Rail Fares

Debate between Theresa Villiers and Owen Smith

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

I am grateful for that intervention, which gives me the opportunity to say that it was, of course, the Labour Government who managed that franchise, such that we called in Great Western and demanded the changes that it made and that it adopt special measures.

[Mrs Villiers]

The Labour Government did make some attempt to fix the problems, but they created them, because they let the franchise in the first place.

[Owen Smith]

In truth, the problems we have with the railways are in large measure precisely due to the fragmentation that resulted from the botched privatisation of our rail industry. That is the reality.

The way we have debated this issue today—in particular, the way the Secretary of State took the opportunity, uncharacteristically perhaps, to make a lot of heavy-handed party political points—does not serve our constituents and rail travellers well. This is too important an economic issue, as she will know from her time on the Treasury Bench, for us to play knockabout politics with it. The key issue that the Opposition are raising today is affordability. Very simply, given that it is so important for many of our constituents that they are able to take advantage of the improved, more efficient and cleaner train services that are now available, those services must be affordable. That is why we are concerned about the large fare increases in the recent round, although Arriva Trains Wales has commendably kept down a lot of its fares across parts of my patch to RPI plus 1. On the Great Western line, however, there has been a worrying increase of 10% in the cost of travelling between Cardiff and London, as my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) said. That will make businesses and commuters think hard about whether they can continue to travel on that vital line for commerce and commuting.

It is important that the public understand that this Government took a decision to repeal the ban on flexing fares that the Labour Government put in place. That measure was introduced as a result of the economically straitened times in which we found ourselves in 2009. Lord Adonis made that decision to try to address the issue of affordability, and it is party political point scoring to suggest that the fact it was negotiated as a legal contract for one year was indicative of a longer-term intention. There is no read-across in that respect, and the Secretary of State would do well to take Lord Adonis at his word when he put it in writing to the Select Committee that he intended to continue the practice while we remained in economic difficulty.

What has changed since 2009? People are harder up than they were. Things have not got easier for my constituents or for those of the Secretary of State; they have got harder. That is why the Government should have thought long and hard about how they could justify taking a decision that might be in the interests of the train operators but is not in the interests of the travelling public. That was fundamentally the wrong decision for them to take.

I welcome the common sense that we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood today about the need for a cross-party review of our rail services. The fares are too complicated, and the system is too complicated. The flexing at peak times across different parts of the country is also too complicated. Many people end up paying higher fares than they ought to, because the system is engineered in such a way that they cannot access the cheapest fares. We have seen this with the energy companies as well. They rig the market in their favour by making it utterly impenetrable to ordinary people, and it is the same on the railways. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we must look into those issues, and at the underpinning question of the nature of the structure—the ownership principles—of the railway industry. We cannot simply say that there is no alternative, and we cannot get into a tawdry, tedious knockabout over whether this or that issue represents a spending commitment. That is just point scoring, and we need a much more fundamental discussion about the nature of our rail services. We need a Government who are going to act in the interests of the people, not just those of their people.