on the issue. However, operators that have installed the system say it has proved to be good value for money. A representative from Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach Company said:

“AV systems punch above their weight due to how valuable they are for the blind and partially-sighted.”

Will the Minister or his officials tell us which operators are resisting the Transport Committee’s modest proposal? If operators have not yet put forward a business case that the Department considers reasonable, can it not do more to seek one out and to recognise the full social benefits that such systems offer? The Department has said that it does not have a method for assessing the full quantitative benefits of access to transport, such as social inclusion and links to skills and jobs. Is it not about time that the Department developed one or worked with similar economic models that have been produced elsewhere? Departments have to produce an equality impact assessment for each piece of legislation, and the Department for Transport should use such a mechanism when it looks at issues such as this.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

On the business case, is it not remarkable that in two UK cities with among the highest levels of bus use, London and Edinburgh, operators have chosen to install AV systems as far as possible? The operators are realising the benefits from doing so voluntarily, so why do the Government not make that mandatory throughout the country?

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend makes a good suggestion. Notwithstanding the difference between major cities and the rest of the country, I might suggest that the Department for Transport should get off its bottom and look at what is being done in London and Edinburgh. Perhaps they might discover a mechanism for producing a business case. The cost, as we know, is around £2,500 for a double-decker bus, compared with £190,000 for the whole process.

Do the Minister and the Department recognise that although many services are delivered locally, his Department can play an essential role in bringing together local stakeholders and encouraging dynamic partnerships? In my constituency, I have been privileged to be president for the past 17 years of Rideability, a disability organisation that provides on-call access to people with disabilities. The organisation has recently entered into an agreement with my local council that allows it to secure its future while retaining its input to an expansion of the scheme. That shows what can be done through intelligent co-operation between local government, consumer groups and the third sector. Surely the Minister’s Department should be incentivising the formation of such groups.

The Committee also said that the exemption to EU law, which the Government brought in, that prevents bus and coach operators from being required to train their staff in disability support should end. My hon. Friends have asked the Minister whether he would review the exemption in March 2014, and I echo that question. What evidence do we have to show that the current approach is working? Replies to the parliamentary questions I have tabled claim that, currently, 75% of drivers have had basic training. Progress on that will not be reviewed until March 2014. The Government need to be far more proactive in targeting 100% rates of training and retraining, and should work closely with sector skills councils such as People 1st, which has done good work in this area, to develop the best strategies for doing so.

The Committee also mentioned financial incentives. The Government response was that they would probably contravene EU state aid law—my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool will be only too familiar with how that catch-all argument has been used with procurement issues. What discussion has the Minister’s Department had with Government lawyers, or preferably an independent legal adviser, to confirm that such incentives would not be possible under EU law? Just because not all disabled people require a wheelchair-accessible vehicle, why will the Government not consider incentives to make more available for those who do? Why not listen to the calls from Leonard Cheshire to ensure more regular checks on accessibility equipment, so that disabled-access bus routes are not left without an appropriate vehicle?

The Committee also talked about journey planning. As Leonard Cheshire commented, the Government should not be complacent or self-congratulatory about what has been achieved so far. The Committee suggested that the Government should consult disability organisations over decisions about what stations should be prioritised for improvements. The Government said that third parties would only recommend their local stations and such consultation would not add value to the process. I dispute that, as I think most MPs would. It is a very Eeyore-ish attitude. I talked to my local bus users group, working with Blackpool Transport in Blackpool, where we have retained our municipal status for both the bus services and the trams. The group works on a range of issues, including disability and accessibility.

The expertise of such organisations is vital, as access to stations is a key issue. The progress being made is important, but is it not awful, in the 21st century, that the majority of rail services and stations have yet to achieve step-free access via lifts and ramps? I am thinking of examples in my neck of the woods of older Victorian stations, such as Preston. For disabled people, getting into and across the station is a bit of a lottery—the Blackpool Gazette reported a disturbing case last year of a lady from Blackpool who tried to do it.

Whizz-Kidz has been mentioned. I have been proud to work with it in the past as an ambassador. It has achieved good things, helping two young people in my constituency and providing life-changing equipment worth more than £1 million. Should the Government and the Department for Transport not seek to engage more broadly with such national bodies, as policy is developed and accessibility criteria are set? Should they not recognise the expertise and objectivity that charities that serve people with disabilities can contribute to the process?

It was a huge privilege to host the Paralympics in this country in 2012. It did the country’s reputation, and its reputation for addressing issues for people with disabilities, an enormous amount of good. One of the many benefits that the games brought was that they shone a light on some barriers that disabled people still face when using public transport. The games sparked a renewed attempt to make transport accessible for all.

I emphasise what colleagues have said. The Minister is a reasonable man. I know that, as a regional MP, he will not simply take a London-centric view. Is it not sad, however, that the Government response to the report offers thin gruel for those striving for these golden ideals? We risk squandering the potential and optimism of that summer and making little of our Paralympic legacy. We were capable then of putting the wonderful success of our Paralympic athletes on stamps, which went out across the UK. Surely we should now make more effort for the people themselves, so that the Paralympic athletes and all those with disabilities can do likewise.

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[Mr Goodwill]

I hope that what I said did not close the door on doing something. The points that the hon. Gentleman makes are absolutely valid, and we will be able to make the position much clearer by the spring of this year.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I fully endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) has just said about taking the opportunity now to ensure that access is provided at all the stations on Crossrail.

A related point is that if Crossrail is approaching this work on the basis of meeting its legal requirements, I must say that we often find situations where accessibility at some stations requires someone in a wheelchair to use four, five or six different lifts to get from one point to another within the same station. Obviously, I accept that there are difficulties in terms of what can be done in many stations. Nevertheless, I hope that every effort can be made to ensure that, where accessibility is provided, it is provided in a way that is as convenient as possible and not in a way that forces passengers in wheelchairs to go on a magical mystery tour to get from one part of a station to another.

[Mr Goodwill]

Absolutely—I could not agree more. Sadly, one of the problems that we face is that we are dealing, of course, with upgrading some Victorian infrastructure that was not built with disabled people in mind at the time.

I am sorry that members of the Select Committee were not entirely satisfied with the response to the Committee’s recommendation that the Government should require bus operators to introduce audiovisual systems across the bus network. We recognise that many people find audio and visual announcements useful for travelling, and we understand the social benefits of having such systems on buses—in fact, they are useful for all bus users—but we are aware that this technology comes at a considerable cost. Our findings show that installing audiovisual technology on all new buses could cost between £5.75 million and £9.7 million per year. These figures are based on projections that between 2,500 and 2,800 new buses could be registered each year through to 2015.

Inter-City Rail Investment

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood]

As the hon. Lady says, we think the east coast main line is providing an important public sector comparator that will help us to evaluate the future of the rail industry. What is clear is that the current structure is not delivering enough for passengers. That is why, unlike the Government parties, we are prepared to review it and to look at alternatives that will deliver the best deal for passengers and taxpayers.

Unfortunately, all of the essential projects that I set out a moment ago were subject to delays after the general election. That caused uncertainty and, in some cases, pushed back completion dates.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have been at the Westminster Hall debate this afternoon, otherwise I would have been here earlier. My hon. Friend mentioned the east coast main line. May I endorse the comments, which I know were made earlier by hon. Members on both sides of the House, on the need for the excellent services on the east coast to be improved by ensuring that the electrification system works and that the overhead lines do not come down too often and disrupt traffic in a way that, unfortunately, they have done all too often in the recent past?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I will return to the east coast main line in a few moments.

Electrification of the Great Western main line, which has come up several times today, is a case in point. After pausing the project in May 2010, electrification to Newbury was announced in November that year, but the project’s extension to Cardiff was not announced until March 2011. Ministers said then that the line to Swansea would not be electrified, and it was not until they faced further pressure that, over a year later, they agreed that the route to Swansea would be electrified after all. In other words, thanks to the Government’s prevarication, a project initially announced in July 2009 was not confirmed until three years later. Given the importance of bringing forward infrastructure projects to deliver sustainable economic growth, even a Tory-led Government can surely do better than that.

There has been a similarly sorry tale in rolling stock procurement. In March 2011, the Prime Minister met the chairman of Bombardier and said that he was

“bringing the Cabinet to Derby today with one purpose – to do everything we can to help businesses in the region create the jobs and growth on which the future of our economy depends”,

but just four months later, Bombardier announced 1,400 job losses as a result of his Government’s decisions. Even after this debacle, there was an unacceptable two-year delay before financial close was reached on the contract. The Public Accounts Committee said recently that it was

“sceptical about whether the Department has the capacity to deliver the remainder of the programme by 2018.”

