Good riddance to the ‘Reversing Beeching’ scheme. I am sure some Railfuture activists may disagree with that statement, as some local campaigners have expressed concern about particular schemes but I think its demise is unequivocally good news.
Ultimately I think the programme was going to make it harder, rather than easier, to bring about reopenings. That’s because the whole concept was a typical PR initiative, rather like the Tories’ levelling up programme, whose intent was to bring about change but, rather, to gain a few short term headlines.
The scheme – it did not merit the term ‘programme’ – was first announced in 2017 but little emerged until January 2020 when the Boris Johnson led Tory government pledged £500m towards reopenings. It was typical Borisonian flourish, rather like his plan to make us all ‘Hop on a bus’ again in London which led to the misconceived New Routemaster.
The Restoring Beeching idea, as often with such government initiatives, was to create competition between different bidders who were required to submit detailed schemes for consideration. This was enormously expensive and time consuming, and well beyond the means of many campaigns, which means that only those with the ability to get support from local or regional authorities were ever likely to put in high quality bids. The £500m, most of which never materialised, was not intended to be spent on actually putting down tracks or platforms but, rather, went to consultants charged with drawing up ‘business cases’ and ‘passenger forecasts’ for projects. It was a cynical exercise that was only ever intended to grab a few headlines.
Inevitably, there were far more applications than could ever be funded. By the middle of last year, 44 schemes were deemed ‘successful’ but Huw Merriman, the then rail minister was quick to accept that there was not much money to go around. In evidence to the Commons Transport Select committee in January 2023, he rather gave the game away, almost admitting that it was more a crowd pleasing exercise than an attempt to create any renewed railway mileage: ‘When you only have £500 million, you cannot deliver anything like the number of bids. Then we end up with very disappointed colleagues and disappointed communities who have put in an awful lot of work, because we require a business case to be put together, which costs money. Are we properly managing expectations?’
It was a good question to which the answer was clearly no. An assessment of the scheme showed that three years after the promise of the money, of the 44 schemes, only two, the Northumberland and the Dartmoor lines, both of which had been given the go ahead before the announcement of ‘Restoring Beeching’, were the only ones in progress, Another half a dozen station schemes, again all long established campaigns, were in progress but otherwise there was nothing to show for the whole process. With costs of reopenings estimated to range from £9m to £17m per mile, it was all too obvious that the £500m, spread around a huge number of projects, was never going to pay for any infrastructure. The Beeching axe fell on some 4,500 miles of railway and therefore the whole exercise was always more fantasy than reality. Of course there have been some superb reopening and there will be more to come, but there was never any chance that any more than a tiny percentage of the Beeching cuts could be restored.
Therefore, Rachel Reeves’ decision to scrap the whole idea was the right one. But that does leave a hole. The fact that this pitiful campaign attracted such massive media attention – I must have done half a dozen interviews on the subject – demonstrates the popularity of railway reopening schemes. We can build on that popularity, but in a far more coherent way than the Restoring Beeching campaign.
First, we need to be realistic. With devolution now increasingly important, the key is to win over local and regional government to our cause. The success of the soon to be opened Northumberland line campaign has been founded on relations with the local authorities. That shows, too, that these are concerted campaigns that are not about off the cuff slogans but, rather, more fundamental long term aims.
Second, we need to choose how and when to put in the maximum effort. With a new government in place which is keen to push through devolution, and many new councillors and councils having been elected as recently as May, an autumn push by campaigners is a no brainer. This is the time to win over friends and influence people.
There has been alarm among some campaigners that Reeves’ statement means that particular schemes will now no longer go ahead. I think that is a misreading of the statement. Various schemes have been put on hold or warned that they might not go ahead, but nothing has been scrapped. The statement though does make clear that money is tight, but we knew that anyway. We just have to be cannier in our demands and try to tailor them to Labour’s missions about inclusivity and growth.