Transport System: Failings
Lord Snape Excerpts(4 days, 15 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Snape
That this House takes note of the case for a coherent plan to address the failings of the transport system.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, the wording of the Motion before your Lordships’ House calls for greater coherence for Britain’s transport system. I hope that, while debating this important matter, we can agree on both sides of the House that coherence is the one thing that is lacking. Indeed, the current Government made a virtue of a lack of coherence with their transport policy. I will come to the divisions within the rail and bus industry in a moment or two, but we lack an overall transport policy in this country and have done for many years. In so far as our major transport sectors are concerned—bus and rail—it is the British people who have suffered, particularly the passengers on both modes of transport.
The failings of our railway network are many and manifold. Since privatisation in 1994, fares for passengers on our railway system have increased by around 20% in real terms; that is not what we were promised when the privatisation Bill went through both Houses of Parliament. We were told that the thrusting private enterprise system being introduced would not just increase competition between railway companies but bring lower fares to its passengers. The result, of course, has been exactly the opposite. We have seen a failure in reliability since privatisation. I have no wish to bore your Lordships with stories of my time on British Rail, but the cancellation of a passenger train in my days in an operating role was virtually unheard of. Because it was an integrated system, we could generally find locomotives, drivers and train crew that could be moved from one role to another in the event of any hiatus within the timetabling system. That does not happen now; because of privatisation, drivers for one company often cannot drive the locomotives of another company; train crews who do not know the route from A to B cannot step in when short-term cancellations take place. Again, this is not what we were promised at the time of privatisation, but it is the reality that we have today.
I read this morning that something like a thousand trains a day on the railway system are cancelled. No other railway system in the developed world has to face such a nonsense on a daily basis. We will be assured by the Minister that everything is in hand and the railways will continue to improve in future, but it is just not true. Another aspect of this is the collapse of morale among those who work in the railway industry. I use Birmingham International station on a regular basis to travel to and from London. The staff there tell me that on some days they hide from the public because they are so ashamed of the product that they have to put in front of them. They also say that, by and large, information is not transported down the line—no pun intended—to those at the front end so that they can pass it on to passengers; they are as unaware as the rest of us of when things go wrong and how they can be put right. This leads, as I have indicated, to a collapse in morale—and in industrial relations generally.
This Government appear to need to find an enemy rather than deal with any problems. The latest enemy, as far as the railway industry is concerned, is ASLEF, the drivers’ union: no negotiations have taken place between the train operating companies and the representatives of ASLEF for over a year. All the Government can say is, “But they earn £60,000 a year”. Well, I do not object to train drivers earning £60,000 a year; it is about an afternoon’s work for a hedge fund operative—whatever they actually do. Someone in a responsible position such as a train driver should be properly paid, and train drivers and their representatives ought to be consulted about not just wages but the aims of the railway industry. We all know that the train operating companies take their orders from His Majesty’s Government in this supposedly privatised world, so they have their hands tied and cannot freely enter negotiations with ASLEF and the other railway trade unions.
We were promised when privatisation took place that there would be an upsurge in new rolling stock and new locomotives for the railway industry. Yet we have just rescued Litchurch Lane in Derby by a last-minute order for trains, to keep something like 1,500 skilled personnel in work there and thousands of other people in the supply chain. Hitachi recently opened, with some fanfare, a factory in the north-east, but that now faces closure because of the dearth of orders for the railway industry, and this has been partly brought about by the nonsense of HS2. I do not wish to rehearse the whole business again in front of your Lordships, but no other country could put forward proposals for a high-speed railway and then keep cutting them back. Only the current Prime Minister could go to Manchester to a Conservative Party conference to tell it that the high-speed line between Birmingham and Manchester is cancelled and expect a standing ovation for doing so. That truncated high-speed route will not just directly impact passengers. Without getting too bogged down again in the details of what is left of HS2, I point out that to travel from Handsacre Junction to Old Oak Common is not quite what was envisaged at the time the proposals for this high-speed railway were put forward. The rump of it has been summed up as a railway starting somewhere that no one has ever heard of, to end up somewhere no one wants to go. Only the present Government could devise a high-speed railway that would make journeys between, for example, Manchester and London no faster and, in some cases, slower than the existing line. The need for a proper strategy for the railway industry is pretty obvious.
