Richard Holden is Shadow Secretary of State for Transport and MP for Basildon and Billericay.
When Kemi asked me to become Shadow Transport Secretary, I made it clear that I’d be doing all I could to ensure that my team did not just obsess over railways, but reflected how people travel and businesses transport goods.
Most people travel by road. 95 per cent of all goods arrive in the UK via sea. Aviation is vital to Britain’s place in the world and global connectivity as well as high-value trade. Having worked in the Department of Transport before, including as a minister, I know full well how acutely obsessed with rail our national transport debate has become and I was determined not to have us myopically focused on rail alone.
So, I’ve met with the UK motor industry, ports, construction firms, airports, equestrians, airlines, bus manufacturers and operators, cycle manufacturers, I’ve been to HGV depots, truck-stops and ferry operators. I’ve even taken my motorcycle theory test – with my CBT coming up before the end of the year. And I have met with rail operators, including open access operators and nationalised operators too.
To date, Conservatives in Opposition have outlined two clear plans for the future of transport. The first has been to scrap the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate – which phases out the sales of new hybrid, petrol and diesel cars with big penalties for manufacturers who don’t hit their ‘quota’. Kemi and I announced this policy at Brands Hatch last year with a simple clear Conservative philosophical basis behind it. You choose which car is right for you: electric, hybrid, internal combustion engine. It should be up to you, not the Government, who today are spending billions of taxpayers’ money subsidising overseas electric vehicle manufacturers to sell their products in the UK.
The second, during the local elections this year, was our ‘Plan for Drivers.’ End blanket 20mph zones. Open up bus lanes to motorcycles and prison vans permanently and restrict their operation more broadly to peak times. Oppose Labour’s planned fuel 5p/litre duty increase currently pencilled in for December. Fix our roads with modern maintenance methods for every council and a clear national reporting mechanism. Clear the driving test backlog with 200,000 more tests a year. And let you choose which vehicle is right for you and your family by scrapping the ZEV mandate.
And we’ve a big piece of work underway, led by my Shadow Rail Minister, Jerome Mayhew, on cutting infrastructure deliver costs.
But just because I’m ensuring rail is seen in the broader transport context does not mean we’re by any means not paying attention to what’s going on. My team of Jerome, Greg Smith, Lord Moylan, and Joe Robertson and their offices, as well as our fantastic Conservative members of the Transport Select Committee, Rebecca Paul and Katie Lam, are on it.
Over the last few weeks, by personal experience, the anecdotes of friends and family, or by reading reports in the press, you may have started to feel an increasing acknowledgment that Britain’s railways are really not improving under the ‘guiding hand’ of Labour’s state control. In fact, things are getting worse. Soon it may well worsen further with rumours of another round of pernicious strikes.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Particularly when you recall Labour’s rhetoric and their close ‘relationships’ – both fraternal and financial – with the unions.
For so many across the country, who’ve had to contend with Labour’s ‘newly nationalised’ services, it all just feels so painfully inevitable.
Take South Western Railway, the first operator pulled into state control. For commuters who rely on the operator to get to work, and the families who use its trains to see friends and relatives, it’s been fourteen months of services getting worse. As the Daily Mail have reported over recent weeks, it’s seen more short-formed trains, worsening delays and rising cancellations.
How stark the reality of Labour’s self-indulgent experiment has become. Ministers now admit their grand design of public ownership is, to quote the Government’s own words, ‘not a silver bullet.’
That is quite an admission. After spending years slagging off private operators for supposedly sponging money off the taxpayer, Labour – now forced to do something about the railways – has conceded a paint job and a new name won’t make late trains run on time.
At the helm is the Secretary of State, Heidi Alexander, who told Radio 4 when South Western Railway was nationalised that she ‘did not want to be the Fat Controller’. Yet Labour simply cannot help themselves. With their voracious appetite for ever more state control, the Government have proved determined to exert an iron grip over the network, squeezing out competition and increasingly dismissing open-access services like Hull Trains, Grand Central and Lumo, which are enjoyed by passengers, as merely ‘abstracting revenue’ from the state.