After the Government’s failure to keep HS2’s cost under control and the collapse of rail franchising on their watch, it is difficult to have faith in the political leadership of the Department. The failure of the franchising system has cost the taxpayer at least £55 million, and the Government’s refusal to consider Directly Operated Railways has left civil servants in an exceptionally weak bargaining position when agreeing direct awards. Under the terms of the Great Western contract extension, FirstGroup will pay only £17 million in premium payments next year, compared with £126 million in 2012-13. Investment has been delayed and orders have been put on hold, hurting the supply chain and threatening jobs and skills.

At a time when Ministers have been overtaken by problems of their own making and the Department is struggling to get essential projects out of the sidings, it is remarkable that the Government’s top priority is selling off the east coast main line franchise before the next election. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for their persistence in raising this question with Ministers. Since 2009, East Coast has gone from strength to strength. It has delivered a new timetable, achieved better punctuality and passenger satisfaction scores than the previous failed private operators, won multiple industry awards and developed a five-year plan for improving inter-city services on the line.

The casual reader will be forgiven for not getting this impression from the Government’s franchise perspective, but thanks to a leaked draft of that document, we know that positive references to the company’s performance were removed at the last minute, as Ministers desperately tried to rewrite history. But East Coast’s commercial performance speaks for itself. By February 2015, it will have returned almost £1 billion to the taxpayer in premiums, and it has invested every penny of its profits—some £48 million—back into the service, but under the Government’s plans, that money would be split between private shareholders instead.

Before Christmas, East Coast announced that half its fares to London would be frozen and that most of its fares would be cut in real terms in 2014. Will the Minister tell us how many private operators have announced a cut in the average cost of their fares? The truth is that the Government have allowed train operating companies to raise prices by up to 5%—more than double the rate of inflation—and the average season ticket is now 20% more expensive than it was in 2010. So at a time when passengers are facing a cost-of-living crisis, why are the Government seeking to abolish the publicly owned operator that is cutting the cost of fares?

It is difficult to resist the conclusion that East Coast has risen to the top of the Secretary of State’s to-do list because it has proven itself as a successful alternative to franchising, and that is why Ministers are so determined to push it out the door before the election.

We know from written answers that the public cost of refranchising could reach £6 million, along with other wasted millions lost due to the west coast shambles. All this money could have been spent instead on alleviating the cost-of-living crisis or investing in the railways. As it stands, the refranchising of East Coast represents the triumph of ideology and short-term political calculation over passengers’ best interests and a wilful disregard for public resources.

I urge Government Members, particularly Liberal Democrat Members who before the election were opposed to selling off East Coast, to think again and halt this un-needed, unwanted and wasteful privatisation. The priority must be delivering a fair deal for passengers and ensuring that the essential projects that so many Members wish to see are completed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

Following my meeting with my hon. Friend and my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), I am pleased that he is moving in the right direction with that consensus, and I will certainly work with him to see whether we can get the long-term answer that he desires.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Tragically, it is not just in London that cyclists have been killed in accidents involving HGVs; there were two cases not so long ago in Edinburgh. Will the Minister ensure that his focus is not just concentrated on London, but looks at what can be done across the country, particularly in Scotland, where although spending is devolved, such legislation is still a reserved matter? Will he ensure that he works with the Scottish Government to ensure a similar focus on preventing the deaths of cyclists caused by HGVs?

[Mr Goodwill]

Yes, certainly. We recently announced our six cycling cities, where imaginative ideas are being brought forward. I am sure that we will work with the devolved Administration north of the border, as part of the United Kingdom, to make sure that we share best practice where we can.

Transport Infrastructure

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

I will of course look at that important issue, as my right hon. Friend asks. Her constituency is very much affected by the entire road network around that area, and by the rail and airport expansion, so I will look seriously at the point she raises.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the Network Rail statement, given the way in which responsibilities for rail services in Scotland are divided between the Scottish and UK Governments, how will responsibility for the net debt of £30 billion or its servicing be divided between those Governments?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman about that.

East Coast Main Line

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is exactly the point. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Government clearly do not think that a state-owned company can run the franchise viably and deliver the investment in service improvements that we want.

How ironic it is that many of the probable bidders for the service are subsidiaries of state-owned railways. Eurostar and Keolis have confirmed that they will team up to bid for the franchise. As the Minister will be aware, those two companies are majority-owned by the National Society of French Railways—SNCF—which is France’s state-owned operator. Arriva, which already operates so many franchises, including the Tyne and Wear Metro in the north-east, and has received much Government investment over the past few years, will probably throw its hat into the ring. It is of course owned by Deutsche Bahn. Abellio, which, with Serco, runs Northern Rail trains in my area, might well be tempted. It is a part of the Dutch state-owned rail operator. The Government are therefore quite happy for the east coast main line to be run for public benefit—just as long as the British public do not benefit.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does not the way in which contracts are handed out to such foreign, state-owned companies mean that taxpayers in the Netherlands, France and Germany will gain at the expense of British ones?

[Mrs Hodgson]

Yes, I agree. That is exactly the point. Instead of profits generated by the franchise benefiting British commuters through investment in service improvement and dividends to the Treasury, the Government prefer profits to be channelled to other European countries, in some cases to subsidise fares in those countries. If we are to achieve the modal shift from cars to rail that we need to ease pressure on our trunk roads and to reduce carbon emissions, we must have the investment and the ambitious targets and standards in place to ensure that services are reliable and can carry on improving. Unfortunately, it appears that the Government intend to put that improvement into reverse over the next few years.

It was brought to my attention yesterday that in the past couple of weeks, the Office of Rail Regulation has published a document setting out the desired outputs for the whole rail network for the next five-year control period. That document makes it clear that the standards expected of whichever company wins the east coast franchise will be significantly lower than the national average, and possibly even lower than those of most European routes. For example, the national standard for cancelled or seriously late trains—which I have had some experience of on the east coast over the past month: the fault for that lay not with the company but with all the storms and so on—is no more than 2.2% of journeys. The east coast’s standard will be 4.2%.The national standard for just mildly late trains, which can be anything between 10 minutes and two hours, will be 8.1% in the first year. For the east coast, it will be 17%, which is more than double the national standard, and equates to more than one in six journeys. That rate will be required to come down to 12% by 2018-19, but it will still be much higher than the national rate of 7.5%.

Over the control period, we could see an additional 15,500 trains officially late and more than 2,500 trains cancelled without the operator being deemed to be breaching its required standards. Why should the east coast be given a lower standard? It is way below what the public would expect, and way below the standards set by Labour for the current control period. The apparent loosening of the required standards does not appear in any of the preceding documents on which the public have been consulted, but has now appeared at a point when they can no longer have their say. Will the Minister explain why the standards are set so low and have been revealed in a document on which the public will not be consulted? Will he give us an assurance today that that is in no way linked to the tendering process, or the Government’s desire to get the most money for the franchise to hold up as a sign of success? If we move the goalposts and make things easier for whichever train operator comes in, it makes the deal more attractive to them, and that is what seems to be going on here.

If the Government are to go through with the privatisation, it is important that the Exchequer get as much cash as possible now and over the course of the contract. However, we cannot sacrifice performance standards to achieve that goal, because people will just give up on trains that are allowed to be late on one in six, one in seven or even one in eight journeys.

If the proposal is not linked to the tendering process, perhaps it is related to the fact that investment in tackling congestion over the coming control period will be less than half the £500 million that the Labour Government allocated. That investment has resulted in improvements in north London, flyovers at Doncaster and Hitchin, and the upgrading of a parallel route for slow freight between Doncaster and Peterborough. Will the Minister assure us that service standards are not being lowered to match the investment the Government are prepared to make? Our constituents rightly expect not just a punctual service but a decent service, particularly when they might be on the train for three or four hours or more when travelling to or from the north-east or Scotland—it can take up to six hours to get all the way up to Inverness.

Will the Minister rule out the introduction of a lower-tier or third-class service, which is allegedly in the prospectus that was sent to potential bidders? Indeed, will he rule out any degradation of standard-class service in a three-class system by a future operator?

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[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Bone, to serve under your chairmanship. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for securing and leading the debate today.

