Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

If we speak to people who take that train journey regularly, I think they will have their own observations about the quality of service. However, if the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will deal with his remarks as I develop my speech.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy McDonald]

I really want to make some progress—I have taken a lot of interventions thus far.

I am concerned that the Government’s unimaginative and ill-thought-out response to the current crisis threatens the taxpayer interest yet further. Following the west coast franchise debacle in 2012, there were numerous reviews and process changes to rail franchising. We were told that nothing like that could ever happen again. In an act of ideological spite, the east coast franchise was forced back out into the private sector by a coalition Government desperate to tie the hands of a possible Labour Government in 2015. Passengers and taxpayers have lived to regret that decision.

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[Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hoare]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

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[Andy McDonald]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I value the work she does so astutely as Chair of the Transport Committee. It is remarkable that those experts and advisers are making such comments. I will come on to deal with the choice of the east coast for a potential partnership option in my concluding remarks.

[Simon Hoare]

A moment or so ago, the hon. Gentleman mentioned ideology. I am a Welshman and I thought I understood the Welsh Labour party. What is the difference between the ideologies of Welsh Labour and London Labour on these vital transport issues? Clearly there is a difference, as alluded to by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards).

[Andy McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman will recognise of course that the Government forced through the franchise option, so they had no choice in Wales.

Like his time at the Ministry of Justice, the Secretary of State must hope to be moved on before his wrecking-ball approach to decisions reveals its true horrors. He seems incapable of being direct with Members and the public alike. Given his track record, is it any wonder that no one takes the east coast partnership idea seriously? Where on earth did he come up with it? In the back of a taxi on the way to Parliament to deliver his statement?

As my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee has remarked, the east coast is the last line on the rail network on which a partnership between a train and track operator has been launched. More than 20 passenger, freight and open access operators use the east coast main line. The east coast franchise runs less than 10% of services. Why would anyone put this operator in charge? There is no basis for the Secretary of State’s assurances that the governance of the partnership would be independent.

The Secretary of State knows that Network Rail’s London and north-eastern route covers the east midlands. Putting that route into an east coast partnership will force Network Rail to prioritise the east coast over the east midlands and further damage a region that is losing rail electrification and services because of timetable changes. Will his east coast partnership not undermine the national rail infrastructure manager, Network Rail? His new market-led proposals for rail enhancements also undermine Network Rail’s role and increase the Department’s micro-management of rail. Is there not simply too much political interference in rail?

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[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

If Members on both sides of the House can agree on only one thing in this debate, it has to be the importance of the railways to our national transport infrastructure, important though they are for business and social purposes and of course for their distinct and clear environmental benefits, as we try to get people on the trains and off the roads. I pray in aid HS2 and Crossrail, which underscore the importance that the Government place on investment in our rail network.

This has in some respects been a slightly confusing debate, but not, I suggest, on the Government Benches. To paraphrase the arguments that have been made on the Government Benches, of course franchising is not prayed in aid as a perfect, foolproof exercise, but it delivers better results than we had under nationalisation, and the Government have behaved in a pragmatic way in facing the problems of the east coast franchise. The Labour party seems to be trying to have its cake and eat it in saying that the Government are solely ideologically driven, have blinkers on and see the private sector as the sole answer, and yet chastising them for finding a temporary, pragmatic, workable solution not designed on the testbed of any form of political ideology but merely trying to provide a seamless service for people who rely on that rail route for either social or commercial purposes. I see no evidence there of any Conservative ideology, but more likely pragmatism.

There was certainly confusion from the shadow Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) who regionalised the philosophical basis of the Labour family, be it Welsh or English. As we have heard, Carwyn Jones, the First Minister in the Labour Government in Cardiff, has taken an entirely different approach to the railways from that which the hon. Member for Middlesbrough seemed to suggest.

Clearly this is a bit of a death knell for that debate. We all remember the phase in British politics when people said, “You’re all the same; there’s no difference between you.” If any ideology underpins this debate, it is the vindictiveness of some pettifogging deduction of a ministerial salary and an ideology that British Rail was marvellous, nationalised is best and the private sector does not know what it is doing. That is going backwards, and we all know that trains going backwards is not the ideal way of making progress in transport terms, unless of course you are shunting into the sidings—a direction of travel in which I hope the Labour party continues.