Scotland Bill

Tom Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[David Mundell]

As has been said, there has been a change from the view that Members should not stand on both the list and in constituencies to a position where that should be done when it is in someone’s self-interest.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

I apologise for not being here for the debate before now, but I wish to clarify one matter. I hope the Minister will recall that in the first Scottish Parliament elections Donald Dewar stood as a candidate for Anniesland, in addition to being No. 1 on the Glasgow list. A number of prominent first-past-the-post candidates also stood on the list, so this is not a new procedure in the Labour party—it has been going on since 1999.

[David Mundell]

As I recall, the reason given for Labour Members taking that approach was that they were encouraging people to vote on the list; they were seeking to demonstrate that prominent people were on the list and so it was an important vote in which to participate.

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[Mr MacNeil]

I would envisage far more than one full-time station in Aberdeen.

This will not be the first time that the House of Commons has heard of the concept of change and of control moving away from the MCA. In 1989, the Isle of Man formed its own coastguard after the UK unilaterally decided to shut down the coastguard co-ordination centre in Ramsey. The Manx Government—perhaps this shows what happens when there is more local control—rightly decided that they should no longer depend on the United Kingdom to protect their coastline and therefore created their own coastguard. That coastguard has five stations open around the Isle of Man and has retained close ties with the Liverpool maritime rescue co-ordination centre, which I would like to remain open.

The Government of the Isle of Man took the right decisions at the right time to ensure that their coast was secure. Surely, it cannot be the will of the Committee to deny Scotland that same inalienable right. This is not the first time that a potential coastguard authority move has been presented. In its illustrious 189-year history, the coastguard has been under the Board of Trade between 1923 and 1939, the Ministry of Shipping from 1939 to 1940, the Admiralty from 1940 to 1945, the Ministry of War and then the Ministry of Transport from 1945 to 1964, the Department of Trade from 1964 to 1983, the Department of Transport from 1983 to 1997 and finally, the Department for Transport from 2002 to this date. All we seek to do is move that one step further and ensure that the Scots coastguard reports directly to Scotland.

[Mr Tom Harris]

I agree with the substance of what the hon. Gentleman is saying about the effects of the cuts to the coastguard system, but would he be proposing this change if the cuts to the maritime coastguard service were not being made at the Department for Transport? He is in danger, I think, of opening himself up to accusations of opportunism if this move is a response to budget cuts rather than a point of principle. I am not aware that this point of principle has been raised by the SNP in the past.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman agrees with me on the substantial thrust of my argument and I hope to see him with me in the Lobby as a result. Would I have done this if such a proposal had not been made at the moment? Perhaps not, but given the safety concerns, this matter is pressing. Given that the process started without any risk assessment from the MCA, despite the relevant Minister telling me at the Dispatch Box that there had been such an assessment, I think that politics has to meet the pressing concerns among Royal National Lifeboat Institution crews, people who used to be involved in shipping, working coastguards and a variety of people across the community—certainly in the highlands and islands and, I imagine, further down to the Clyde and over to the Forth and, indeed, Shetland.

New clause 4 would redress a bizarre part of the Scotland Act that prevents the Scottish Government from creating incentives for the maritime industry in Scotland. Currently, the Government of Scotland have the ability to incentivise travel for maritime journeys that both start and end in Scotland, which has meant that a successful pilot project on the west coast for the road equivalent tariff has been brought to the Outer Hebrides and to Coll and Tiree. We hope that policy will continue, as it has done quite a lot to help the economies of those areas in a time of severe economic downturn.

Maritime policy is vital to Scotland as we are responsible for 70% of all the fish landed in the UK. Aberdeen is home to the North sea oil industry and lands nearly 4.5 million tonnes of cargo annually from approximately 8,000 ships. Clyde port lands 7.5 million tonnes of cargo and Stornoway port in my constituency has 200,000 people travelling through it each year. The ability to control the maritime economy is surely vital to what is a maritime nation. It is vital to secure future growth in the Scottish economy.