This really is no way to run a railway. Open-access operators have brought new routes to communities where, for far too long, a direct train to London was little more than a pipe dream. They have also delivered lower fares and genuine choice for passengers without relying on taxpayer subsidies. Yet Labour’s Railway Bill would hand Great British Railways greater power over whether its own competitors are permitted to run.
My colleagues and I expected Labour to kowtow to their union paymasters. After all, it is their modus operandi where public services are concerned. None of us has forgotten the new First Secretary of State giving train drivers whopping great pay rises, without securing any meaningful modernisation of working practices, when she briefly held the transport brief before resigning after details of her fraud conviction, following her own guilty plea, emerged.
Yet it still beggars belief to see just how little respect or regard the likes of the RMT have for Labour Ministers, despite receiving everything they wanted on pay. Now passengers face the prospect of yet more industrial action from unions which know this Government will always buckle when the pressure is applied.
This autumn, the Railway Bill returns to the House of Lords, where the Conservative Peers will be doing all they can to ensure that passengers and taxpayers, not Labour’s union barons, are at the heart of changes.
We will once again work to put a clear target to increase passenger numbers on the face of the Bill, protect our Veterans’ Railcards and safeguard open-access operators from being driven off the tracks.
Needless to say, I do not believe that an Andy Burnham-led Labour Government, who owes much to the Labour left for delivering him the leadership, will do much to protect passengers or taxpayers.
If you use Chiltern or Great Western Railway, my thoughts and prayers are with you. Because by the end of the year, you’ll be joining the ranks of those from Clitheroe to Chilworth who are very much not feeling the benefits of state-controlled operation under Labour.
So, while Transport is not all about rail, with around £15 billion a year of taxpayers’ money going into the network – excluding capital expenditure on HS2 – my colleagues and I will continue to rail against Labour’s woeful maladministration, put passengers first and fight for a railway judged by the results that really matter: growing passenger numbers, reliable services, genuine competition and better value for taxpayers.
Richard Holden is Shadow Secretary of State for Transport and MP for Basildon and Billericay.
When Kemi asked me to become Shadow Transport Secretary, I made it clear that I’d be doing all I could to ensure that my team did not just obsess over railways, but reflected how people travel and businesses transport goods.
Most people travel by road. 95 per cent of all goods arrive in the UK via sea. Aviation is vital to Britain’s place in the world and global connectivity as well as high-value trade. Having worked in the Department of Transport before, including as a minister, I know full well how acutely obsessed with rail our national transport debate has become and I was determined not to have us myopically focused on rail alone.
So, I’ve met with the UK motor industry, ports, construction firms, airports, equestrians, airlines, bus manufacturers and operators, cycle manufacturers, I’ve been to HGV depots, truck-stops and ferry operators. I’ve even taken my motorcycle theory test – with my CBT coming up before the end of the year. And I have met with rail operators, including open access operators and nationalised operators too.
To date, Conservatives in Opposition have outlined two clear plans for the future of transport. The first has been to scrap the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate – which phases out the sales of new hybrid, petrol and diesel cars with big penalties for manufacturers who don’t hit their ‘quota’. Kemi and I announced this policy at Brands Hatch last year with a simple clear Conservative philosophical basis behind it. You choose which car is right for you: electric, hybrid, internal combustion engine. It should be up to you, not the Government, who today are spending billions of taxpayers’ money subsidising overseas electric vehicle manufacturers to sell their products in the UK.
The second, during the local elections this year, was our ‘Plan for Drivers.’ End blanket 20mph zones. Open up bus lanes to motorcycles and prison vans permanently and restrict their operation more broadly to peak times. Oppose Labour’s planned fuel 5p/litre duty increase currently pencilled in for December. Fix our roads with modern maintenance methods for every council and a clear national reporting mechanism. Clear the driving test backlog with 200,000 more tests a year. And let you choose which vehicle is right for you and your family by scrapping the ZEV mandate.
