Andrew Jones is the Member of Parliament for Harrogate & Knaresborough.
While highly damaging and disruptive industrial action has understandably been dominating colleagues’ attention these past six months, there is another issue on the railway that our Party needs to address – getting rail reform done and putting the issue to bed for a generation.
Colleagues will be familiar with the concept of Great British Railways (GBR), but less clear on what form this new guiding mind for the railways will take, and when the legislation to create it will be forthcoming.
It has now been confirmed by Huw Merriman at the Transport Select Committee that we will hear an update on GBR from the Secretary of State on February 7. But in advance of this, I want to make clear to colleagues what’s at stake for our party, and why we need to crack on and get rail reform done in the remainder of this parliament.
Let’s start with Labour. We know that they have recommitted to the Corbyn era policy of renationalising the railways. How whole-hearted the leadership is with this policy we do not know – certainly there is grassroots pressure to nationalise one of the major national industries.
But assuming they are serious, we must ensure rail does not get caught in the crosshairs at the next general election.
Instead, we need to be pointing to having completed a robust package of reform which has increased accountability and improved the customer experience. This starts with having reinvigorated a public-private partnership on our railways, one which bakes in the role of the private sector.
While the private sector hasn’t got everything right, and I recognise colleagues are concerned about the situation on certain routes today (which is linked to outdated working practices that existed pre-pandemic), the record of the private sector still stands up strongly.
Over the last 25 years private operators have more than doubled passenger numbers, achieved revenue growth at twice the rate of GDP, and overturned a £2bn operating deficit to an operating surplus in the years before the pandemic. That record should inform future decisions on how to run the railway.
There are also more recent examples of what the private sector can do: post-pandemic, operators like Hull Trains, Mersey Rail, and Grand Central, who enjoy commercial freedom from the Department for Transport and strong revenue incentives, have regrown at a faster rate than contracted operators.
Independent research conducted by the economic analysts Oxera estimates that Treasury is missing out on as much as £1.6bn over two years due to restrictive contracts for operators. With acute pressures on the public finances, making more of such opportunities must be a priority.
But despite the clear successes and potential of the private sector, the trajectory of some aspects of the Plan for Rail White Paper would see the role of the private sector diminish, shifting more cost burden onto the taxpayer. Before privatisation we had decades of decline caused by a lack of customer focus, and ultimately a smaller railway in line with what politicians deemed the public purse could bear.
Colleagues may be aware that former ministers – rail ones like myself, and others – have made representations about the contents of the Plan for Rail to government.
For clarity: we’re not calling for government to go back to the drawing board and entirely ditch the White Paper. Rather, we want to ensure that as a defining principle, operators are looking outwardly to the customer and focussing on their needs, rather than looking inward to officials for approval and sign-off.
Which brings me to GBR. I think colleagues would agree it is not in the interest of customers for officials in Whitehall to determine every decision on the railways. We do not need a controlling public body to micro-manage every decision on the railway – we’ve had far too much of that in recent years, with operators stuck on rigid DfT management contracts, introduced during the pandemic, which are no longer delivering for the customer or the taxpayer.
Rather, we need a more streamlined and strategic public body, which introduces greater coherence and accountability whilst allowing operators to do what they do best: attract customers back to the railway, respond to their needs in a post-Covid environment, and by such means grow revenue.
So, what I want to hear on February 7 is a clear plan, and then for parliamentary colleagues to help the Government get any forthcoming legislation through.
Decisions we make in the next 18 months could determine the railway for the next 30 years – and, if we get it right, we could remove rail as a potential election issue, and expose Labour’s renationalisation fixation as a plan that will do no good either for the country or the taxpayer.
Andrew Jones is the Member of Parliament for Harrogate & Knaresborough.
While highly damaging and disruptive industrial action has understandably been dominating colleagues’ attention these past six months, there is another issue on the railway that our Party needs to address – getting rail reform done and putting the issue to bed for a generation.
Colleagues will be familiar with the concept of Great British Railways (GBR), but less clear on what form this new guiding mind for the railways will take, and when the legislation to create it will be forthcoming.
It has now been confirmed by Huw Merriman at the Transport Select Committee that we will hear an update on GBR from the Secretary of State on February 7. But in advance of this, I want to make clear to colleagues what’s at stake for our party, and why we need to crack on and get rail reform done in the remainder of this parliament.
Let’s start with Labour. We know that they have recommitted to the Corbyn era policy of renationalising the railways. How whole-hearted the leadership is with this policy we do not know – certainly there is grassroots pressure to nationalise one of the major national industries.
But assuming they are serious, we must ensure rail does not get caught in the crosshairs at the next general election.
Instead, we need to be pointing to having completed a robust package of reform which has increased accountability and improved the customer experience. This starts with having reinvigorated a public-private partnership on our railways, one which bakes in the role of the private sector.
While the private sector hasn’t got everything right, and I recognise colleagues are concerned about the situation on certain routes today (which is linked to outdated working practices that existed pre-pandemic), the record of the private sector still stands up strongly.
Over the last 25 years private operators have more than doubled passenger numbers, achieved revenue growth at twice the rate of GDP, and overturned a £2bn operating deficit to an operating surplus in the years before the pandemic. That record should inform future decisions on how to run the railway.
There are also more recent examples of what the private sector can do: post-pandemic, operators like Hull Trains, Mersey Rail, and Grand Central, who enjoy commercial freedom from the Department for Transport and strong revenue incentives, have regrown at a faster rate than contracted operators.
Independent research conducted by the economic analysts Oxera estimates that Treasury is missing out on as much as £1.6bn over two years due to restrictive contracts for operators. With acute pressures on the public finances, making more of such opportunities must be a priority.
But despite the clear successes and potential of the private sector, the trajectory of some aspects of the Plan for Rail White Paper would see the role of the private sector diminish, shifting more cost burden onto the taxpayer. Before privatisation we had decades of decline caused by a lack of customer focus, and ultimately a smaller railway in line with what politicians deemed the public purse could bear.
Colleagues may be aware that former ministers – rail ones like myself, and others – have made representations about the contents of the Plan for Rail to government.
For clarity: we’re not calling for government to go back to the drawing board and entirely ditch the White Paper. Rather, we want to ensure that as a defining principle, operators are looking outwardly to the customer and focussing on their needs, rather than looking inward to officials for approval and sign-off.
Which brings me to GBR. I think colleagues would agree it is not in the interest of customers for officials in Whitehall to determine every decision on the railways. We do not need a controlling public body to micro-manage every decision on the railway – we’ve had far too much of that in recent years, with operators stuck on rigid DfT management contracts, introduced during the pandemic, which are no longer delivering for the customer or the taxpayer.
Rather, we need a more streamlined and strategic public body, which introduces greater coherence and accountability whilst allowing operators to do what they do best: attract customers back to the railway, respond to their needs in a post-Covid environment, and by such means grow revenue.
So, what I want to hear on February 7 is a clear plan, and then for parliamentary colleagues to help the Government get any forthcoming legislation through.
Decisions we make in the next 18 months could determine the railway for the next 30 years – and, if we get it right, we could remove rail as a potential election issue, and expose Labour’s renationalisation fixation as a plan that will do no good either for the country or the taxpayer.