Asked by: Dominic Raab (Conservative - Esher and Walton)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of rail privatisation on (a) investment in the rail network, (b) the performance of the rail network and the quality of services and (c) the public purse.
Answered by Claire Perry
Since Privatisation annual rail passenger journey growth has averaged almost 4%, compared to 0.58% over the previous 60 years and the number of passenger journeys has more than doubled from 735 million in 1994/95 to 1.6 billion journeys in 2013/14. On a network roughly the same size as 15 years ago there are now 4,000 more services a day, which are all delivered through dynamic private sector stewardship with the flexibility to respond to the needs of passengers. This is reflected in improved passenger satisfaction scores, which are at a higher level now than when these were first collected in the late 1990s.
Investment in the rail network is at record levels and the Government’s Rail Investment Strategy will see £38bn spent by Network Rail on enhancing and maintaining the network between 2014-2019.
There is no consistent performance measure that has been in place since privatisation so it is not possible to make a meaningful comparison. However, performance in recent years has been higher than it was in the later 1990s, when figures were first available, on a network that is far busier and safer than it was at that time.
Private sector train operating companies provide billions of pounds to the public purse. The last 5 franchises let by this Government alone (Thameslink Southern Great Northern; Essex Thameside; InterCity West Coast; South Eastern; InterCity East Coast) are due to pay over £9bn to the Department for Transport over the lives of their contracts.
Asked by: Dominic Raab (Conservative - Esher and Walton)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the cost to the public purse of the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme has been in each of the last five years.
Answered by John Hayes
Data is not collected on the cost of reimbursement and administration for the statutory concession in isolation, so it is not possible to provide total expenditure figures for only the England National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS).
However, Local Authorities are the Travel Concession Authorities (TCAs) who reimburse bus operators so that they are no better and no worse off as a consequence of carrying concessionary permit holders for free.
The table below summarises reimbursement and associated costs for the past five years, as reported by TCAs.
| £million | |||||
| Methodology | 2009/10 | 2010/11 | 2011/12 | 2012/13 | 2013/14 |
A. Bus operator reimbursment (Statutory and discretionary schemes for older and disabled people) | Not available | 0.801 | 0.896 | 0.907 | 0.933 |
B. Expediture on concessionary travel (Reimbursement and admin for all modes, schemes and users) | 1.056 | 1.099 | 1.109 | 1.126 | 1.165 |
(A) Statistics table BUS0830:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/356416/bus0830.xls
(B) Statistics table BUS0811:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/387141/bus0811.xls
Asked by: Dominic Raab (Conservative - Esher and Walton)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the cost to the Exchequer is of removing all road tolls and making good any shortfall in funding from the public purse.
Answered by John Hayes
There are two tolls operated under concession with the Government – the Severn Crossing and the M6 Toll, with maximum concession lengths of 30 and 50 years respectively. There are a further four local authority tolled crossings, and a number of smaller privately owned tolled crossings. Note that the Dartford crossing has a user charge, not a toll, and similarly the new Mersey Gateway Bridge will also have a user charge.
I do not have information on local authority and privately owned tolls. For the two concessions, removing the tolls would involve changing or terminating those concessions. This would mean a negotiation with the toll operating companies, so costs have not been estimated.
Asked by: Dominic Raab (Conservative - Esher and Walton)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate his Department has made of the minimum and maximum (a) start-up and (b) annual running costs of establishing a government-owned company to bid for rail service contracts.
Answered by Claire Perry
It is the policy of this Government, and has been for all Governments since 1993, that private sector companies compete to run passenger rail franchises. The Department for Transport has set out clearly how it will do this through its franchising programme. This programme is providing millions of pounds of benefits for passengers and billions of pounds for taxpayers across the network from franchise awards like the recent Essex Thameside and Thameslink, Southern Great Northern franchises. The Department is making good progress towards the award of the InterCity East Coast franchise, expected in March 2015 and continuing the development of the Northern and TransPennine Express franchises, which we expect to announce the shortlisted bidders for shortly. As such, no estimate has been made of the potential costs of establishing a public sector body to participate in these competitions.