And we’ve a big piece of work underway, led by my Shadow Rail Minister, Jerome Mayhew, on cutting infrastructure deliver costs.
But just because I’m ensuring rail is seen in the broader transport context does not mean we’re by any means not paying attention to what’s going on. My team of Jerome, Greg Smith, Lord Moylan, and Joe Robertson and their offices, as well as our fantastic Conservative members of the Transport Select Committee, Rebecca Paul and Katie Lam, are on it.
Over the last few weeks, by personal experience, the anecdotes of friends and family, or by reading reports in the press, you may have started to feel an increasing acknowledgment that Britain’s railways are really not improving under the ‘guiding hand’ of Labour’s state control. In fact, things are getting worse. Soon it may well worsen further with rumours of another round of pernicious strikes.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Particularly when you recall Labour’s rhetoric and their close ‘relationships’ – both fraternal and financial – with the unions.
For so many across the country, who’ve had to contend with Labour’s ‘newly nationalised’ services, it all just feels so painfully inevitable.
Take South Western Railway, the first operator pulled into state control. For commuters who rely on the operator to get to work, and the families who use its trains to see friends and relatives, it’s been fourteen months of services getting worse. As the Daily Mail have reported over recent weeks, it’s seen more short-formed trains, worsening delays and rising cancellations.
How stark the reality of Labour’s self-indulgent experiment has become. Ministers now admit their grand design of public ownership is, to quote the Government’s own words, ‘not a silver bullet.’
That is quite an admission. After spending years slagging off private operators for supposedly sponging money off the taxpayer, Labour – now forced to do something about the railways – has conceded a paint job and a new name won’t make late trains run on time.
At the helm is the Secretary of State, Heidi Alexander, who told Radio 4 when South Western Railway was nationalised that she ‘did not want to be the Fat Controller’. Yet Labour simply cannot help themselves. With their voracious appetite for ever more state control, the Government have proved determined to exert an iron grip over the network, squeezing out competition and increasingly dismissing open-access services like Hull Trains, Grand Central and Lumo, which are enjoyed by passengers, as merely ‘abstracting revenue’ from the state.
This really is no way to run a railway. Open-access operators have brought new routes to communities where, for far too long, a direct train to London was little more than a pipe dream. They have also delivered lower fares and genuine choice for passengers without relying on taxpayer subsidies. Yet Labour’s Railway Bill would hand Great British Railways greater power over whether its own competitors are permitted to run.
My colleagues and I expected Labour to kowtow to their union paymasters. After all, it is their modus operandi where public services are concerned. None of us has forgotten the new First Secretary of State giving train drivers whopping great pay rises, without securing any meaningful modernisation of working practices, when she briefly held the transport brief before resigning after details of her fraud conviction, following her own guilty plea, emerged.
Yet it still beggars belief to see just how little respect or regard the likes of the RMT have for Labour Ministers, despite receiving everything they wanted on pay. Now passengers face the prospect of yet more industrial action from unions which know this Government will always buckle when the pressure is applied.
This autumn, the Railway Bill returns to the House of Lords, where the Conservative Peers will be doing all they can to ensure that passengers and taxpayers, not Labour’s union barons, are at the heart of changes.
We will once again work to put a clear target to increase passenger numbers on the face of the Bill, protect our Veterans’ Railcards and safeguard open-access operators from being driven off the tracks.
Needless to say, I do not believe that an Andy Burnham-led Labour Government, who owes much to the Labour left for delivering him the leadership, will do much to protect passengers or taxpayers.
If you use Chiltern or Great Western Railway, my thoughts and prayers are with you. Because by the end of the year, you’ll be joining the ranks of those from Clitheroe to Chilworth who are very much not feeling the benefits of state-controlled operation under Labour.
So, while Transport is not all about rail, with around £15 billion a year of taxpayers’ money going into the network – excluding capital expenditure on HS2 – my colleagues and I will continue to rail against Labour’s woeful maladministration, put passengers first and fight for a railway judged by the results that really matter: growing passenger numbers, reliable services, genuine competition and better value for taxpayers.