This is not the first Westminster Hall debate on the east coast main line and, unless the Government change their position, it will probably not be the last. The Government might not like to have such repeated debates, but the Opposition make no apologies for bringing the issue back for discussion time and again. We will do so until the Government change their policy, because there is an overwhelming case against forcing East Coast trains back into the private sector without even giving the public sector a chance to offer an alternative.

My hon. Friend reminded us of the positive financial record of East Coast trains and that the public are clearly against the return of the east coast service to the private sector. The staff on the line, and the cities up and down the line, do not want the service to return to the private sector, and public opinion is overwhelmingly against the proposals that the Government seem determined to push forward.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I give way to my hon. Friend, whose constituency neighbours mine.

[Sheila Gilmore]

My hon. Friend and I have spent a considerable time campaigning on this issue in Edinburgh. Does he agree that the overwhelming response of the people we have spoken to while we were gathering signatures has been that they do not want the line to be re-privatised?

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[Mark Lazarowicz]

Absolutely. As my hon. Friend has said, she and other colleagues have spent quite a bit of time with me outside the railway stations in Edinburgh and at other locations, and not one person has come up to us and said, “Yes, we want East Coast trains to be re-privatised.” They have all recognised the value of this service being in the public sector.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) on securing this very timely and important debate and on making some excellent points. On the point about the value of having the east coast main line within the public sector, are there not lessons to be learned from what is happening with gas and electricity companies? When the private sector has no benchmark of public sector provision, does the consumer not get ripped off? Is there not an overwhelming argument for retaining at least one main line in public ownership, by which we could benchmark the other lines?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

That is a very good point. Let us be clear—we are not calling today for a renationalisation of the entire railway operating network.

[Grahame M. Morris]

We are! [Laughter.]

[Mark Lazarowicz]

My hon. Friend might be, but that is not the issue today. What we are talking about today is giving an alternative to the private sector. He just referred to other industries, and one of the issues about those industries is this: to what extent is there real competition?

One of the problems is that within the railway sector in the UK, a very limited number of UK companies are able and willing to put in a bid for a line. On the east coast and west coast lines, we all know that the major UK bidders will always be drawn from Virgin, First Group, National Express and possibly Stagecoach.

Of course, Virgin also runs planes to Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and First Group and the other companies operate other rail services. Some of them also operate bus and express coach services. So the issue is ensuring that there is at least some competition in the system, which the existence of Directly Operated Railways on the east coast main line would certainly provide.

[Ian Mearns]

rose—

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I will give way to my hon. Friend and then I will move on, to ensure that I make some progress.

[Ian Mearns]

It is ironic that, despite the number of Eurosceptics on the Government Benches, the Government are clearly in favour of state ownership—but Dutch, German and French state ownership of UK railways, not UK state ownership of UK railways.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Indeed. However, my hon. Friend is being perhaps a bit too restrictive, because I understand that one of the companies shortlisted for one of the Scottish railway franchises is the mass transit railway system—MTR—in Hong Kong, which I presume is ultimately owned by the Chinese Government. It appears that although the Chinese are able to build our nuclear power stations and run our railways, the British state is unable to do so.

I come to the essence of the argument. The Government say that one of the reasons why the east coast line should go back into the private sector is the success that there has been since the railway system was privatised. One of the oldest logical fallacies in the book is to say that because event B followed event A, event B must have been caused by event A.

What the Government are saying, of course, is that because passenger numbers have gone up since the railways were privatised, that must be because they were privatised. However, the fact is that we have not been able to establish that link between the two. For example, I can look at the local bus company in Edinburgh, my home city, which is municipally owned. The number of bus passengers has gone up dramatically in the past 20 years. That company is in the public sector, but I will not say that the rise in passenger numbers is just because of that.

Equally, however, saying that the rail network’s being in the private sector is why the number of passengers has gone up seems a very weak argument. In fact, the number of passengers on other state-owned railways in other parts of the world has gone up as well. The argument about privatisation seems very weak.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West pointed out, Lord Adonis, when Transport Secretary, made references to privatisation that are continually mentioned by the Government in defence of their policies. However, he has made it clear that he has learned from experience and is approaching this issue in a non-dogmatic fashion, in a way that the Government are signally failing to do.

Let us not forget that it was a Conservative Government who privatised the railways in the first place, against the wishes of the Labour party. Labour colleagues in Parliament at the time voted against that privatisation. Of course, the Labour Government after 1997 had a large number of priorities and I can certainly see why the issue was not, at that time, their No.1. However, as I have said, we are talking about the situation here and now. We have an opportunity to judge from experience and to ensure that the public get the best value for money and the best service, which, in my and my colleagues’ view, would be obtained by ensuring that the east coast line stays in the public sector.

Reference has been made to the way in which foreign companies are able to bid for the franchise. I will not develop that point any further, given that it has already been made by other colleagues. However, I will again make the point that there is a real issue about the lack of genuine competition within the rail franchising sector in the UK, including among British-based companies. Also, the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) made about comparing rail with the utilities was very well made.

One of the points made by Ministers when they have argued why the east coast main line should go private again is that—as I think one of the Minister’s predecessors, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), said—the record of East Coast trains on punctuality had “plateaued”. Again, that is another example of desperation and of the Government trying to grab arguments to support a weak case.

The fact is that East Coast trains has a good record on punctuality. As we all know, the main reason why there have been problems with train punctuality in recent times is certain factors—first of all, the recent storms, which were clearly beyond anyone’s control. Above all, however, they have been due to problems with infrastructure, which have not been the fault of East Coast trains.

I asked a parliamentary question on the issue a while ago. I received an answer about the 2012-13 split in responsibility for delays on East Coast trains: 18% of them were due to East Coast itself, 13% were due to “Other Train/Freight Companies” and 69% were due to Network Rail. We know that one of the reasons why 69% of delays were due to Network Rail was problems with the overhead line system, which was, of course, put in place on the cheap, and for which—again—a previous Conservative Government clearly have to take responsibility.

My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West referred to the new targets from the regulator regarding punctuality. One of the things that the regulator said in its recent report was that there is a problem with reliability on the east coast main line, and I welcome the fact that it did. However, like my hon. Friend, I am concerned about how the performance measurements for the east coast service have been reduced by comparison with those for many other lines in the country.

I know that it only sounds like a marginal reduction if the performance target is reduced from 90% to 88%, but of course what we want to aim for is 100% reliability. Obviously, we will never get 100% reliability, but every time the target is reduced—even by 1% or 2%—we release the pressure on that operator to ensure that, as far as possible, all their trains arrive on time.

The fact is that the new target for cancelled or seriously late trains was set at a rate that would allow 4.2% of east coast line trains to arrive more than two hours late or not at all. That does not sound like much, until we put those figures in another context and say that one in every 24 trains could be cancelled without any penalties whatever being imposed on the operator responsible.

As my hon. Friend has said, there are concerns about the fact that that change was not referred to in draft proposals for the new punctuality performance targets; it was a change that people could not be consulted on. The Minister should give an explanation as to why that was the case. Bluntly, if he cannot provide one today, he should go away and look at the issue, because it was a major defect in the process.

It is time for the Government to drop their dogmatic approach to the east coast line and to give the public sector operator a chance. Let Directly Operated Railways put forward an alternative model and we will see what represents the best value for money and the best service for the public. Please, Minister, do not come forward with the argument that I heard from one Minister some time ago, which was, “We couldn’t do this because the law wouldn’t allow us to do it, and we had to put it out to the private sector.”

As a Back Bencher, I cannot speak for those on the Labour Front Bench, but were the Government to come forward and say, “Yes, we will change the law to allow East Coast trains to continue to operate the franchise,” I cannot think that my party would oppose that. Perhaps the Minister will make that offer today. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) would be happy to respond to that.

It is time for the Government to change their policy. It is not what the public want, what the staff want or what the communities want—and it is not in the best interests of the public purse, either.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore]

I think the right hon. Lady knows that I do not share her views on this matter. We should not cast one railway line against another, because one of the advantages of HS2 is that it provides an opportunity to improve some of the other services, not least by dealing with the capacity question.

One issue is the opportunity cost of prioritising East Coast over some of the other long-distance franchises. Under the original franchising timetable from August 2011, a new contract for the west coast main line was due to start in October 2012, with Great Western starting in April 2013 and the east coast main line thereafter. However, following the debacle of the west coast main line bidding process, a new timetable was announced in March this year. The east coast main line, which was previously the last in the trio of inter-city franchises to be let, was brought forward to be the first. That was only made possible by the current operator of the west coast main line, Virgin, being given a franchise extension of four and a half years to April 2017. At the same time, the Great Western operator, First, has been given an extension of two and a half years to September 2015. In total, that is 77 months’ worth of extensions.