I turn also to the bus industry. Those of us who take an interest in these matters were intrigued some years ago to see the Prime Minister at the time, somebody called Boris Johnson—I wonder what happened to him—announce with great fanfare a scheme called Bus Back Better. He was a great man for gimmicks, but what has been the reality of Bus Back Better since its inception? The answer is that bus services throughout the country have been decimated, and many towns and cities that formerly had a proper bus service no longer have such a thing.
At the time of bus privatisation—I was a Member of the other place then—Nicholas Ridley made a virtue of the thrusting competition that would result from the 1984 privatisation Act. Yet towns and cities in this country have seen not only their bus fares increase, in real terms, by around 15% to 20% but their bus services decimated. There is a whole list of casualties of bus services, which have been reduced in previous years, including in cities such as Bath. Everybody talks about Birmingham, of course, and that the near bankruptcy in Birmingham is all the Labour Party’s fault. I do not think that Bath is particularly regarded as a left-wing bastion, yet bus services there have reduced by about 70% since privatisation. The fact is that local authorities, having been starved of funds, have no finance to subsidise essential bus services, and even the commercial routes in many of our cities up and down the country have been cut back because of financial problems.
Bus Back Better has turned out to be “bus back a lot worse” over the last couple of years. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what the Government propose, other than postponing all the decisions until after the next general election, when they will not be affected anyway, as far as bus services are concerned.
Lastly, I will talk for a moment or two about the road network, important though it is. Again, in theory we have a £20 billion-odd road programme in this country, yet driving around our major towns and cities is an object lesson in pothole avoidance. I was driven into the centre of Birmingham the other day to a hospital. I have a bad hand so I cannot drive; I was going on to the railway station, so I do not want to be accused of failing to use public transport. It was fascinating to watch how the regular drivers and commuters weaved their way through all the potholes at major junctions. Are we serious? We supposedly have a £24 billion or £25 billion road-building programme, yet we cannot fill potholes in our towns and cities. The Government will again blame wasteful local authorities, but they have cut back the resources for local authorities for many years. How are local authorities supposed to provide not only the essential statutory services but the upkeep of the infrastructure in the areas they represent?
The lack of a transport strategy is not the only disaster. There is also the attitude of the Treasury towards any major project. All the Treasury ever sees is the cost; benefits never ever occur to it. The fact is that investment in our road, railway and transport system brings a return far in excess of the initial cost, in most cases, but, short-termism being the curse of Britain over the years, the fact is that many of the projects that need to be completed are put aside, HS2 being only one example.
The lack of enthusiasm, strategy and planning as far as our transport system is concerned makes this country the laughing stock of the western world. The fact is, we need proper long-term planning for many of these major infrastructure projects, both road and rail. I leave the last word to the Institution of Civil Engineers, which makes exactly that same point: that short-termism has bedevilled British infrastructure projects for years, and that when things go wrong the Treasury all to soon says, “We can save billions of pounds by cancelling a specific project”. The nation has been the great loser in this lack of any sort of transport strategy over the years, and I hope that, during the course of the debate, I can take noble Lords on both sides along with me when I say that it is the nation that has been the loser. I beg to move.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that comprehensive reply, given at his customary express speed—far exceeding any Avanti train that leaves Euston on the west coast main line. I was intrigued by his attack on today’s proposals from the Labour Party to renationalise the train operating companies. Coming from a Government who have renationalised no fewer than seven train operating companies in the past couple of years, we may well depend on his expertise if the result of the general election goes the way we would like.
I pay tribute to the two former Secretaries of State for Transport who participated. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, reminded us of the occasional tensions between the two major railway unions, the National Union of Railwaymen as was and the drivers’ union. He might reflect that the one thing that united the pair of them was attacking the third railway union, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, so tensions are by no means unusual. The noble Lord, Lord McLaughlin, quite rightly reminded us of the occasional vagaries of the polling system. I do not know whether he is tempted to head for the bookmakers to back his views but, if he does, I should think he would get fairly long odds.
Once again, I thank all noble Lords who participated in the debate. It is a subject I am sure we shall return to in the near future.
Train Operating Company Contracts
Lord Snape Excerpts(1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Avanti Trains
Lord Snape Excerpts(2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Snape
To ask His Majesty’s Government when they next expect to meet Avanti Trains to discuss payments made to the company under the service quality regime.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)
My Lords, officials regularly meet Avanti to discuss its performance against service quality regime targets and how it will make improvements for passengers and to the customer experience. To date, no payments have been made to Avanti under the service quality regime. The evaluation to determine the first service quality regime performance fee for April to October 2023 is currently under way.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that, at a recent internal meeting at Avanti trains, various slides were produced for its management? I have some of them with me at the moment and I shall quote from them. Managers joked about receiving “free money” from the Government and performance-related payments being
“too good to be true”.
