Rail Fares

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle]

I have already given way to the right hon. Lady and to the hon. Gentleman, so I will make some progress in my speech. At the very least, rail passengers would like tickets to state clearly the precise time restrictions that apply instead of simply being referred to some obscure part of a website that they do not have access to when purchasing a ticket.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Maria Eagle]

I want to make a few points about what I have heard from passengers and will try to give way to the hon. Gentleman later.

Secondly, passengers want a legal right to be offered the cheapest ticket for the journey they wish to make, and they do not think that it is too much to ask that the cheapest fare must be clearly advertised. Should passengers not be entitled to a refund if they have not been sold the cheapest ticket?

Under this Government, it is to become harder to buy the cheapest ticket if plans to replace staff with machines and close all 675 category E station ticket offices are implemented, yet that is what Ministers are considering, along with cutting the opening hours of 302 category D station ticket offices. All the evidence suggests that many people are not sold the cheapest ticket when they buy a ticket online or from a machine.

Thirdly, passengers have told us that they want the cheapest fares to be available wherever tickets are sold, yet the cheapest fares often appear to be available only online. Should not the same fare structure apply to tickets purchased at train stations and other outlets as applies to those bought online, ending the digital divide that is arising and increasing costs for older passengers, in particular?

Fourthly, what really annoys rail users is when they make a genuine mistake or are forced to change their travel plans but find themselves treated as a common criminal in front of other passengers and required to get out their cheque book and cough up. Of course we have to protect revenue, but we also have to have some common sense. Within the same period of the day, there has to be greater flexibility to vary plans, even on pre-booked tickets. Trains are not airlines, and we do not wish to go down the road of airline-style ticketing, with no cheap walk-on option.

Finally, passengers told us—

[Maria Eagle]

If the hon. Gentleman will just let me get to the end of my points, I may give way to him.

Finally, passengers told us that they understand that sometimes a track has to close, such as for essential work, to keep our railways safe, but when a rail replacement service makes their journey longer, often adding considerable inconvenience, they want to know why their ticket costs the same. They can apply for a discount if their train is delayed, but not if it turns out not even to be a train and ends up being a bus.

Those are all ideas that we are looking at seriously, because for too long Governments have let the train companies get away with treating passengers in a way that would not be permitted in other industries.

[Paul Maynard]

Is the hon. Lady seriously arguing that peak hours on the west coast main line should be the same as those on Merseytravel lines?

[Maria Eagle]

I am arguing that it is important to have a national understanding of peak hours, so that passengers are not clobbered and do not have to wait until what seems like a long time after normal peak hours in order to get on a train home. That would be an improvement, and it would clarify the system. People would not be caught out as they frequently are, and they would not be inconvenienced by having to wait for hours after their meeting has finished in order to get on a train home.

If this Government are not going to stand up to the train companies and take on vested interests, we will. Those are all ideas that we are looking at seriously.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harris]

That says quite a lot about the Secretary of State’s reluctance to accept her own culpability for supporting the spending plans of the previous Labour Government.

I do not believe that the railway industry is broken, or a basket case. I was proud to serve as a railway Minister in the last Labour Government, and I understand the successes that have grown from 13 years of Labour governance of the railway industry. We have more people travelling on the railways than at any time in their history outside of wartime. We have more services every working day than ever before, and punctuality is at an all-time high. Those were achievements that this Government have managed to continue—and I hope that that continues—but fares are a fundamental weakness. They are the crucial interface between the travelling public and the railways and—irrespective of the public subsidy to the railways—if we do not make rail travel affordable for ordinary people, it will not be surprising if they feel that the railways are letting them down.

The previous Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), famously described the railways as a “rich man’s toy”. A few weeks ago, I challenged the Secretary of State in the Transport Committee about whether she agreed with that assessment and, understandably, she did not want to commit herself. She told the Transport Committee that she wanted to see the balance between the taxpayer and the fare payer move towards the latter. She also said that in the long term she wanted the fare payer to pay less. Well, she can have one or she can have the other, but she cannot have both. It is clear that unless the taxpayers’ contribution is increased, fares will not come down. The Secretary of State refused to answer that point at the time.

[Paul Maynard]

The hon. Gentleman raises the interesting question of whether the burden can be switched to the fare-paying passenger at the same time as reducing fares. Does he agree that if we do what McNulty recommends and try to reduce the overall cost base of the railways, that conundrum could be solved?

[Mr Harris]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, who also sits on the Transport Committee, is as much of an expert as any other Member, and I will agree to consider his comments.

