Railways Bill (Second Reading)

Lord Faulkner of Worcester:

My Lords, I am conscious that the conventions of the House do not allow me to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, on a maiden speech, but as someone who agreed with every single word of it I must say how pleased I am that he is back among us and contributing to debates on railways. I hope that there will be many other opportunities to hear the sort of wisdom that we heard from him this afternoon.

I should declare my three unpaid interests. I am a vice-president of Transport 2000, the environmental public transport campaigning group. I am a non-executive director of the West Somerset Railway, winner of the 2004 heritage railway of the year award, which I can assure the noble Lord Rotherwick, has every intention of running steam trains for the indefinite future. Since the beginning of December, I have been the chairman of the Railway Heritage Committee.

As many noble Lords are aware, I have been an unashamed supporter of the railways all my life. In the 27 years in which I have been involved with transport policy issues, I have lost count of the number of Secretaries of State and Ministers who have come and gone. At one point, I counted 12 former Ministers on the Conservative Benches alone who have occupied that job, and policy has changed numerous times as well. However, despite all that upheaval, the setbacks and the difficulties, the relationship between the British public and the railways has endured.

The public have demonstrated year after year their wish to maintain the railway network and to use it. The Association of Train Operating Companies says that last year—and I believe that I have more up-to-date figures than the Minister used—1.05 billion journeys were made on the railways. That is the highest figure since 1959, when the network was almost twice as large as it is today. ATOC also tells us that ours is the fastest growing railway in Europe. We are a long way from the low point in the 1980s when, as some of my noble friends will recall, a senior civil servant from the department joined the British Railways Board as a member and told everyone that his remit was to preside over the orderly rundown of the railways. By contrast, the background against which the Government have introduced this Bill is one of growth, some success and modest optimism.

As no one else has given any credit today to the work of the Strategic Rail Authority and its former chairman Richard Bowker, I at least would like to put on record my appreciation of the way in which, under his leadership, the SRA got the West Coast Main Line modernisation programme back under control with regard to budget and timescale. I also welcome the Secretary of State's decision last week to pick up the SRA's original proposal for a new north-south high-speed line, operating at the same speeds as the Channel Tunnel rail link. A journey time of under three hours to Scotland and 90 minutes to Manchester is a really attractive proposition. I hope that that study goes well and that it will include the benefits that would flow from the transfer of passenger traffic from the airlines to the high-speed line, particularly in terms of the environmental savings that would flow from more people taking the trains and fewer flying.

I also support wholeheartedly the community railways initiative undertaken by the SRA under the direction of Mr Chris Austin who, for many of us, is the epitome of the dedicated public service railwayman. I have no problem with the SRA's objectives of reducing the running costs of the services, of encouraging volunteer involvement or of attracting support from local authorities and others, or with all the other measures to increase usage and secure a long-term future for them. We have moved on from the original Beeching report and from Beeching mark 2, as well as the Serpell report and all the other various attempts over the past 30 years to reduce the size of the railway network.

When I worked at the British Railways Board, a ridiculous amount of time was wasted in dreaming up unworkable and unpopular bus substitution proposals. All of them came to nothing, for two reasons. One was the public outrage at the proposed closures; the other was political prudence on the part of Ministers, who could see the aggravation that would be caused by trying to go ahead with them and the fact that that would outweigh any potential cost savings. These, as the SRA has repeatedly pointed out, are always far less than expected because of residual liabilities to maintain the infrastructure.

The test that we should apply to this Bill today is whether it will encourage continued growth in the use of the railways and facilitate higher levels of investment in new services and rolling stock. Of course, I accept completely the assurance given by my noble friend that there is no secret agenda on closures contained in the Bill. Yet there are concerns, inside the industry, that some of the centralisation of the finances within the Department of Transport could allow for a closure programme to take place under a Secretary of State less enlightened and progressive than the present one.

I suggest that there are two amendments which the Minister might like to consider in Committee. I am not asking for it to be required of him to produce what he calls a glossy strategy for the railway. There is no need for that. It would do no harm, however, for the Government to restate their commitment to promote the use and development of the railways. That was contained in the Railways Act 1993—not a piece of legislation of which I am particularly fond—which imposed such a duty on the Secretary of State and the regulator, in these words,
"to promote the use of the railway network in Great Britain for the carriage of passengers and goods, and the development of that railway network, to the greatest extent that he considers . . . practicable".

That was reconfirmed in the Transport Act 2000, when the duty was taken on by the Strategic Rail Authority. It would be a huge reassurance if a restatement of the duty to promote the use and development of the railway were to be incorporated into the Bill.

My noble friend should also be aware that there are concerns about the provisions in Clause 4, relating to the reviews by the Office of the Rail Regulator, of access charges and licence conditions. I received a letter this week from George Muir, the director general of ATOC, whose concerns may be summed up in this sentence:
"The risk to train operators is that a cash-constrained ORR Periodic Review will lead to a less effective railway—closures, reduced line speeds, less reliability, etc. If this happens, passengers would be pushed"—the grammar is a little strange—

"(and) put off travelling by rail, revenue would fall and operators would lose money".

I hope the Government will address and reply to that concern.

The third difficult area concerns the passenger transport executives. I will not attempt to repeat any of the arguments used by my noble friend Lord Morris of Manchester, who spoke so eloquently about Greater Manchester. There is much concern that the PTEs are losing the right to be co-signatories on local rail franchises, and that the Bill provides that they will no longer be able to specify service levels, service quality requirements and fares. I am certainly one who takes the view that the PTEs are one of the most enduring and successful legacies of Barbara Castle's 1968 Act. They have facilitated the opening of new lines and stations in all conurbations where they exist. They have encouraged some huge increases in passenger numbers—for example, up by 40 per cent in West Yorkshire since 1997.

What PTEs have also done is to recreate a travelling by rail culture. That was important, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, when cutback and retrenchment was the pattern elsewhere on the railway system. So we shall need to look at the future of the PTEs and their relationship again when we consider the Bill in its later stages.

Finally, I turn to a much less controversial area. That is the future of the Railway Heritage Committee, which I have the honour to chair. As a child of the SRA, the Railway Heritage Committee would have been left an orphan after the SRA's abolition. I am delighted that the Minister, Mr. McNulty, met me and two colleagues on Monday to discuss these matters. As a result of that meeting, I hope I can express some confidence that my noble friend will be able to present a formula in Committee which will allow the RHC to continue its work of safeguarding the nation's railway heritage through its transformation into a non-departmental public body. Perhaps, when winding up, the Minister will indicate that the Government are intending to bring forward amendments in Committee.

This is an important Bill, much of which I welcome as it is positive. Yet there are a number of issues which we will need to look at in Committee. I hope that we can all be reassured that there is nothing in the Bill that will damage the continued growth and popularity of our railways, and the contribution they make to our transport system.

© Lords Hansard 10 February 2005