The presentation went on to say that the Department for Transport supports the firm and added:
“And here’s the fantastic thing!—if we achieve those figures”—
that is, the Government’s punctuality figures—
“they pay us some more money—which is ours to keep—in the form of a performance-based fee!!”
Does the Minister accept that this is a situation where the Treasury takes the revenue, the passengers take the strain and the directors take a bonus for providing the worst train service in the UK? This is not a policy; it is lunacy.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
As I referred to in my opening response, no payments have been made to Avanti under the service quality regime thus far. The department considers the comments from the leak to be a very serious issue, and expects the highest standards of culture and leadership from Avanti’s operators and senior management. We are extremely disappointed by the tone expressed in the leaked presentation. Officials have met their counterparts at First Rail Holdings, Avanti’s parent company, and spoken to the managing director to convey the seriousness of this issue. The Rail Minister has also met the chief executive of FirstGroup.
East Coast Main Line
Lord Snape Excerpts(3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
A lot of these changes to the trans-Pennine route are part of the Making Journeys Better plan, outlining how TransPennine Express under DfT OLR Holdings will work to make things better. Having completed an in-depth review of the business, these services are expected to be restored from December 2024. I will have to come back to my noble friend on his question about the railway station.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that the problems of the east coast main line, important though they may be, pale into insignificance for those of us who have the misfortune to use the west coast main line? Given the fact that Avanti trains’ punctuality levels in the last six months of 2023 plumbed the depths of 43.5%—the worst in railway history, as far as I can ascertain—can he tell the House what those improvements outlined by the Secretary of State were before it was given another nine years of inflicting misery on the rest of us?
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
As the noble Lord knows, the department awarded a new National Rail contract to First Trenitalia to continue operating the west coast partnership in September 2023. The decision to award the contract to it was contingent on the operator continuing to win back the confidence of passengers. The Rail Minister and officials have met regularly with First Group and Avanti’s senior management to understand the challenges and hold them to account for issues within their control. In fact, I understand that the Rail Minister met with them only this month.
Private Crossings (Signs and Barriers) Regulations 2023
Lord Snape Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest which is not in the register of interests, in that I am a patron of Avon Valley Railway, and the questions being debated this afternoon may well apply in the case of Avon Valley. I want to refer to the points the noble Lord has made and their potential implications elsewhere.
Noble Lords will have seen that I have an Oral Question tabled for 8 February on traffic marshals and the backwards and forwards crossings on this estate. One of my many Written Questions has been about trying to establish what alternatives are available, other than these costly traffic marshals, to mitigate the risk of pedestrians crossing where cars are moving at less than 5 mph. I noted the speeds that the noble Lord referred to and that we are talking here about a much lesser speed. When I queried the cost of the traffic marshals—remember, this is going to run for several years—I was told that the annual cost of a traffic marshal was £65,600 a year. A four-year programme means that we are talking not far short of a quarter of a million pounds. I then asked about the cost of the traffic marshal supervisor and was told that it was £91,700 a year. I have not yet asked what the cost will be of the manager of the traffic marshal supervisor and the like.
I will be very interested to see the costs in relation to these signs. I have been told that there are no alternatives to these traffic marshals, yet, as the noble Lord says, there are 35 pages of guidance. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the options identified in those 35 pages may well be available to use on this estate, and might cost substantially less than the figures I have been given for what we are spending.
I do not necessarily want my noble friend the Minister to answer my observations today, but I am just recording that I have an interest in the costs, which have implications for matters I will be pursuing on another occasion.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Berkeley in his objective. It seems to me, as I suspect it does to other noble Lords taking part in this debate, that this is a typical example, if I may say so, of departmental overkill. For some reason, the regulations, which cover the national railways separately, are to be paid out of Network Rail’s budget. That will be taken care of, presumably, in the grants made to that organisation. But despite representations being made by the heritage railways sector, the regulations are now to apply to every farm track, crossing and so on across the country, as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hayward.