The Government justify prioritising East Coast by referring to the Brown review, which was carried out after the problems with the west coast main line. They are restating their belief that competition in the bidding process should drive down the subsidy required or drive up the premium payments offered. They say that that will push operators to be more efficient and innovative, and prompt investment in new services. One can argue that franchise competitions might achieve these goals, but the one thing that certainly will not achieve those goals is franchise extensions. That is because the Government, by setting up this arrangement, have no option but to negotiate with the existing operators on other lines. The only bargaining chip that Ministers can use is to threaten to call in East Coast’s parent company, Directly Operated Railways, but they are reluctant to do so, as is highlighted by their desperation to extract DOR from the east coast main line. How are the other franchisees threatened by Ministers saying, “If you don’t agree reasonable terms, we’ll take you into the fold of Directly Operated Railways,” when Ministers are running as fast as possible in the opposite direction with the east coast main line?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. When there were problems with East Coast trains, as there were with Southern some years ago, Directly Operated Railways was able to step in and provide an alternative when the private sector failed. If Directly Operated Railways is taken off East Coast trains—I do not know what will happen to the organisation, but I presume that there might still be a shell company—the nucleus that allows it to operate an alternative may disappear, so there might not be an alternative even if a future private sector operator fails.

[Sheila Gilmore]

My hon. Friend gives a helpful example of where, instead of increasing competition and providing opportunities for the Government to exercise some control over the rail companies, that possibility might be being reduced.

The contract extensions, which were made necessary by the Government’s determination to pull East Coast forward, will cost the taxpayer a lot of money. In 2011-12, Virgin paid the Department for Transport a premium of £165 million, and First Great Western paid £110 million. Will the Minister confirm that there will not be payments of anywhere near those sums during the extension period? Will he also confirm that, apart from the roll-out of wi-fi on First Great Western, which all train operators are beginning to offer, the two extensions offer no improvements for passengers? There is less money coming in and no improvements; the extensions need not have been given had the Government stuck to their original timetable.

If the east coast main line had not been prioritised, the extensions simply would not have been necessary. There could have been fresh competitions, if that was the Government’s will, for the west coast main line and the Great Western main line. If East Coast had been performing badly in the public sector, there might have been some justification for what has happened—the imperative of turning East Coast around would have trumped other disadvantages of negotiating extensions on the west coast main line and the great western main line—but East Coast is performing well, so that reason simply does not apply.

The Government clearly hope that they can get to the next election with all the main line routes back in the private sector. The Government could take credit for that in the hope that it would be extremely difficult for any incoming Government to do anything about it. If that is not the motive, the Government have to say what is their real motive for proceeding in that way.

Public opinion has changed. People have seen the reality. Some people, although not necessarily all of us—there are always some critics—warned that privatisation of rail might be a step too far. Members of the public who were prepared to give privatisation a chance now see Directly Operated Railways as an opportunity to have a rail service in public ownership that brings money back to the Treasury. As I said earlier, when we talk to people, they enthusiastically support our campaign. The Government sometimes say that they listen to public opinion, and on this occasion I suggest that they do indeed listen to public opinion and stop the process before it goes any further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karl MᶜCartney]

No, not at this point.

The real elephant in the room is perhaps the fact that Opposition Members are worried that re-privatisation might bring some change to services. Although I agreed with some of the points made by the hon. Members for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz), they might consider the fact that seats to the south of theirs are not just “and beyond”, as they were referred to. Lincoln is not “and beyond”; it is my constituency, and I will fight for it as hard as I can and as hard as Opposition Members, I am sure, do for theirs.

I would like to see better services from Lincoln to our capital city, as I am sure Opposition Members would from theirs. However, I am also aware that if trains on the east coast main line stopped at Edinburgh, and passengers then had to cross a platform to catch another train to go further north, people south of Edinburgh would see a vast improvement to their service. That is something a private operator might consider, although I am not saying it will. In Lincoln’s case, however, I would certainly like to see more direct trains daily and even at weekends.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

rose—

[Graeme Morrice]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Karl MᶜCartney]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that erudite and timely intervention, which is typical of the interventions he might make, but I would refer him to my first intervention. If he and the Labour party feel that way, why did they not re-nationalise the rail service across the whole country in their 13 years in office? They did not do that.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

May I respectfully point out that the private operators did not provide the direct service the hon. Gentleman is calling for to his constituency in the 13 years or longer they operated the line? The private sector did not offer his city any improvements when it was in charge. That is surely an argument for saying that Directly Operated Railways should offer an alternative. The hon. Gentleman can then decide whether he wants Directly Operated Railways and East Coast or the private sector. Surely he can accept that there should at least be a choice.

[Karl MᶜCartney]

I accept that different changes might be made. I thank my predecessor in the constituency, who, as a Transport Minister, perhaps secured the promise of seven trains a day down to and up from the capital. Ultimately, I was the lucky recipient of more votes in the 2010 general election, and I replaced her. Unfortunately, at that point, unlike some Labour Members who have retained their seats, East Coast decided not to follow through with its promise. That is to the disbenefit of my constituents. As I said, I will always stand up for them to secure the best rail services I can.

High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Gillan]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am afraid that I do not have the resources to table an extensive list of amendments, and although I considered that, I dismissed it fairly rapidly. I just do not have the back-up and resource, on a project this large and complex, to keep up with the machinations of the Government, as they bring out 400 or 500 pages of information a couple of days before any crucial stage of the Bill—I am expecting the £50,000 environmental statement to arrive on our desks shortly.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Obviously, I am as concerned as the right hon. Lady apparently is about high-speed links to Scotland, but is she seriously telling the House that if the Government were to announce that HS2 was going to Scotland, she would drop her opposition to it completely?

[Mrs Gillan]

No, not at all. I am not arguing that, but I have always been of the principle that if it is to be done, it is to be done properly. I am quite clear about my position—I do not want HS2 at all, but I also do not want a Bill to go through the House that does not reflect what I think the project should encompass, and indeed what the Bill itself states it encompasses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lilian Greenwood]

I thank the Minister for his response; clearly the media reports are wrong. It is ironic that the SNP should be proposing to take this line to Scotland, given that the one thing we can guarantee is that the SNP plans for separation would make the possibility of a high-speed line across the UK even less likely.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

One can excuse the Minister for not having this at the top of his to-do list only because he is new in his job. I have asked similar questions of previous Ministers over the past few months, so may I suggest to my hon. Friend that if it is not at the top of a Minister’s to-do list now, it should be pretty soon and that the Minister should be giving details of this study in the near future?

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is right. We will continue to press the Minister on the issue in the months ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am convinced that elsewhere on the network train frequencies and train paths are the problem. We have far too few trains on the existing network, and we could run many more trains much more quickly. The only real tight capacity is between London and Birmingham. Beyond that it is not difficult.

I do not want to speak for too long, but I want to mention other routes. In 1990, British Rail ran a test train from London to Edinburgh on the east coast main line. They cleared the line of everything else, ran the train straight through with a two-minute stop at Newcastle, and did the journey in three and a half hours—two minutes faster than the original time proposed for HS2.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Is not the answer to my hon. Friend’s objection the fact that, as he said, they cleared the line of everything else? The point is that we cannot just clear the line of everything else.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Perhaps my hon. Friend will allow me to continue. Clearing the lines is obviously not possible all the time, but upgrading the line so that we can have through trains is not difficult. [Hon. Members: “It is!”] I have specifics. We need to double the viaduct north of Welwyn, and four-track the line between Huntingdon and Peterborough. We need flyovers at Peterborough and Newark, and we could then have non-stop trains straight through to Edinburgh if we wished. The train would have to slow down at Newcastle and York, but by and large the journey could be done in three and a half hours maximum. That is the east coast main line.

As we know, the midlands main line is going to be electrified, and we also want it to improve. With some track remodelling at Leicester and Derby we could make the trains run faster there. We need to straighten out the line at Market Harborough and restore the straighter line that used to exist, and we must take freight traffic off those three lines. That is the key to more train paths, because if we can take all the freight off those lines, we will not have a problem. To do that, however, we need an alternative. We have such an alternative: a GB freight route, which I have been promoting for some years with colleagues from the railway industry. We have a detailed scheme, carefully worked out and costed, to build a dedicated freight line from the channel tunnel to Glasgow, linking all the main conurbations of Britain, and capable of taking lorries on trains. We need to take freight off the road—and off the main lines, of course, but 80% of freight travels by lorry, not by container or other means. To get lorries on trains is crucial to modal shift, and to do that we need a gauge capacity that is capable of taking lorries on trains.

