Cost of Public Transport

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at our record, he will see that rail fares increased only by the level of inflation or were actually cut in six of the 13 years that Labour was in power. Fares rose in some years, and that helped to fund investment. Under Labour, there was more investment in rail in real terms than under any previous Government. Under this Government, that link has been broken.

The Transport Secretary said that only commuters were paying regulated fares, and that unregulated fares could be “quite cheap”. Those comments are a world away from the frustrations endured by passengers every day on Southern and Thameslink, some of which were described in the House today by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna). They reflect an increasingly overcrowded and unreliable network.

In 2009, the Conservative party’s rail policy review stated:

“Fare rises come with tacit Government approval and are often the direct result of the franchise process”.

Will the Secretary of State therefore explain why he intends above-inflation rises to resume after 2020, as his Department’s recent consultation on the East Anglian franchise makes clear? Passengers were always told that higher fares were necessary to pay for improvements, but under this Government that link has been broken. The electrification of key lines was first paused and then shambolically “unpaused” one week before the Conservative party conference, and those projects are now delayed by years.

That goes to the heart of public trust in the railways. Ministers and Conservative Back Benchers went into the last election on a manifesto that said that key improvements would be delivered in this Parliament, but information about the true state of those programmes was kept concealed within the Department. The Transport Secretary has said that he was not informed about the state of the electrification programme until after May, but why did he not pose searching questions within the Department in October 2014, when my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), challenged him to say

“which electrification projects will be delayed or cancelled”—[Official Report, 23 October 2014; Vol. 586, c. 1030.]

due to cost overruns on the great western main line?

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

I have one curious question for the hon. Lady: how is this all going to be paid for? Is it going to be borrowed or are we going to put prices up?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I shall deal with that very question later on in my speech, so the hon. Gentleman should listen attentively.

Why did the Transport Secretary not raise the alarm in the last Parliament when the estimated cost of electrifying the midland main line rose from £250 million to £540 million, and then to £1.3 billion? Why did he not do so when the cost estimates for great western electrification rose from £548 million to £930 million, and then to £1.7 billion? Of course, the estimate has now risen further still, to £2.8 billion. Why did he not act when the Transport Committee warned in January 2015:

“Key rail enhancement projects...have been announced by Ministers without Network Rail having a clear estimate of what the projects will cost, leading to uncertainty about whether the projects will be delivered on time, or at all”?

Will the Transport Secretary confirm that he commissioned a report on the state of the electrification programme, which was given to him in September 2014? This report has never been published, and a Freedom of Information Act request for a copy has been personally refused by a Minister in his Department. What did that report say, and what has he got to hide?

The truth is that the Department was clearly warned by Network Rail about the impending northern power cut. The company’s board discussed last March

“the decisions required jointly with the DFT”

regarding

“enhancement deferrals from June”.

Network Rail’s chief executive has confirmed to me:

“In mid-March 2015, Network Rail informed DfT that decisions may need to be made in the coming months about the deferral of certain schemes.”

If the Secretary of State really was not aware of what his own Department and Network Rail were doing, there is only one possible explanation: he made it clear that he did not want to know. He failed to take responsibility, and passengers are now paying the price.

We were told that 850 miles of track would be electrified before 2019, but now the Department is refusing to say how many miles of track will be electrified in this Parliament. Is it half the original target? Is it a quarter? Will the Transport Secretary confirm that by 2019 this Government would do well to realise the plans for electrification set out by a Labour Secretary of State, the noble Lord Adonis, a decade earlier?

Let me return to the cost of tickets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr McLoughlin]

I really do need to make progress.

The shadow Secretary of State used to be in favour of rail franchising, but now she seems to be against it, although it is interesting to note that her party’s candidate for Mayor of London is apparently so keen on it that he wants Transport for London to bid for contracts in the private sector. In 2014, the shadow Secretary of State got one of our great private companies, Stagecoach, to sponsor her Christmas cards. I did not get one in 2015. Maybe this time it was sponsored by the RMT instead, because these days Labour has only one policy on transport: turn all the signals bright red—a policy that is going nowhere from a party that is getting nowhere.

Now of course the Labour party wants to impose yet another cost on hard-working people: the cost of strikes. We heard not a single word from the hon. Lady in her speech about the planned strikes next week on the underground—a party that will not even stand up for Londoners when the unions carry out a selfish and irresponsible strike. Well, this Government clearly stand on the side of Londoners and those who work in London. Will the hon. Lady condemn the planned strike on the underground? I will give way to her if she will. Will she condemn it? Silence. She is probably under orders from the shadow Chancellor to join the picket line, or does she agree with the Labour peer Lord Mendelsohn? My hon. Friends may not have heard this: Labour peer Lord Mendelsohn said strikes would be “economically efficient” because some travellers would discover better ways into work. That is Labour’s new policy: a strike that aims to stop Londoners getting new and better services.

Transport is central to Britain’s economy, and because we are dealing with the decline and deficit the Labour party left behind, we can afford to invest for growth. That means more jobs, more homes, and more businesses using our transport system, and more people too. Last year it carried more people than ever in its history: there were 1.65 billion journeys on the railway network, 316 billion vehicle miles on our roads, and over 1.3 billion journeys on the tube. This year, it will break that record again. That is why we are widening roads, building railways, opening up opportunities: a massive programme is under way now that means building Crossrail, completing Thameslink, electrifying the northern hub, starting HS2, record investment in local roads, setting up an independent National Infrastructure Commission under Lord Adonis, and getting on with the £15 billion road investment strategy, including the A358 and A27 that Labour pledged in its manifesto to cancel. There is £38.5 billion of investment in our railways, and 30% more on enhancements than Labour spent previously.

[Oliver Colvile]

May I remind my right hon. Friend that, during the election, the Labour party said it would cancel the A359 work? I did not hear how this would all be paid for, which I was told clearly to listen out for.

[Mr McLoughlin]

Indeed, the Opposition said they would take those roads out of the roads investment strategy.

Through our careful custodianship of the economy, we can afford to invest in the future. That is why some 4,000 new rail carriages for the national network are now on order, with most being built in Britain.

The hon. Member for Nottingham South talked about the need to help people up and down the country with transport costs, and I agree with her. That is why we are investing. In Nottingham, we have spent £150 million widening the A453, speeded up trains and rebuilt the station at a cost of more than £100 million, and extended the tram with a contribution of more than £370 million. That is more in six years for the people of Nottingham than in the previous 13 years of Labour government.

I welcome the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) to the Opposition Front Bench. I hope he lasts longer in the job than his predecessor, which will let him see the benefits of our investment in his constituency, including new intercity express programme trains, direct services from London on Virgin Trains East Coast, the removal of Pacer trains from the network and an upgrade to the A19 close by. I could go on. Other members of the Front-Bench team will benefit, too, with a £1.5 billion investment for the A14 and new Thameslink trains serving Cambridge, while Birmingham already has the upgrade to New Street station, services on Sunday from Longbridge and the M5 smart motorway programme.

That is the choice: under Labour, the cost of travel goes up and the cost of lost investment goes up too; under us, rail fares are capped, fuel prices go down and investment goes in.