The figures that I have presented for the Aberdeen and Clyde ports are small in comparison with Southampton, which lands 75 million tonnes of cargo annually. Currently, the shipping industry coalesces around the south of England leaving little else for the rest of the UK. It is peculiar that most of Scotland’s goods are transported to the south of England and then driven into Scotland. With ever-increasing fuel costs and more congested motorways, surely that is not a good idea. The cost of moving goods to Scotland will invariably increase as the costs of transportation increase, and we propose that costs could be saved if there were an incentive for ships to land their goods in Scotland. The professor of maritime research at Edinburgh Napier university, Alf Baird, put it succinctly when he said that

“the present reality is that firms located in Scotland are considerably worse off in international transport cost terms compared with firms located close to hub ports in the south east of England…firms in the central belt of Scotland are between 15-23% worse off, while firms in the highlands are 22-33% worse off, and firms located on remote islands between 37-63% worse off…From a purely Scottish perspective this therefore raises the question—is the current method of serving Scottish industry’s global import and export needs through remote UK ports sustainable in the long run? Or, in other words, will rising domestic UK transport costs (rail as well as road) make Scottish industry even less competitive in global markets than it is today, leading to further job losses”—

that is the important point, as we want to keep people in employment—

“in manufacturing and reduced competitiveness?”

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[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.

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[David Mundell]

If the hon. Gentleman had listened to the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife, he would have heard him give a very narrow definition of services which start and finish in Scotland, without giving sufficient recognition to the fact that there are significant services that cross the border.

[Mr Tom Harris]

I listened closely to my hon. Friend’s speech, and he was very explicit in saying that the new clause refers only to the ScotRail franchise. That includes one cross-border service, the Caledonian sleeper, but this would have no effect whatever on other franchise services that cross the border—Virgin, East Coast and TransPennine Express. They would be completely untouched; nothing would change in their operational or financial arrangements. The only thing that would change is the ScotRail franchise. Can the Minister explain why that is beyond the wit of the Government?

[David Mundell]

If the hon. Gentleman had been listening, he would realise that I have said that Scotland benefits from a mix of services within the ScotRail franchise, and that cross-border services are vital to Scotland. I would have hoped that he would support the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) that high-speed rail is important to Scotland. However, none of those things is why the Government do not support the new clause.

[David Mundell]

There are indeed services that travel from Glasgow to Dumfries and on to Newcastle.

However, the Government’s objection to the new clause is that we are committed to maintaining a GB-wide national rail network that is publicly specified, funded in the public interest and provided by the private sector. The new clause would interfere with that national network. If the intention of the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife is to allow for a not-for-dividend operator of the ScotRail network, that is possible within the current framework.

[Mr Tom Harris]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way once more. I agree with him that the GB-wide network should be publicly specified and commercially provided by the private sector. However, surely it goes against the spirit of devolution and of the Scotland Bill to deny Scottish Ministers the right to take a different view with regard to one self-contained franchise in Scotland. Surely devolution is about allowing Scottish Ministers to make mistakes, if that is what they wish to do.

[David Mundell]

The devolution settlement is indeed about allowing the Scottish Government to take decisions in respect of the areas for which they are responsible, as determined by the Scotland Act 1998 and the Scotland Bill. This discussion is about whether the issue in question should be devolved to the Scottish Government. The Government do not agree with that proposal because we believe that it would open the opportunity to fundamentally alter the national framework by allowing a renationalisation of the railway in Scotland.

[Mr Harris]

Will the Minister explain what negative consequences have resulted in the GB-wide network from the nationalisation of the east coast main line franchise?

[David Mundell]

The hon. Gentleman knows better than most that the Government were required to take over the east coast main line as a measure of last resort. Within the framework of the rail industry, there have to be measures of last resort. It is not a measure that the Government wish to promote. As I have said, we wish to promote a national rail network that is publicly specified, funded in the public interest and provided by the private sector. As I have also said, if it is the intention that a not-for-dividend company should operate, there is nothing to stop that in the present arrangements.