These are not matters of minor expense so far as the heritage railway business is concerned. Perhaps I should rephrase that: most of these railways are not businesses, because they are run largely by volunteers. The Department for Transport consulted the HRA and was warned about the total cost of these regulations, but it went ahead anyway. The department’s own estimate of the cost is £1.5 million to £3 million. That is a substantial amount for such organisations, which, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley said, are hardly profitable under the present circumstances. Indeed, the future of some of them is under direct threat.
As my noble friend indicated, crossings, whether on the mainline railway or the heritage railway, are there to protect not the railway traveller but the motorist from the consequences of their own folly—and sometimes not particularly successfully so. It appears that a minority of motorists is prepared to ignore railway crossing signs. In those circumstances, the road network surely ought to make a proper contribution, rather than it being left to the railway industry the whole time, particularly given that, as I and my noble friend have indicated, the lower speeds of heritage railways, which are restricted to 25 mph, make the likely dangers considerably less than on the mainline railway.
I do not expect a direct reply from the Minister today, but I ask him either to write to me or to set out in the Official Report the duties of the ORR as far as the road network is concerned. It appears to be only too ready to intervene on railway safety; indeed, the last time I met the ORR, it proposed an increase in railway freight rates in a particular area of this country because, it said, the railway industry was charging less than it should. As far as I am aware, it does not intervene in—how does one diplomatically put it?—the rough and tumble of the lower end of the road haulage industry. Why, therefore, should it take such a deep interest in railway matters, which, in many cases, I do not consider it capable of doing? Will the Minister set out the ORR’s duties so far as the road network is concerned, allowing those of us who take an interest in these matters to compare the two and, in the interests of fairness, make future representations about the ORR’s involvement in the railway industry?
As the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, indicated, the extra signs that will be demanded under the regulations will apply to the smallest railway crossings. Again, this is really taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I would like to hear from the Minister how many accidents and fatalities he thinks this provision will impact, including the number of casualties that take place because of road users on little-used roads crossing heritage railway lines. Are we prepared to stand by as 1,500 people per year are killed on our roads? Without taking any great action, thousands more will be seriously injured, yet here we are inflicting these regulations on the heritage railway industry.
While £3 million might not be a lot for the Department for Transport, it could tip many of the smaller heritage railways over into bankruptcy. I hope that it is not too late for the Minister to think again. I plead with him and his department to look again at the activities of the ORR. It appears to be more concerned with intervening in matters in the railway industry, whether heritage or mainline, than with what happens to the road network—indeed, it does not show any concern for that at all.
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the South Tynedale Railway. Earlier today, in my capacity as chairman of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, I signed off on its response to the Government’s call for evidence on overregulation, which closed at 4 pm. I put it to the Minister that perhaps the best response to the close of consultation might be to withdraw this proposal and to come back with something that is a bit less mean-spirited and a bit more proportionate.
Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Passenger Railway Services) Regulations 2023
Lord Snape Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I am delighted to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, back to the Labour Front Bench, as I am sure the whole House does. I agree with everything he said, except to make the point, as I did with the previous Labour Front Bench speech, that it appears to be more of an argument for my fatal amendment than for a regret amendment. I also very much agree with him about the need to change the way in which our railways are run. If we bring them back into public hands and run them for public good, not private profit, that would be a very good foundation for resetting our industrial relations in the operation of our railways.
I am not going to repeat all the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I have one question for the Minister, raised by the TUC briefing and I have also seen it in other contexts. If there is a partial service running as required under the minimum service levels, we all know that there are likely to be significant overcrowding and safety issues. I am sure many Members of your Lordships’ House picked up this piece of paper and thought, “Well, I’d love some minimum service levels on the trains I ride on non-strike days”. We know how crowded trains can get when they are cancelled for other reasons. Can the Minister assure rail workers that they can continue to apply work-safe principles, and stop working if it is no longer safe for the trains to continue to run? It needs to be clear that they will not face legal consequences for making a safety decision. We do not want what are often not particularly well-paid or senior staff in a situation where they make decisions with the feeling that such consequences hang over their head. I beg to move.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, my criticism of the proposed legislation is a quite simple one: it will not work. I listened to the Minister who, I have to say, went through his brief faster than any train I have been on recently. It is not a new idea. It was considered by the Thatcher Government and rejected. It was considered by the Cameron Government and rejected. It will not work. The problem is that this has been put together by lawyers who have no concept of how the railway industry actually works, or how train crews are rostered and how people are laid down for their various duties. The rostering of train crews is done at local level. The management and the local district committee—the shop stewards, if you like—sit down at every timetable change in May and December to decide the future rosters. The trade union side will obviously not sit down and discuss rostering under this minimum service level. As for choosing the name “minimum service level”, what else have we had in the railway industry for some time but a minimum service level?
