Railways

William Cash Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burns]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, to which I will respond in two parts. His second point is, I am afraid, above my pay grade. I hear what he says, and I understand what he is getting at, but I cannot give him an assurance. The transport field is a bit more complicated because so much is done on a Europe-wide basis, but I can give him the somewhat glib assurance that no doubt his concerns and his point will be heard and considered in other places. On the narrower issue, I beg his patience because he may be more reassured when I reach our proposals.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I endorse the views expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). When my right hon. Friend reaches that narrower issue, will he make clear whether High Speed 2 is directly connected? It is being put around by the UK Independence party, and others in the county council elections, that HS2 is directly related to the issue.

[Mr Burns]

I will deal with it now. HS2 is not directly related. It is a project drawn up by the coalition Government—to be fair, building on the work of Lord Adonis when Labour was in power. We support the project because we believe it is in the national interest, which is why it is going ahead. UKIP has sought to muddy the water on a number of issues with regard to HS2 and the European Union. As I was saying at Transport questions, before I was politely interrupted, that is fascinating, because if one were to travel around Buckinghamshire, and possibly Warwickshire, Staffordshire and a few other points north, one would see opposition to that magnificent project from the party my hon. Friend mentioned. He might then be confused if he read UKIP’s 2010 general election manifesto, which calls for three—not one, but three—high-speed railway systems in this country. But I now return—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is right. That is precisely why the Opposition have been prepared to look at reforming the railways.

In total, the train operating companies were left with £305 million before tax at a time when, as my hon. Friend has just said, some fares and season tickets have been allowed to rise by well above the rate of inflation. Those are the headline figures but, as the McNulty report, the Transport Committee and many others have pointed out, there is a basic lack of transparency in railway finances, as commercial confidentiality serves to obscure waste in the system.

The waste is huge. The McNulty report identified an efficiency gap of 40%, compared with the railways of four other European countries. The fragmentation of the industry has led to massive interface costs between Network Rail, the operating companies and the supply chain. Taxpayers and fare payers are supporting replica bureaucracies and unnecessary legal challenges. That money could be better invested in the industry. The great railway sell-off was a botched, rushed job. Labour took action to reverse some of the most damaging legacies of privatisation, including the disaster that was Railtrack, but the Railways Act 1993 was hurried through Parliament for political reasons, creating inefficiencies that are still with us today.

[Mr Cash]

With regard to the interesting dialogue between the question of Europeanisation, nationalisation and privatisation, does the hon. Lady agree that the consequences of adopting a positive policy towards the underlying desire to Europeanise the system of railways are alien to what I assume to be the interests of the trade unions, whether in this country or elsewhere, because Europeanisation and the bureaucracy she has just referred to will ensure that it is inefficient?

[Lilian Greenwood]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, but my concern is to protect the interests of passengers and taxpayers. That prompts the reasons for our response to the Government’s proposals today.

Rather than reading the Commission’s non-paper, Members could watch the accompanying video—I wonder how much taxpayers’ money was spent producing it—which is very amusing. They could be forgiven for thinking that there is no real dispute at all, but buried in the impact assessment for compulsory tendering is the giveaway sentence:

“There is a certain degree of uncertainty in the assessment of impacts of some options, as evidence is sometimes fairly recent (e.g. competition in the market) or ambiguous (evidence provided only by specific stakeholders). The choice to move forward with the aforementioned combination remains thus a political choice.”

There we have it. The decision to impose one particular model on European states is a political choice, just as the Government’s decision to re-privatise the east coast main line was ideologically driven.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

First, I am glad that the Minister ruled out the connection between HS2 and this Europeanisation of the railway packages.

The European Scrutiny Committee asked for a three-hour debate on this matter. The Minister and the Opposition spokesman took up the best part of an hour, so we are down to five-minute speeches, but I will do my best.

What we need in our railway system is interaction, not integration. Obviously, we have to have compatible gauges because there has to be interaction between our country and the continent. I am very much in favour of trading and political co-operation in Europe, but I object to the Europeanisation of the railways on the one hand and their nationalisation on the other. That analogy, which was given by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), is very apt because there is no difference between the two.

The intention of the package is to create a single railway market and to reduce the barriers that are hindering the development of a single EU railway area. That has all the elements of centralisation and the creation of a monopoly in legislative terms. The effect will be to centralise power and reduce the extraordinary necessity for competition, on which the Minister put so much emphasis. Of course, we all want competition. We need the kind of competition that was created, albeit some time ago, in the mid—19th century. My family founded the London to Brighton railway and the Leeds to Thirsk railway, among others. In fact, my ancestor, William Cash, was chairman of the committee of inquiry into George Hudson, the crooked MP who created the monopoly of the railway system. There was a special inquiry into his behaviour and he was eventually driven out. I believe that Europe is probably moving towards the kind of monopoly that had to be unravelled in the United Kingdom.

I am deeply concerned about competition in relation to contracts. We remember the Bombardier fiasco, which affected British jobs. The French and Germans are very good at getting into our systems, but we are not allowed into theirs. We saw what happened with Siemens and Alstom. I have some knowledge of how that worked in practice, being a former Member for Stafford, but we do not have time to go into the details. The reality is that these matters affect British jobs. I remember discussing all this with Arnold Weinstock, who was so much in favour of the great venture of Europeanising GEC. I said, “Get the message: you will find that it doesn’t work in the way that you are hoping.” At the end of his life, he had a word with me and said, “You were right after all.” He had found that the system was very unfair and that other countries exploited it. We must have regard to our own national interests.

I am extremely worried about the direction of the railway package. I will go further and say that the Labour party should be worried as well. I would be interested to know what Mr Bob Crow thinks about it. Perhaps we will hear about that in a minute. Although I do not favour trade union control or nationalisation, I do believe in our national interest. Despite the fact that this is only a communication as yet, we know the direction in which it is going and I am not happy about it. The Labour party is doing the wrong thing because it is allowing this to happen. Although it is voting against it today, it will not really resist it for practical purposes. I am afraid that the Government are going to allow a system that will create a centralised monopoly in Europe.