Scotland Bill

Debate between Thomas Docherty and Tom Harris

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty]

Thank you, Ms Primarolo. I see that the Chamber is suddenly becoming a bit emptier. Perhaps it is worth pointing out that the Deputy Prime Minister is hosting a drinks reception tonight for Government Back Benchers. I imagine that hon. Members are off to make sure he does not drink all the wine himself, although after the Barnsley result he probably needs to do so.

I shall return to the substantive issue of the railways in Scotland. As I was saying before I was so gently interrupted, it is obviously right that we should retain the single health and safety policy throughout Great Britain. I say “Great Britain” because, as hon. Members will be aware, the railways in Northern Ireland are part of the single railway system of the island of Ireland. My proposal refers only to the railway network in Great Britain.

It is bizarre that, following the Scotland Act 1998 and the Railways Act 2005, we have successfully given greater powers to Scottish Ministers to do everything except determine the model of the franchise. I am not going to argue that a switch to a not-for-dividend model would necessarily be in the best interests of passengers in Scotland. As a member of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, I have worked for Network Rail. The problems that Network Rail has had in the past are well documented, and there is an ongoing issue involving the cases of sexual harassment and bullying by Peter Bennett, the head of human resources, of many of his employees. That has resulted in about £300,000 of damages and compensation being paid to employees. This is not an ideological debate; it is about who is best placed to make the decisions.

I shall give a couple of examples of how the present system is not working. We have only to look at the constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. I was lucky enough to live there, in the village of Moffat, for a number of years, and the Minister will recall that I put myself forward as a Labour candidate in a local council by-election. It was a secret ballot, so I am not quite sure how he voted, but I recall his featuring on one of my rival candidate’s leaflets, promising that if the Conservatives won the by-election—which, surprisingly, they did—he would ensure the reopening of the Beattock railway line. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) will know from his time in the rail industry and as a Transport Minister that that line sits on what is now the west coast main line.

The Minister was also a great champion of the Eastriggs railway station, which is ably represented by my old colleague, Councillor Sean Marshall. The Minister’s constituency also contains the village of Thornhill, which is in the Galloway area of the constituency. In all those places, he was a huge champion of the reopening of railway stations, yet after six years as a Member of Parliament and 10 months as a Minister in the Scotland Office, none of those railway stations has reopened. That could not possibly be because he was making promises that he could not deliver, so the fault must be with the franchise model. We need no better reason for giving Scottish Ministers the power to shape their own model.

[Mr Tom Harris]

I am genuinely unclear about the nature of my hon. Friend’s grievance with the current model. Is he saying that Scottish Ministers and Transport Scotland do not have the legislative capability to reopen disused stations?

[Thomas Docherty]

The issue at the moment is that Scottish Ministers must let the franchise according to a privatised railway model. As my hon. Friend knows, the Railways Act 2005 specifically bans a public body from acting as the franchise operator. The only exception to that is if that body is the operator of last resort, as is now the case with the east coast main line. The new clause would give Scottish Ministers the right not only to fund the railway, to let the franchise and to monitor its performance—all of which they have to do anyway—but to determine the shape of the model involved. This might well result in a privatised model like the one that we now have on the ScotRail franchise, or perhaps in a co-operative model. The Ministers might ask Transport Scotland to run the franchise, or set up a new company called Scottish Passenger Transport to do so.

The new clause provides a logical conclusion to the direction of travel—again, please pardon my poor pun—of the reconfiguration of the railways in Scotland. The reason that the proposal was not considered by the Calman commission is that it involves such a small technical change. Most Members of Parliament and MSPs were simply not aware that Scottish Ministers did not have this ability.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to these points. It is possible, if his civil servants have not done a particularly good job of advising him, that he might claim that the measure would somehow bring the whole of Great Britain’s rail network crashing down. Obviously, that would be an absurd argument. The Department for Transport is already running the east coast main line as the operator of last resort, placing the line back in the public domain. I am talking about a service that is wholly contained within Scotland, and the measure would have no impact on any other service. It would have no impact on the CrossCountry service or on the east coast main line—or, indeed, on the west coast services. The only services that leave Scotland are the one that runs from the Minister’s constituency to Carlisle, on the Glasgow to Carlisle line, and the Caledonian sleeper, which runs between London and Fort William, Inverness, Edinburgh and Glasgow. That service would stay in the franchise. As I have said, this is a very technical new clause. It is supported by all the trade unions and by the Scottish Government, who see it as a logical way forward.

Summertime (Scotland)

Debate between Thomas Docherty and Tom Harris

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend appreciate that the fact that he has given up his blog means that hon. Members and the wider public will not have an opportunity to see his views being promoted on the internet, and will he perhaps reconsider giving up his blog so that he can take forward this important issue?

[Mr Harris]

I am almost grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point and intruding into personal grief. Now that I am no longer a blogger, I may consider going into politics.