It is not just the Labour Party and the trade union movement that are against this. The Rail Safety and Standards Board has said that it has considerable reservations about rail safety in future. That is not an organisation that one would normally regard as particularly left wing in its outlook. What the Government are proposing will poison industrial relations within the railway industry for years to come.
I have a couple of questions for the Minister. What happens if a minimum service level driver is rostered and declines to pass through a picket line at a particular depot? Will the Minister prosecute the driver or the trade union of which he is a member? The chance of conflict because of this barmy legislation cannot be emphasised too much. I said earlier—I do not wish to detain the House—that it is not just the Labour Party against it. I commend the Minister to read a paper prepared by Nicholas Finney OBE for the Centre for Policy Studies, that well-known left-wing organisation. He attacked the whole concept because, like me, he says it will not work. Maybe he will be regarded as a destructive member of British society. He is, or was, the chairman of the Wantage Conservative association, so if someone like him feels that this legislation is impractical, the Minister really ought to look again.
I am almost speechless at the stupidity of the Government bringing forward this legislation. I repeat that it will poison industrial relations within the railway industry for years to come, and I beseech the Minister even at this late hour to take some proper advice and not to make this into a lawyer’s dream.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I regard these regulations as even more inappropriate than the other sets of regulations that we have just discussed, and even more clearly designed just to provoke an adverse reaction from the workers concerned.
In the previous regulations, the Government relied on the argument that the workers concerned—border security staff and ambulance staff—provide an irreplaceable service. The same is not true of railways. If the trains are not running we can usually catch a bus instead, or maybe drive. Obviously rail strikes have an economic impact, but it is not of the same order as that caused by ambulance or border staff strikes. You take away the right to strike only in extreme circumstances, and these are not extreme circumstances.
The Transport Committee in the other House, which is chaired by a Conservative MP and has a Conservative majority, has criticised these regulations and the Government’s plans for the railways. It questioned whether those plans would do anything to improve relations with rail employees—I think we can more or less answer that question here. The committee questioned whether there might be unintended consequences, in that this could lead to other, more disruptive forms of industrial action, such as wildcat strikes. It also asked whether minimum service levels would lead to better service for customers than that already provided by train operating companies on strike days. It was deeply unimpressed by, and expressed its dissatisfaction with, the Government’s one-sentence answer to its suggestions.
Tomorrow, as the Minister will undoubtedly be aware, is strike day on Great Western Railway. As on previous strike days, we regular travellers are informed that a minimum one-hourly service will be provided between 7 am and 7 pm. In my experience, when the company says that a train will run at a particular time, it generally adheres to that timetable—which is not always what we get on our railways these days. So a minimum service is already being provided.
Another obvious concern is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, rail services are extremely complex, with major impacts of one part of the service on other parts of the service, and an obvious interaction with devolved services. Providing a safe minimum service level is therefore very complex. As the Transport Committee noted, the Government have not provided the necessary detail on how they will provide the safe level of service required. In particular, the operation of signal services is so specialised that the provisions will effectively mean that individual staff will have to be specified as being required to work, if a minimum service is to be provided. In other words, those staff will have the right to strike removed from them. In effect, they will lose their rights.
This is bad legislation, badly planned—and so far, as attempted by the Government, badly implemented. I am fairly certain that it will do absolutely nothing to improve either the services for rail passengers or the situation of our train operating companies, which are fighting to provide a reasonable service in difficult circumstances.
Birmingham Highways Infrastructure Private Finance Initiative
Lord Snape Excerpts(5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Snape
To ask His Majesty’s Government when they expect to conclude the review of the 2010 funding agreement for Birmingham City Council’s Highways Infrastructure Private Finance Initiative; and whether they intend to honour the agreement to continue funding the PFI until 2035.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are currently considering the business case for a revised contract for Birmingham highways maintenance following the failure of Birmingham’s original PFI deal. Highways maintenance is a critical and statutory function for all local authorities and the Government will continue to support them to fulfil this function. A decision is expected imminently.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, while I am grateful for the response and it reflects great credit on the Minister—I congratulate him on his new appointment—this matter has been dragging on for many years. The original contract was signed in 2010. The Department for Transport supported the city council in the removal of the contractor in 2019, but when will the Government approve the full business case and pay up the £50 million a year which they committed to do when the original contract was signed back in 2010?