--- Later in debate ---

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I assumed we were already joined to Scotland. That could be an exaggeration—[Laughter.] For some of my constituents, it is not an exaggeration.

For coalition Members, one key thing was to rebalance the economy of this country. For me, high-speed rail is a key part of that. I am grateful for Ministers’ work in getting us this far on the Y shape. I wish we were already into a third high-speed rail or whatever, but High Speed 2 is fundamental to our commitment to deliver a rebalanced economy between the regions and London. I will support the Bill tonight.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

A number of amendments in the group deal with the extension of HS2 to Scotland. Unsurprisingly, I shall concentrate my remarks on the case for the building of HS2 and the benefits it will bring to Scotland and my city of Edinburgh.

It is patently clear that the improvement to the railway system that HS2 will deliver will benefit Scotland. At the moment, we suffer from capacity problems further south on the rail network. Unless something is done to deal with them, as rail demand increases, journey times and railway services to Scotland will be affected. We will obviously benefit from the reduction of 45 minutes that will be brought about by HS2, and I hope that further reductions will be achieved in the fullness of time.

We will also benefit from the way in which HS2 will help to rebalance the economy towards the north of Britain. The development of HS2 will lead to a reduction in the pressure for growth in domestic air travel, which will have other advantages. Extending high-speed rail to the points proposed by HS2 and beyond will also improve the business case for high-speed. All the evidence suggests that the business case for the improvements further south will be strengthened by extending HS2 to the points currently provided for and beyond to Scotland as well.

[Andrew Bridgen]

The hon. Gentleman is obviously very keen on HS2, but can he explain why Lord Prescott has called the project “the great northern con”?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I did not hear those comments. Front Benchers will put forward the Labour position on the matter, and I am pleased that this high-speed rail project was started under the Labour Government of which Lord Prescott was a member.

The case for HS2 is overwhelming, and that is why we have seen a wide degree of political consensus across the parties in Scotland and certainly in my city. It is a project that has the support of the business community, the local authority and practically all political parties in Edinburgh.

[Nic Dakin]

In Committee, I became aware of the overwhelming evidence from both business leaders and local government leaders across the north of England in favour of the Bill. The points that have been made by my hon. Friend and others underscore that.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Interestingly, in Scotland, it is not only those communities and councils that would directly benefit from the high-speed line that are in favour. Communities further north recognise that, although they might not get a direct benefit, it would still be beneficial overall to the Scottish economy. That is the kind of constructive approach that other communities not directly served by the line should note and use as the basis for their approach to the development of HS2.

One of my concerns was the possible temptation to extend the line as far as Birmingham and never any further north. I therefore welcome the commitment in the Bill to go further north in England and the possibility that the line will go even further than outlined in the HS2 documents. I will look for any commitment for high-speed rail to go beyond the current terminus points for HS2. I would also ask why we have to accept a 20-year programme for high-speed rail to go from London to York and somewhere near Wigan when other countries seem to manage to do it much faster than we do. I hope that that issue can be addressed in the preparations for the scheme over the next few months and years.

[Mr Goodwill]

I can confirm that our new Minister, Baroness Kramer, will be in Scotland tomorrow and we will no doubt hear more on that subject then.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am grateful for that update, which has been circulating over the last hour or so as the information has reached the public domain. I presume that Baroness Kramer will not announce that high-speed is coming to Scotland, but I am looking forward to some positive announcements tomorrow. There is an opportunity here for the Scottish Government—of whatever colour, as we are obviously talking about a long-term process—to work with the UK Government. It is recognised that it will be possible to do some work on high-speed rail in Scotland, perhaps to link Edinburgh and Glasgow but also to provide the basis for a route further south. Although we cannot immediately have a high-speed route all the way from Edinburgh and Glasgow to London, other sections of high-speed rail would certainly benefit the Scottish economy. Just as the business case for high-speed rail further south is strengthened by bringing into it business from Scotland, any high-speed rail in Scotland that would bring passengers into the GB-wide high-speed system would be beneficial for the rest of the country.

I understand why those communities that will not be served directly by the line, especially those that currently have a good rail service, will be concerned that they could lose out as a result of HS2 being constructed. The answer for those communities is to engage as actively as they can with central Government and neighbouring local authorities to try to ensure that they put the case to get the best benefits. It is also important that connectivity is examined, the point of the amendment tabled by my hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench.

It is important for the Government, and for Front Benchers of all colours, to use the opportunity of developing HS2 to rebuild the vision for rail in the country as a whole. HS2 is not just a question of trains running on the high-speed line and then going no further; they can serve other destinations in the way they will serve Edinburgh and Glasgow. On the continent, high-speed trains do not just run on high-speed lines; they serve other communities too. That is something we should aim for in Britain.

The case for high-speed developments beyond HS2 is powerful. I understand why a Government would not want to start putting down lines on a map to other parts of Britain, because that would set off scare stories about costs, but the points made by the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) on possible development should not be lost or forgotten—the lines to Scotland and routes to the north-east of England in particular. There are clear capacity problems between Yorkshire and the north-east of England and they will need to be on the agenda at some stage.

I started my comments by referring to the amendments on Scotland. The amendments tabled by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) and the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) are superfluous. The Scottish Government have accepted the Bill in its current form. The Scottish Parliament has passed the relevant Sewel motion endorsing the proposals in the Bill. I do not always agree with the current Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament, but on this occasion if it is good enough for them, it should be good enough for this House. I will not support the amendments, as they do not take the debate any further. We have good proposals that have achieved broad consensus across the House. I hope we can continue to proceed in that fashion.

[Stephen Barclay]

I shall speak to amendment 17 and, in particular, to the costs associated with connectivity.

On Sunday, it was my daughter’s third birthday. As the list of presents she was hoping to receive grew ever longer, I had to remind her that we did not have a magic money tree in the garden. Her response, quick as a flash, was to say, “Why don’t you plant one?” When we look at amendment 17 and consider the remarks at the beginning of the debate from the Chair of the Transport Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), we need to reflect on the reality of a budget set at £42.6 billion—this seems to be used interchangeably with the spending envelope, albeit that it appears to have now grown to a £50 billion cap—that does not include the changes in design referred to in the powerful speech from the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms).

I want to draw hon. Members’ attention to the remarks that David Prout made to the Public Accounts Committee. One might have expected the contingency to have anticipated changes in design costs. Of the £50 billion cap, £21 billion is currently unspecified. More than £14 billion includes dealing with optimism bias and risk inflation—the initial 10% on that £15 billion figure—and then on top of that there is a further contingency of more than £4 billion for phase 1. Nowhere do the figures address changes to design, yet many of hon. Members’ remarks have been based on exactly that premise. I predict there will be public campaigns in Camden where people will say, “If we are going to have High Speed 2, let us connect it to High Speed 1 in a far better way.” Dare I say it, but there may be one or two well-connected opinion-formers in north London who will help that campaign. Yet David Prout said:

“The contingency would not include major changes in scope, for example, that the Select Committee might require. If the Select Committee requires an additional station”—

as some in Sheffield are hoping for—

“that is not included in the contingency. If it required 20 more miles of tunnelling”—

as the people of east Cheshire are hoping to secure—

“that is not included in the contingency. What we would expect to include in the contingency are the more minor adjustments in Select Committee to mitigate environmental impact.”

Those are the very environmental issues on which we still do not have a report.

