Network Rail

Rob Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

I join other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friends the Members for St Albans (Mrs Main), for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) and for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) on securing this important debate. I apologise, Mr Amess, that I must leave the Chamber slightly early due to some child care issues that have arisen today.

Thus far, we have heard some valid criticisms of Network Rail’s performance on punctuality, delivery of long-distance and freight services through its operators, value for money and inefficiency, to name but a few issues. First Great Western, which serves my constituency, reports that 60.4% of delays are due to factors within Network Rail’s control. That figure includes 18 incidents of overrunning engineering work causing 1,053 minutes of delay, and 347 incidents of infrastructure failure causing 21,270 minutes of delay. The result is passenger inconvenience and frustration. Specifically in the Thames valley, which covers my constituency, Network Rail has caused a total of 2,976 hours of delay. That is not very good, to say the least, and considerably adrift of the targets that it was set.

The Office of Rail Regulation has said that Network Rail must improve on that, and two enforcement orders have been issued, which is highly embarrassing for such a company. I have spoken to First Great Western, and it is keen to emphasise that this is not a blame game, but a plea to work better with Network Rail to address problems that cause so much grief for so many of its passengers and our constituents. This is a long-standing plea and I had hoped that matters were improving, but it seems that I was far too optimistic about the moves that have been made to try to deal with some of the problems. Network Rail can and must improve on the terrible figures, but no organisation is perfect and we must see what can be done, and what improvements can be made.

As an organisation responsible for operating 20,000 miles of track and infrastructure, 40,000 bridges and tunnels, 18 major stations, 2,500 leased stations and 8,200 commercial properties, Network Rail has a huge responsibility. At this time of economic challenge, we need a railway infrastructure fit for purpose to keep Britain moving.

The McNulty report recommends a number of improvements, some of which have been covered in the debate and some of which will perhaps be covered later. I would like to draw from my experience of working with Network Rail on a range of issues on behalf of my constituents. That experience should not detract at all from anything in the powerful speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans, but all I can say at the outset is that my experience has been very positive.

Reading is a major transport hub in the south-east and Reading station is among the busiest stations on the country’s rail network. Every day, 700 trains pass through the station, which handles 14 million passengers each year. An £851 million redevelopment of the station is well under way, and its express aim is to provide more trains, to reduce delays and to provide a much better station overall for passengers.

In my first term in Parliament after 2005, I brought key stakeholders together to breathe life into a project that was drifting and even failing. It could not get off the ground, but I am pleased to say that Network Rail got onboard—if you will pardon the pun—and was very responsive to my requests, always positive and keen to get the job done. I am also pleased to report that to date the work has been delivered on time and on budget—although I take my hon. Friend’s point about “Panorama”. For such a large and complex project, that is welcome indeed, but it is also impressive considering that it must fit around a busy operating schedule. The Reading station redevelopment thus far stands as an example of Network Rail’s ability to deliver on ambitious plans for major rail improvements. Network Rail has shown me and my constituents that it employs good project management in this case, and has some very good people working for it.

In Reading, Network Rail is changing the track layout and building new platforms and entrances to the station to tackle congestion and to improve passenger journeys. Given the price my constituents pay for tickets—I am led to believe that it is the most expensive railway line in Europe—any work to improve passenger experience must be welcomed. New tracks and platforms mean that incoming trains will no longer need to queue outside the station, as they do now, which I am sure anybody who lives in the west country and further afield will welcome. Sitting delayed outside Reading station almost every day of the year is very frustrating, and a particular problem for passengers to the west of Reading. Network Rail engineers are building a new viaduct to the west of Reading, which is designed to take fast main lines over freight and relief lines. That work will enable the railway to cope as demand for train services increases in the years to come—a point well covered in the debate and a necessity that we cannot afford not to address.

Since 2008, I have been impressed by the emphasis that Network Rail has put on dealing with local stakeholders, ranging from myself as a local MP to Reading council and community groups. Its engagement strategies have helped stakeholders to shape the designs, not only for the station, but for the layout of the platforms and so on, and its work to keep local people updated has minimised disruption ahead of works. Thanks to its careful preplanning, a 10-day closure during the 2010 Christmas period meant that it was able to reduce—yes, reduce; I can see that there is surprise at that—the overall timetable for the project by a year. It was originally planned to be a six-year project and it will come in a year earlier than that, which is a big achievement.

The rail performance watchdog, Passenger Focus, has given positive feedback on the works to date. To Network Rail’s credit, in this instance an acceptable balance was struck between short-term disruption and a long-term reduction in the overall disruption caused by the project. Of course, there is huge room for improvement, but those efforts have been thorough and deserve a fair mention—credit where credit is due, after all. More recently, Christmas 2011 saw the completion of another major new bridge and new platforms to serve electrified southern lines. There too, Passenger Focus has given positive feedback on the works.

I am also pleased to say that all that work was completed to Network Rail’s published timetables, and I hope that that continues through to the project’s completion in 2015. If the project management at Reading station to date is anything to go by, I am confident that that can and will happen. My constituents in Reading East are ambitious for public transport services, and so am I. I am therefore pleased that, in my experience of the Reading station redevelopment, Network Rail has helped to deliver on that ambition.