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for that supplementary. The Government recognise that the delay in reaching a decision is far from ideal and is causing challenges for the council. I am sure noble Lords will appreciate that this a big investment decision that needs to be looked at thoroughly. The Government want to make sure that they have looked at all options to support Birmingham City Council’s highways maintenance programme.
West Coast Main Line
Lord Snape Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I am content that the Avanti contract has gone through all the relevant processes. It has been structured such that there is an initial three-year period, which I think is right, to enable Avanti to provide the investment that is clearly needed. That investment is in driver training and rolling stock. I am sure many noble Lords have noticed the upgrade in Avanti trains when they have travelled on them recently; I find them very comfortable indeed. There is an ability after three years for the Government to give three months’ notice. Within that intervening period, senior officials from the Department for Transport will meet management on a weekly basis to make sure that the recovery plan and all the elements the new management has put in place are being followed.
There are also enormous incentives for Avanti to improve—£14.3 million-worth of incentives. That is what the performance-based fee is; if Avanti does not hit its targets, it will not get that fee. It is absolutely right that that is there, it will incentivise Avanti and we will work alongside it so that it can continue to improve its performance.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, would the Minister accept that I am one passenger on Avanti trains who is completely baffled by this decision? I do not wish to rain on the noble Baroness’s parade, but when you have been at the bottom of the league table for punctuality and cancellations for as long as Avanti trains has, the only way is up. Could the Minister tell the House which other train operating companies expressed an interest in this particular franchise? Is it the case—as I suspect—that none of them did, largely because most rail managers are fed up to the back teeth with the micromanagement by her department or, even more likely, by the Treasury?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
Actually, this is exactly what this contract is trying to achieve. By giving a three-year horizon for Avanti management to properly plan, it will not be necessary to micromanage Avanti. The Department for Transport will continue to support it and, as I said in my opening Answer, the net advocacy scores show that customers are supportive of Avanti. I am sorry that the noble Lord is not, but the numbers speak for themselves—and these are customers speaking and not the Department for Transport.
High Speed 2
Lord Snape Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend for pointing out the enormous benefits that Birmingham is currently seeing. All across the route of phase 1, there are shovels in the ground, with 350 active construction sites and 29,500 workers. The focus is on delivering high-speed rail services between London and Birmingham.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister go further in acknowledging the common-sense view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin? Will she also reflect on the fact that, so far, almost a third of the around 140-mile line between London and Birmingham is either through tunnels or on viaducts? We are spending a vast amount of money trying to please people who oppose the project and who have opposed it right from the start. Is it not about time we took a leaf out of the book of the French railways? At the time they built their high-speed line across France, they said: “When we are draining the swamp, we do not consult the frogs”?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
The noble Lord makes a very interesting point. It is right—and this is not only for High Speed 2 but for many major infra- structure projects—that local interests can sometimes cause the cost of projects to increase. I need only mention, for example, Chesham and Amersham, where I think there is a Liberal Democrat Member—and they are deeply behind HS2, apart from any candidate who wins a by-election. Sometimes, to please certain groups of people, additional expense must be had, and sometimes that is absolutely valid. That is the difficulty with building major infrastructure. But the planning permission that goes into it and the DCO process—or in this case the hybrid Bills—have to reach the right balance, and sometimes one has to question whether it is in the right place.
Great British Railways
Lord Snape Excerpts(10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Snape
To ask His Majesty’s Government when they intend to bring forward legislation to create Great British Railways and progress contractual reforms for train operators.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)
My Lords, we will progress legislation to establish Great British Railways when parliamentary time allows. New passenger service contracts will balance the right performance incentives with simple, commercially driven targets that will ensure a central role for the private sector in delivering for customers.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, the short response to that would be to ask why it has not been done before. The current subsidy to the railway industry is about three times more in real terms than it was to the much-maligned BR in the 1990s. Legislation to bring forward an organisation that will put together the disparate but essential parts of the railway industries, such as track and train, is long promised and long overdue. The present system pleases neither passengers nor staff.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I am seeking a question in that comment. I can say that the number of passenger journeys is now significantly higher than ever it was under British Rail. Between January and March 2023, there were around 400 million journeys, which is an astonishing achievement. There are so many things that we can get on with when it comes to Great British Railways—just one example being the long-term strategy for rail. We have received hundreds of responses to the consultation for that, which we will be publishing later this year.