Cycling

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is pleasure to be able to speak in this debate. A few minutes ago my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) made the point that if we are to increase cycle percentages, the starting point will vary from place to place. Some places already have a very high percentage, but others have a much lower percentage. I am pleased to say that Edinburgh has a good record of encouraging cycling over the years. In our case 10% of journeys to work are now undertaken by bike, whereas 10 years ago the figure was only 3%, so we have seen a 300% increase, which shows what can be done when there is consistent political commitment and a spending commitment from the local authority, which has certainly been the case in Edinburgh.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend highlights the increase in cycling in Edinburgh. Will he join me in paying tribute to Spokes, the Edinburgh cycling charity, which has done so much to help that increase, and also the volunteers who organised Pedal on Parliament 1 and 2? There were 4,000 cyclists at the Scottish Parliament just a few months ago, and I completed the second one myself, on a tandem.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Indeed. I saw that with my own eyes, and I took part on a more conventional bike in that Pedal on Parliament. The point that my hon. Friend makes is a good one. One reason we have seen an increase in Edinburgh in the percentage of journeys undertaken by bike has been the political commitment over many years—political commitment in which, I am pleased to say, the Labour party over the decades has taken the lead, and which, to be fair, is now widely shared across the political parties in Edinburgh, just as it is in the Chamber today.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) pointed out—and I should mention that we were joined by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) in Pedal on Parliament this year—we have also had a very effective grass-roots campaign, first in the form of Spokes, the Lothian cycle campaign, of which I have been a member for many years. That campaign has consistently and in a well-informed way put pressure on local government and central Government to deliver both cycle spending and the integration of policies in wider planning and transport activity, to give cycling a higher profile. We have also seen the very successful Pedal on Parliament initiative, which started in 2012 with a couple of thousand people lobbying the Scottish Parliament at the end of a cycle ride, and which in May this year ended up with 4,000 people in a very impressive lobby of the Scottish Parliament.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the significant things at that event was the reaction of those who were there to a spokesperson from the Scottish Government who gave only warm words—compared to the local council, which has committed 5% of its transport budget, to rise by 1% each year to 9%—because cyclists know that words are not good enough?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend points to the commitment of Edinburgh council not just to maintain a 5% level of all transport spend, both revenue and capital, on cycling but to increase it year on year by 1%, which is a major commitment. In a briefing to some of us earlier, Chris Boardman said that it was the first city in the UK to make that commitment. That contrasts with the poor record of the SNP Scottish Government in supporting cycling. It is interesting that the success of the Pedal on Parliament campaign in Edinburgh has had the effect of shaming the Scottish Government into putting more money into cycling. That is a tribute to such campaigning work, which is so important at the grass roots.

I do not want to make jibes at other political parties in what has otherwise been a non-partisan debate, even if those parties are not represented in the Chamber today. In Edinburgh we have now seen a cross-party consensus on cycling policies. Although it is true that our Labour colleagues on the council made a commitment to increase the spending on cycling year on year, it is being done now with the support of the minority party in the Edinburgh council coalition, the Scottish National party. So let us hope that the SNP at Scottish Government level will follow the example of its colleagues on Edinburgh council.

As has been mentioned a few times in the debate, some of those who organised the Pedal on Parliament campaign to lobby the Scottish Parliament had personal experience of death and serious injury to cyclists on our roads. The increase in deaths and serious injuries to cyclists in England over the past five years has been replicated in Scotland. We have seen a similar increase over the past five years. Let us not forget that as well as being in every case a personal tragedy for the families and friends of those involved, every cycling death or serious injury has the effect of discouraging people who might otherwise come back to cycling, because they do not realise the wider relative or absolute safety of cycling compared with most forms of transport.

There are many reasons why it is vital to have targets to bring down the toll of death and serious injury to cyclists on our roads, and I have no doubt that if the measures proposed in the “Get Britain Cycling” report were implemented, they would dramatically reduce the number of cyclists killed and injured on our roads.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that of particular importance is the need to address the role of HGVs in cyclists’ deaths? I believe that around half such deaths in London are caused by HGVs. It is surely time, as part of the programme, to push for a much more energetic uptake of the technology measures that would make HGVs much safer and much less dangerous to cyclists—sensors, mirrors, side bars and so on. That surely should be a priority.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Absolutely. I know that in some of the e-mails and letters that I have had from constituents in the run-up to this debate, a number of cases have been highlighted where people or their relatives have been the victims of HGVs in that way. That must be dealt with as a priority. It can be done quite easily now with current technology and I hope that the Minister will give some indication in his response as to how these changes can be introduced. They are UK-wide measures and therefore relevant to all of us in the Chamber, from whichever part of the UK we come.

High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

I announced last October the work that was already being commissioned by HS2 to take the link up to Scotland, and I am more than happy to have discussions with Scottish Ministers and the Scottish Government about that.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I suspect that even the Scottish National party does not expect the line to reach the constituency of the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) any time soon, but I hope it will reach my constituency.

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

This century?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I would like to believe that it will not be next century and that my constituents will be able to benefit from the line as well. Clearly, they will benefit from faster services in so far as they can use the line further south, but we need to see work being done now and commitments made now to ensure that the further additions from HS2 do not start happening only in 2033.

[Mr McLoughlin]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. As I announced last October, I have asked HS2 to start doing the work on that, and I hope to be in a position to say more about it in due course. I cannot give him a specific date at this stage because there are some very big issues to address.

I was saying that HS2 will bring about two thirds of the people in the north of England within two hours of London. Its purpose is not merely to keep pace with our competitors, although it is worth pointing out that Italy will soon have 926 miles of high-speed rail, whereas we have just 67 miles.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Eagle]

It is fair to say that there are concerns about connectivity and what is happening at the southern end, but it is also fair to say that the Government of the day must decide. It is reasonable for the Opposition to raise issues, but, with projects over multiple Parliaments, we must accept, as an Opposition, that we are not quite as well resourced as the Government of the day to come up with well-thought-through alternatives. The Government of the day have to make the decisions, but it is fair enough for opponents and supporters of the scheme to raise issues, recognising that, if the project is ever to be delivered, the Government of the day must decide on the way forward.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Maria Eagle]

I will do, and then I would like to make a little progress.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I did not quite catch my hon. Friend’s answer to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who asked about taking the line north of Leeds and Manchester. Will she confirm that we would wish to see the high-speed services and line taken north of Leeds and Manchester in due course? It is not just a question of speed, however; it is also a question of capacity, because, as she pointed out, the construction of high-speed lines further south will free up capacity on existing lines, but that will lead to capacity problems if all the high-speed trains end up going on the existing lines further north.

[Maria Eagle]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, and the one I made in response to the earlier intervention was simply that we had to get to Leeds and Manchester before we could go further. Work is going on—led by the Department, I think—looking at the prospects for further phases, if one wishes to put it that way, after we have got to Leeds and Manchester.

The delays over the past three years are no surprise, given that the Department has been promising to publish a transport strategy ever since the election, but has yet again delayed it until later this year. The failure to deliver progress on this new railway line could not be a better example of what happens when one decides on a transport strategy towards the end of a Parliament, rather than at the beginning. It means major transport decisions—for example, how we connect the new rail line into Britain’s hub airport at Heathrow—are not being taken forward in an integrated way. That is entirely a consequence of ducking the big questions on aviation for the whole Parliament and of the Government’s decision, which we believe to be wrong, to tell the Airports Commission not to report until after the next election.

It is not just the rapidly slipping timetable that raises alarm bells and worries those of us who support this project. The National Audit Office wrote:

“We identified three areas of risk to the Department’s effective governance of the High Speed 2 programme:… Underdeveloped governance and programme management… Insufficient resources in the Department’s High Speed 2 team”

and

“Inadequate stakeholder management”.

The criticism that Ministers failed sufficiently to resource the team in the Department will be familiar to anyone who has followed the fiasco over the collapse of the Government’s rail franchising programme. The NAO has warned that there is

“a high risk that it may have insufficient skilled staff in the areas of procurement, corporate finance, rail technical and programme management.”

Yet again, the reckless way in which the Department was reorganised after the election and the scale of cuts to key staff have put a major project at risk.

The Government have finally, belatedly, appointed a new director general for HS2 as well as a new senior management team, which is welcome news, but is it not extraordinary that, just as with the west coast main line fiasco, it took so long for a senior responsible owner to be identified for the project? No wonder the Major Projects Authority has rated the delivery of the new rail line as amber/red. That should have been a clear warning to Ministers to take its concerns seriously, not simply dismiss them as irrelevant.

To be fair to the Secretary of State, there was one bit of good news in the otherwise highly critical report from the MPA. It found that

“the Department has strengthened its working relationship with HM Treasury.”

That is very sensible indeed, particularly in the light of the NAO’s concerns about the budget for the project. It has called the Department’s use of a precise estimate of £16.3 billion for the cost of phase 1 of the scheme as “unwise”, as I think we have discovered today. It said that an honest figure would be between £15.4 billion and £17.3 billion, so I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has today given updated figures. I am sure that he will continue to do so, as he has undertaken to do.