I would like briefly to cite another example of my positive experience of working with Network Rail. Last month, I chaired another meeting of an ambitious group I have put together with Network Rail, BAA, London Heathrow airport, the Department for Transport and First Great Western. Our aim is to provide extended western rail access to Heathrow airport for Reading and beyond. In these tough economic times, such a link will improve business conditions in Reading and further afield, providing much needed connectivity with Europe’s busiest airport. That is important because Reading is home to many large employers and first-rate firms, such as Microsoft and Oracle, and the lack of a direct link leaves little alternative to lengthy and costly car and taxi journeys from Reading to Heathrow, which are estimated to cost local businesses £10 million a year in transport.

Reading, like other business centres, faces stiff competition regionally, nationally and internationally. We need to remain competitive, and in doing so, we must address the lack of a speedy link to Heathrow. A direct rail link is essential to our local economy over the next 20 years, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport and her predecessor, now Secretary of State for Defence, for their critical support in getting such efforts off the ground. Network Rail deserves our thanks too, because following my bringing together key stakeholders and establishing the group to drive the project forward, Network Rail has proved to be an enthusiastic team player and, again, has shown itself to be a good project manager. I commend it for that.

I hope that Network Rail’s chief executive, Sir David Higgins, and his directors will take some positives from the debate, despite the many criticisms that they must hear and take onboard. I, for one, can give the Network Rail projects and people with whom I have dealt a thumbs up, and I hope that proposed improvement changes will mean that right hon. and hon. Members can give Network Rail a thumbs up in future.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on a first-class speech. I agreed with almost every word she said, but I am afraid that I do not share the rosy view of Network Rail that the hon. Member for Reading East (Mr Wilson) expressed.

[Mr Wilson]

It was my experience.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

It is not my experience. I have had many contacts with those who have worked in the rail industry over the past 15 years and before, and I have heard a stream of criticism from people fearful of being exposed because they would be victimised if their names leaked out. To illustrate that point, I deliberately forget their names, but I have heard a lot of very disturbing details.

I have a passionate interest in railways and have supported them since I serviced the TUC transport committee in the 1970s. I have been a rail commuter on Thameslink for 43 years, and have travelled through St Albans in that time. I have always believed that railways are the transport of the future, which was not the view of the Department for Transport until recently—quite unexpectedly as far as it is concerned, there has been an enormous surge in rail passengers in recent years. Despite higher fares and travel problems, people have chosen to use the railways, which confirms my view that they are the transport mode of the future. There has been much investment over the past 15 years, which has been expensive, but we need a lot more of it.

Privatisation has been a hugely expensive mistake. Indeed, a Department for Transport official was heard to say privately at the time that privatisation was intended to facilitate the decline of the railways. That was the Department’s view then. It was thought that the railways were a diminishing form of transport and that eventually we would all move to our cars. The great mistake, of course, was to divide the railways between Network Rail and the train operators—to separate track and train. No other country in Europe has chosen to privatise their railways. They have seen the mistake that we made, and the problems that that caused. There have been accidents and there are serious safety problems, even now, and of course there has been a massive increase in costs.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), the Select Committee Chair, said, Railtrack was an appalling organisation. In the foyer of its headquarters it had an electronic indicator showing its share price. That is what it was concerned about—not serving the public, or safety. Eventually, of course, the previous Government were forced to abolish it and to come up with another solution. I understand that a private conversation took place in Downing street for several hours, between Stephen Byers, Tony Blair and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Tony Blair got bored after a certain time and walked out, saying “Well do what you have to do, but no nationalisation.” So they came up with the strange beast called Network Rail, which is neither nationalised nor privatised, and has no effective accountability at all. We have had not just privatisation but fragmentation—but that fragmentation was based on some economic theory, which was once explained to me by an economist. I said, “Costs were supposed to go down, but they went up massively.” “Yes,” he said, “our theory didn’t work.” Well, why do they not just reverse what they did and reintegrate and renationalise the railways?

There has been a massive increase in costs, in both public subsidy and fares, and, as Sir Roy McNulty concluded, at one point, our railways were up to 40% more expensive than continental railways. I have said in the Chamber, and to Sir Roy, whom I have met twice with my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), that the big difference between continental railways and ours is that the continental ones are publicly owned and integrated, while ours are privately owned and fragmented. I do not think that he was listening to me, because he clearly had his card marked, “Whatever you do, no public ownership: find another solution.” One of the things that he has done, which I completely disagree with—the railway unions have made the point—is to consider staffing cuts. The staff on the front line have apparently been judged very efficient. They are not the problem, or the ones who cause the costs, but they are the ones who will have to pay the price, because in place of a challenge to what Network Rail does, there will be cuts to staff in stations at night.

Network Rail is a dysfunctional organisation. It is expensive and bloated, and is a law unto itself. I have met David Higgins a couple of times, and I have a high regard for him. He is a decent person, but he has taken over an organisation that is out of control. He has had great difficulty in penetrating that appalling organisation. Network Rail is a rogue organisation, and impenetrable. I have described it as an entrenched management mafia. I understand that within the organisation David Higgins suffers a degree of hostility, because every time he tries to change anything he is resisted. That is not just within the management structures; even at board level he suffers from those problems. It is down to the Government to back him up when he wants to do things, and to break the stranglehold of the corrupt management that has been there so long.

The vice-like grip of the old guard stems back to Railtrack days, and even though it was abolished some of the same people—and the same practices and culture—carried on. As I have said, I have had dozens of conversations over 15 years with staff and former staff, and they are all fearful of being whistleblowers, and I can understand why.