John Bercow
Main Page: John Bercow (Speaker - Buckingham)Department Debates - View all John Bercow's debates with the Department for Transport
(11 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)
I begin by adding my congratulations to the Transport Committee on its important report, which comes up with a number of important and interesting recommendations. As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), the Committee Chair, will know, the Government have responded in full to the recommendations, and on a number of issues we have considerable sympathy and agreement with them.
Like the Select Committee’s, the Government’s vision is for a transport system that is an engine for economic growth—one that is environmentally sustainable and promotes quality of life in our communities. Rail offers commuters a safe and reliable route to work. It facilitates business and leisure travel, connects communities with their public services and workplaces and transports millions of tonnes of freight around the country, relieving congestion on our roads and bringing huge environmental benefits.
It is easy for some to criticise our railways, but as the Transport Committee itself noted:
“In many ways the railway has been a success in recent years.”
We have made tremendous progress. As hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), have said, since privatisation passenger journeys have almost doubled—from 735 million in 1994-95, to more than 1.5 billion in 2012-13. That point was made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside in her introductory comments. There are some 4,000 more services a day on our railways than in the mid-1990s. Rail freight, which the hon. Lady also mentioned, has grown by over 60%, with traffic reaching over 21.5 billion net tonne km in 2012-13.
With an ageing network built in Victorian times, coupled with underinvestment over a number of decades by successive Governments, operating today’s railway is a task of colossal proportions, but we are getting better at it. GB Railfreight has been ranked as the EU’s most improved rail network. Passenger satisfaction is up by about 10 percentage points in the past decade. Punctuality is up by about 12 percentage points, with just under 91% of trains arriving on time last year compared with just over 79% in 2002-03. That rather meets the point made by my hon. Friends the Members for Milton Keynes South and for Ipswich (Ben Gummer)—that the performance and the quality of service today is better than it was under British Rail, to which the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) is wedded, as we have now heard on at least two occasions in the past week. As other hon. Members have said, we are among the safest railways in the world.
Just running today’s railways is not an option. We have the fastest growth rate of any of the major European railways so the Government have committed over £16 billion to running and expanding the network between 2014 and 2019. We are providing capacity for an extra 140,000 commuter journeys into our major cities during the morning peak. Schemes such as Crossrail, Thameslink and the northern hub cross-Manchester link will have a transforming effect. They will increase capacity and connectivity and reduce journey times. [Interruption.] It is interesting that the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) is chuntering—I think that is the right word—from the Back Benches. He seems to be able to get away with it in a way that others cannot.
Mr Speaker
Order. The Minister will resume his seat. Let me be clear and explicit. There is a saying about pots and kettles. It is a point so obvious that I think it is within the comprehension of the Minister of State, who should now continue uninterrupted with his speech.
Mr Burns
Improved rail links to major ports and airports will support inward investment, trade and connectivity.
Electrification will provide faster, more reliable services on the midland and great western main lines and elsewhere. We have confirmed funding for the completion of electrification of over 324 route miles and added a new requirement for a further 537 route miles. That means that we are funding electrification of 11% of all route miles in England and Wales. Our programme contrasts with the approach of the previous Administration, under whom fewer than 10 miles of track was electrified during their 13 years in power. By 2020, about three quarters of passenger miles travelled in England and Wales will be on electric trains, compared with just 58% today.
We have provided a £300 million fund to improve passenger journey times. There is £200 million for stations across England, including £100 million to support accessibility. A further £200 million will build a better network for freight.
Mr Burns
My hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point. We have to learn from some of the mistakes of the past and what happened to the railways post-Beeching. I accept what my hon. Friend says.
We are well on the way to delivering a new high-speed railway for Britain, bringing extra capacity, faster journeys and better services and changing our economic geography. I am sorry that the hon. Member for North Durham is not as enthusiastic about this exciting way of improving connectivity, journey times and increasing capacity. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is chuntering, but I am surprised—
Mr Speaker
Order. Actually, the hon. Gentleman was not chuntering. There are many Members who do chunter in the House, in some cases extremely noisily, and an exemplar of that approach is the right hon. Gentleman. I suggest that it would be in his own best interests, of which he is not always the most appropriate guardian, that further references to chuntering by him might seem singularly inappropriate. Continue.
Mr Burns
Well, let’s move on.
I was just saying that I am surprised and disappointed that the hon. Member for North Durham does not share the enthusiasm of his colleague the Leader of the Opposition for the new high-speed railway. I hope that he will be reassured, however, that rail is thriving. It makes a vital contribution to the UK’s economic competitiveness and the Government’s investment ensures that that will continue.
The Government recognise, however, that we need to work to make rail even better. As recent surveys have shown, although passenger satisfaction is high on average across Great Britain, it can vary significantly across franchises, and although nine out of every 10 trains are running on time, with historically high levels of performance, punctuality is not yet as good as it should be, particularly on long-distance services, but also on London, south-east and regional services. Finally, the railway still costs more than it should.
We fully understand the importance of achieving the McNulty savings, which have been mentioned by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside and others. Our railways must become more efficient and financially sustainable. It is crucial that we ease the pressure of fares on hard-working families and reduce the burden on taxpayers, which is another issue of concern, not only to members of the Transport Committee, but to other hon. Members who have taken part in this debate.
That was the challenge in the Government’s rail Command Paper: how to reduce the costs of running the railway while keeping the passengers at the heart of everything we do. We are making progress. Network Rail will have delivered 40% efficiencies over 2004-2014 and the regulator recently announced a new 20% target for 2019. Further efficiencies will be made through the programme of franchising competitions and the initiatives of the Rail Delivery Group. The key message is that aligning incentives between train operators and Network Rail is one of the most important reforms to drive down costs and bring passenger benefits.
Mr Speaker
Order. The Minister of State is a slow learner, but he must try to grasp the point that it ill behoves a right hon. Gentleman who regularly shouts, hollers, chunters and accuses other people of all sorts of things from a sedentary position to make something of the fact that somebody else mutters from a sedentary position. I gently advise the Minister to raise his game and operate at the level of events. Minister of State, continue with the speech and the reading thereof.
Mr Burns
As I was saying in answer to the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), the Secretary of State made it clear last September that what happened with regard to the west coast main line was unacceptable and apologised for it. Even more importantly, he set up the Brown inquiry and the Laidlaw inquiry. I will not rehearse what they did, but the Brown inquiry came up with recommendations to ensure that we learn from that mistake and that it never happens again. We have a new franchise timetable, in keeping with the recommendations of that report, to ensure that we minimise the opportunities for that mistake to happen again.