The NAO was also unable to verify the Department’s claim that the £1.5 billion savings recommended by Infrastructure UK could be delivered. Work apparently only began on identifying those savings in September. The House needs to be told whether the savings have now been locked in. The NAO also raises doubts about the Department’s claim that phase 1 will result in reduced operating costs on the existing network of £3 billion over 60 years. This is on the assumption that fewer long-distance services are likely to run on the west coast main line, but because the Department has not set out any revised service patterns it is difficult to see how such a precise and neat rounded figure has been generated.

The Government should also be clear that the £42.6 billion cost of completing the north-south line as far as Leeds and Manchester does not include the £7.5 billion cost of the trains to run on the line. The Secretary of State has made that clear today. These factors are an essential part of the project, and they ought to be included in the estimates in future.

Worryingly, the National Audit Office also claims:

“The Department has not included VAT in its cost estimates or affordability assessments”,

and warns that

“HS2 Limited will be liable for VAT at 20 per cent on almost all of its spending.”

Ministers need to confirm that the Chancellor and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs have agreed that the VAT will be reclaimable. If that will not be the case, that should also be accurately reflected in the budget.

The NAO also warns that, even with the additional £3 billion capital spending from 2015-16 that has been confirmed today, there is a risk that the project

“may restrict the ability to fund other capital projects across government”.

It goes on to warn:

“We estimate that there could be a gap in affordability of £3.3 billion spread over the four years from 2017-18 to 2020-21, which are the peak spending years for phase one.”

The Secretary of State will, I think, have negotiated something in that respect, but he must make it clear, when he can, that the settlement he has reached with the Chancellor—the details of which we might get tomorrow—has closed that funding gap in full. It would be unacceptable if the Department’s failure to plan the spending needed for this scheme were to result in any cuts or delays to the vital upgrading on the rest of the network. That includes the rolling programme of electrification and new inter-city trains, both of which have already been delayed or scaled back under this Government.

Finally, on the budget for the scheme, there is already a creeping increase in spending from the allocation set for this Parliament in the 2010 spending review. The Minister of State, Department for Transport has admitted to me in a parliamentary answer that the budget for the current spending period has been revised upwards from £773 million to around £900 million. That is worrying in the context of the legislation we are debating today, which will effectively give Ministers a blank cheque from Parliament to spend on the scheme. I am sure that the Secretary of State will keep Parliament fully apprised of where the money is going.

In addition to the delays and the criticisms of the budget, serious concerns have also been expressed about HS2 Ltd. It was initially set up to advise Ministers on the route for the new north-south line, but the Government have expanded its role to include building support for the scheme and then delivering it, despite the fact that HS2 Ltd has faced criticism for the way in which it has engaged with communities along the route, with local authorities and with MPs. The fact is that it has not proved to be an effective advocate for the scheme.

The NAO has issued a warning on this, too, saying:

“The programme has a complicated governance structure. This is because the Department aims to preserve some independence for its development body, HS2 Limited, while also maintaining effective governance.”

By divorcing the scheme from delivery of the investment in the existing rail network, there is a risk that we will not focus on the need to create a fully integrated single rail network. It makes no sense that Network Rail is, in effect, having to mirror some of the work of HS2 Ltd, including appointing staff of its own to work on the scheme and having to lobby HS2 Ltd to ensure that decisions are taken in a way that does not have a negative impact on the wider network.

It is increasingly clear that a better option would be to transfer responsibility for the planning and delivery of the new north-south rail line to Network Rail. That would reduce duplication and cost while better enabling the integration of investment in the existing network and the new line. The hopelessly inadequate plans for connecting the new north-south line with HS1 are a good example. The focus of the debate on this issue has been on whether there would be any demand for services from the continent to go further north than London. We should surely not turn our backs on the opportunity to end unnecessary and environmentally damaging short-haul flights, but the real case for getting the connection right involves the opportunity to run the excellent Javelin trains that served us so well during the Olympics further up the country, instead of simply between the coast and the capital.

East Coast Main Line Franchise

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for clarifying the position. Perhaps for the rest of this debate, unlike the one in Westminster Hall, we will concentrate on the main issues before us and the reasons why the Government made the decision they have.

In the Westminster Hall debate, a number of hon. Members questioned the Minister’s claim that East Coast’s performance had plateaued, noting the remarks the right hon. Gentleman made to the Select Committee on Transport on 24 April:

“If you look at the latest monthly figures for reliability and punctuality, it is the worst of the 19 franchises.”

That struck me as odd, because in my experience East Coast trains are, more often than not, on time. That was borne out in the debate, in which many speakers pointed out that the Minister was quoting figures from a narrow four-week period in which bad weather had caused flooding and brought down overhead wires. East Coast is powerless to prevent such incidents, and responsibility for subsequent delays lies with the infrastructure manager, Network Rail. In fact, according to the moving annual average punctuality figures, which offer a more balanced picture, East Coast is in the top three of the seven long-distance franchises.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour and those who signed the motion on securing the debate. Is it not worth pointing out that, over the decades, a consistent cause of delays has been problems with the overhead wires? Is she aware that one of the main reasons those problems have arisen is that, back in the ’80s when the line was electrified under the previous Conservative Government, the overhead wires system was installed on the cheap? Ever since, we have suffered problems precisely because they did not do the good job they ought to have done.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Indeed. I am not saying, and I do not think any Opposition Member would say, that there is nothing that needs to be improved. Track and rolling stock can always be improved, and the current state of the track and overhead cables is a problem, but I would argue that it would be a problem for any operator. That is not what lies behind the Government’s proposal.

There is also the question of the premium payments. Again, I quote the Minister, this time at Transport questions on 25 April, when he said that

“the premium that the east coast main line pays to the Treasury is less than that paid by the west coast main line.”—[Official Report, 25 April 2013; Vol. 561, c. 995.]

In fact, a recent report from the Office of Rail Regulation suggests that, in 2011-12, the Government received £156 million in net franchise payments from the operator of the west coast main line and £177 million from East Coast—the opposite of what the Minister asserted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Jones]

No, I do not use first class—the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Extreme caution is required for any Member using first class, and I do not risk it.

The question is not whether the line should be in private or public ownership; it is about getting the franchise right. I want to see the franchise taken forward promptly, with customers right at the heart of the railway. That means listening to what they want and responding to it. For my own area, in the past three years we have seen the first direct London to Harrogate service for 30 years. I remind the House that this service was removed under nationalisation, alongside the downgrading of services for Hull, Bradford, Cleethorpes and Teesside. The new service is fantastic. Our area has an important visitor economy and is hosting part of the Tour de France next year.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I might be wrong, but is the service to Harrogate not an East Coast rail service? Does that not show that the operator is able to be flexible and respond to customer demand and passenger needs?

[Andrew Jones]

Of course it is an East Coast service. In some ways the operator has responded and I am quite happy to reflect that. I just think that more can be done and the hon. Gentleman’s comment does not really address why our railways saw such a dramatic turnaround after privatisation. Opposition Members have had no comments whatever to make about how we have had decades and decades of decline in passenger numbers. Privatisation occurred and the situation changed utterly. I am sure the Minister has noticed that no Opposition Member has said a word about the change in passenger numbers from the mid-1990s onwards.

I would like to see the new franchise introduce more services for Harrogate. I am sure that representations will be made nearer the time. Flexibility will need to be built in so that we can allow the operator, whoever wins the franchise, to respond to demand. I hope there will be new rolling stock, as some of the trains on the service are from the 1970s, and line investment. It is worth noting that new rolling stock and line investment would change the cost base of the franchise, and start to change some of the numbers that Opposition Members have been keen to quote this afternoon. I urge the Minister to press on, because that will mean more innovation and more success for our industry.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) made a robust defence of privatisation—it must be unusual for the Conservatives to hear a Liberal Democrat robustly defending Government policies for a change—but it is not unfair to point out that he represents a constituency in the west of Scotland. Although I am sure some of his constituents use the east coast service from time to time, he will not have had my experience of regularly meeting constituents on the train or at the station. If he had, he would know that his defence for putting the east coast service back into private hands would not find great favour among users of that line, because the service provided since East Coast was brought in has been good. It has not always been perfect, but customers and passengers are generally satisfied and, as has been said, when there are problems—particularly delays—they are mostly not down to factors over which East Coast has, or is expected to have, any control.

It is pretty outrageous of the Minister, who is generally a fair person, to use poor punctuality over some selected periods to justify putting the east coast service back into private hands. Some of his colleagues suggested that the private sector might be able to offer infrastructure improvements or offers for long-term planning, but for the last few years, East Coast has been operating the service, not on a day-to-day basis but certainly not on a long-term basis with any security. Surely we should now give East Coast the chance to see what it could come up with if it were given long-term security similar to a franchise period.