The Prime Minister was wrong today and failed to give the facts about the policy of the last Labour Government and the policy of this Government. Even if it was for only one year, Lord Adonis managed to challenge the rail industry on the so-called basket of fares and whether the RPI plus 1% policy should apply to individual fares or to a basket of fares. He got a lot of support on both sides of the House for insisting—against the arguments of his own officials and the resistance of the industry—that that policy should apply only to individual fares. As we know, if it is applied to a basket of fares, some can go up by 6%, instead of 1%. Whether or not that was a temporary agreement for one year, surely when a new franchise is let the Minister has a responsibility to challenge the industry and set such an arrangement in stone at the very start.

When the railways were first privatised, the policy—it was then RPI minus 1%—was applied to a basket of fares, as agreed with Ministers. That was what Lord Adonis succeeded in challenging, but sadly only for one year. Will the Secretary of State give a commitment that, in future new franchises, the Adonis approach will be applied to fares to protect fare payers and to ensure that train operating companies take money out of their own pockets, rather than the pockets of fare-paying passengers?

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. Paragraph 13 of the final McNulty report states quite clearly:

“Fares structures do not send efficient pricing signals, particularly in terms of managing peak demand, and are extremely complex.”

As a frequent user of the west coast main line I can only concur with that diagnosis, but what has struck me about today’s debate has been the lack of any praise for what the Government are doing to tackle it. I am not just talking about RPI plus 1 rather than RPI plus 3, or about the fact that we have more passengers on our railways than we did in the 1920s, but I find it strange that the Opposition find it difficult to recognise our investment, particularly in the north-west with the Ordsall chord, which is the first stage of the northern hub, and the electrification of the line to Blackpool—and that is before we get on to High Speed 2; I am told than those on both Front Benches are suffering a degree of HS2 fatigue.

I listened to the speech from the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), the shadow Secretary of State, and I began to ask myself whether that was the new reality and the new approach for tough times or whether it was just about borrowing a bit more—the same old story and the same old solution—without saying where it would come from. That is not just a knockabout point, as it goes to the heart of transport policy. The previous Labour Government, rightly in my view, wanted to shift the burden of paying for our railways from the taxpayer to the fare-paying passenger, a policy that this Government are continuing. I am not quite sure I understand why the Labour Opposition do not want to continue with that approach. I began to get a bit confused. As I listened to the hon. Lady, I felt like I was watching a game of what I call policy Twister, where a Front-Bench team try to contort themselves into new poses to fit the leader’s latest re-launch. As someone who spent many years in an opposition front-bench team, I know what it feels like. I have been there, done that and bought the T-shirt.

I do not want to denigrate the hon. Lady’s proposals, as I thought that some of them made a lot of sense. For example, I have concerns about the digital divide and the availability of fares only online, and she was right to raise that. I feel, however, that in the wider debate we need a slightly more coherent understanding of what the McNulty review recommends. I am concerned that the debate seems to focus on what is said in the latest RMT or Transport Salaried Staffs Association press release. This is not just about ticket offices—and, by the by, I share many people’s concerns about the loss of ticket offices. We need to understand that McNulty goes much further than that.

Somewhere within rail policy, we must discuss where the burden lies and where the balance falls between the fare-paying passenger and the taxpayer. Given that McNulty called for a fare review and we are delivering a fare review at the end of the year, I am a little perplexed as to why the Opposition could not wait to see what is in the fare review. I am proud to serve on the Select Committee on Transport and I am looking forward to our cross-examination regarding the documents when they come forward. I have no doubt that we will find some flaws and will communicate those flaws to the Government in our usual courteous way, and that will be a good thing. Hon. Members have to recognise that there is a Command Paper coming out that will look at the structure of our railways and that there is a fare review coming out that will also address the issues.

The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood illustrated a useful point when she confirmed to me that one of her core beliefs is that the peak period should be the same in Euston as in Merseyside. I should think that would raise some very interesting problems. Anyone who uses the west coast main line, as I am sure she does to get back to Liverpool, must realise that at peak hours on a Friday the place is a hell hole. Passengers have to be put in cattle pens; it is not acceptable. Is she suggesting that we should reduce the standard national peak time? That would just cause that problem at Euston every day of the week and make it worse. Is she suggesting that we should have a much longer national peak hour? That would make it quite hard for many of our parents and neighbours who travel from Runcorn into Lime Street to do their shopping in Liverpool One to get there and back in a day on an off-peak ticket. That is an example of how the policies that the hon. Lady has suggested today have not really been thought through.

I would far rather that the hon. Lady recognised that the Government are taking relevant steps and are making a difference. They are bringing forward the fares review and the Command Paper on the structure of the rail industry that we need to see. I have a feeling that this debate might have been plonked on Opposition Members from above. I know that that happens sometimes—Members do not always choose to have a debate but might be told, “You’re having one.” They have done their best to cobble together a press release but I am afraid that although they get A-plus for effort, they get D-minus for homework. There is a debate to be had, but I am not sure that today’s debate was the one we wanted to be having.