The Government should approach the issue in a non-ideological way. As has been said in this debate, East Coast provides a good return to the taxpayer, in contrast to previous operators, and surely success should be rewarded, not punished as the Government seem intent on doing. I would like the service to be retained and continue to be operated by Directly Operated Railways. That would be the simplest way forward. If the Government are not prepared to do that, could they not allow Directly Operated Railways to come forward with an alternative bid and a proposal that could be put against whatever comes in from private tenderers, to see who offers best value for the Government and for passengers? Then we can judge who has the best offer on the table. The Government should at least do that, if they are not driven purely by an ideological bent, as they appear to be.

I wonder whether the way the Government have timetabled the franchise process—presumably partly to comply with the Brown review and obviously in order to have the east coast main line back in private hands before the 2015 election—will result in a fair bidding process. I say that because with Virgin operating the west coast route until April 2017 and providing a service that is popular with many passengers, and with another branch of the Virgin empire operating flights to Edinburgh and Aberdeen, competition issues would surely arise if it was to bid for the east coast main line as well. It would not leave many alternative bidders, certainly from within the UK. The 2015 date has clearly been driven by the date of the general election, but I wonder whether the franchise process, instead of giving the Government a successful policy to sell to the public, might not in fact give them a huge headache just before May 2015. If that is the case, it will serve them right. I say give DOR on the east coast main line a chance at least to put forward an alternative bid to show what it can do, to show what its management team can do and to show what alternative offer can be put into the process to see which would bring the best value for money.

I want to raise a point that has not been raised so far, but which is important to the future of the east coast main line and the franchise. We will be having a separate debate next week on High Speed 2, which I support—although I think it should be going all the way to Scotland—but whichever option is adopted for the future of high-speed rail in the UK, under the present plans the services operating the high-speed system will reach points near Manchester, York or Leeds, and will then be run on the existing rail network up to north-east England and Scotland—along what are endearingly called in the HS2 prospectus the “classic routes” to Edinburgh and Glasgow. It is reasonable to ask, therefore, how many more trains we can fit into the existing east coast main line network north of York.

For those reasons, we need to plan for the future services, network and infrastructure on the east coast main line on a long-term, secure basis. Let us not forget what has happened before with the franchising process on that line. Twice the operator has been forced to give back the service to the Department, and most recently DOR was forced to operate the service at the last minute to ensure that the public continued getting a good service, as indeed they have.

If DOR cannot continue operating the east coast service, the Government—whoever is in power in 2015—might find themselves in a difficult situation. At the moment, if a privately operated franchise collapses, DOR has the infrastructure, staffing and structure to move in quickly and take over the service. If we take away the DOR service on the east coast main line, we will take away a valuable alternative operator and comparator for the rail network. That is another reason why the Government should be rethinking this proposal and approaching it on a non-ideological basis. They need to consider what is best for the customer and passenger, and that must surely be to allow the current East Coast service to continue, rather than yet again to force it into private hands in the way suggested.

East Coast Main Line

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) on securing this important debate.

I also congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) on leading a campaign that has widespread backing inside and outside Parliament. It is not surprising that it is so well supported; as we have heard, the facts speak clearly for themselves. By the end of this financial year, East Coast estimates that it will have returned about £800 million to the Exchequer since the line was nationalised. The net public subsidy in the past financial year was just 1% of turnover, compared with an industry average of 32%.

A recent report commissioned by the TUC reveals that the firms receiving the largest state subsidies spend more than 90% of their profits on average on shareholder dividends. Of those firms, the top five recipients received almost £3 billion in taxpayer support between 2007 and 2011, which allowed them to make operating profits of £504 million. However, more than 90% of that money—£466 million—was paid straight to shareholders.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is also worth while pointing out that the taxpayer has been getting this money back from Directly Operated Railways in a context where the company has been able to operate only on a fairly short-term basis, because there is no certainty for the long term about the franchise. Is it not highly possible that, if the current operators had the security of knowing they were going to operate the railway system for a considerable number of years to come, they might make even better returns for the taxpayer and run the system even more efficiently?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I agree. That was a good point, and it was well made.

I am a regular user of the service, as are many Members, constituents and people across the north-east, and the improvements in service and punctuality have been plain to see. That is not to say that there are not occasional causes for complaint; of course there are, and we all know what they are—often, it is the toilets. However, the service has improved, without the need for the private sector ethos that we often hear about from advocates of privatisation.

In a written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), the Minister said:

“The Government remains committed to benefitting from private sector innovation and operational experience in its railways.”—[Official Report, 22 April 2013; Vol. 561, c. 590W.]

Given the improvements since the line was nationalised and the low reliance on subsidy, which is 1% of turnover, as well as East Coast’s returns of £800 million to the national coffers, the private sector organisations running other franchises could learn a thing or two from Directly Operated Railways.

The east coast line is getting increasingly busy, and it needs constant investment in maintenance and capacity improvement. Incidentally, one way that we could improve capacity—I and other north-east Members recently met the Minister to make this case—would be to bring the Leamside line back into use in the north-east to take some of the freight off the main east coast line. The Minister and I have discussed that at length. The proposal would have the added bonus of providing the means to extend the Tyne and Wear Metro to Washington, in my constituency, which would bring great benefits to the town and its residents.

However those improvements are made, they do need to be made, and that will require money. The benefit of keeping the franchise in public ownership is that that investment can be made by ploughing the generous profits generated—£800 million so far—back into the service, instead of giving them to overseas shareholders. Our network sees hundreds of millions of pounds disbursed to shareholders of private companies every year, despite the fact that those companies receive state subsidies to keep going. East Coast’s performance over the past three years has shown us the folly of that model. Why send profits generated from British passengers to foreign owners abroad, when some of those owners are subsidising rail fares in their own countries? We could and should use those profits here to improve our services and to help keep our fares down.

The East Coast arrangement is not hurting my constituents; it is working. It is not broken, so it does not need fixing—apart from the toilets, of course. If anything, based on the performance of East Coast, it would be desirable to see more of our key lines under public control. What the service needed was the stability to carry on planning for the future and improving performance and service standards further, while maintaining the return to the taxpayer. What it has, however, is the uncertainty caused by being put out to the market once again, where it may even be the subject of a tender by the company that failed to run it properly last time. That would cost taxpayers millions.

Given the shambles over the west coast line, I would have thought that the Government would at least leave a successfully operating line well alone—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The ideology in this debate is clearly not on the Labour side, as is shown by the speeches we have heard. What is puzzling many of my constituents is why it is somehow so urgent to put the east coast line out to franchise now, when East Coast is working well and when the franchise process for the west coast main line was such a disaster so recently. It sounds like the answer is ideology.

A couple of misconceptions have arisen in the debate so far. One of the previous speakers suggested that refranchising would fund improvements such as electrification, but during the past few years Network Rail has made infrastructure investment from public money. It is clear that refranchising will not bring about that kind of investment. I also say to the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) that, instead of perpetuating the notion that somehow East Coast is uniquely expensive, if he took his Government’s advice to benefit claimants and became “digital by default” he could considerably reduce fares by booking in advance. That is no different from the situation with any of the other rail operators.

There is now a good argument for looking at the situation. I am sure the Minister will say, as some Government Members have already said, “Oh, but the Labour Government were going to refranchise.” We learn from experience, and we have learned that there is no inherent reason why a publicly operated railway company cannot make a success of things. One reason for that is that such a company will be operated not by some anonymous Department, but by rail professionals; it will not be run from the Department for Transport. Those rail professionals are clearly motivated to make things work, which is why we are seeing the improvements that we feel are happening on the east coast line.

The time has now come for us to look again at some of the assumptions that were made at the time of privatisation.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I am sorry; I do not think I have time to give way.

There was a view that the track should be separated from the trains and that the network should all be split up. However, we know from the McNulty report that the unit cost of railways in this country is 40% higher than in countries in Europe where there are publicly owned, integrated rail services. The time has come not to be ideological about this issue, nor even defensive about what anybody’s Government did in the past, but to look at what is actually happening out there.

In the first instance, we should say of the east coast line, “No, we will not put this out to franchise again at this stage. There is no need to do so.” Secondly, we should look at the whole process and analyse what is happening. Thirdly, we should perhaps look again at having an integrated rail system—