How many bills does it need to sort out the railways? Well, as we now know, there are two on the way in this Parliament and the first, with the cumbersome name of Passenger Railway Services (Public Owhership) Bill passed its initial Commons stages on September 3. There was a lengthy debate but it was hardly enlightening, with much of it being taken up by maiden speeches – more than half the MPs are new – on subjects that had nothing to do with the railways.
The purpose of this Bill is simple, to allow the government to take over franchises as the present contracts come to an end or are up for review. No longer will the government have to wait for operators to get into trouble before it can pounce and add to its collection of four franchises under the aegis of the Operator of Last Resort. Instead the default position will be to take them over.
Lou Haigh, the transport secretary, reiterated the reasons for this bill, pointing out the way that the performance of the railways had collapsed under the Tories. While that is indeed true, we have heard all this before. What we need to know is precisely how Labour’s solution of bringing the franchises back in house is going to address the fundamental failings of the rail industry.
In a surprisingly well-researched and coherent speech, the shadow transport secretary, Helen Whately, who is new to this field given that she was minister for social care in the previous government, complained about the haste with which the Bill was being pushed through. She is right that this is being done hastily but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Labour had expressed clear intent about its plans in the manifesto and it is well within its rights to press home with a policy that has been well prepared in advance of the election. The priority being accorded to this policy by the new government is because of its eagerness to show that reversing a key Tory policy, the privatisation of the railways, was a failure. The railways are seen as emblematic of the much wider political failings of their Tory predecessors which is why Labour ministers are so keen to push this policy through. When Whately complains that this is based on an ideological policy, she is right. But then, as I have written so many times, the Tory privatisation of the railways after the 1992 election was purely driven by ideology as by then British Rail was running the most efficient railway in Europe and meeting both its commercial and social goals.
The importance of the railways to the Labour government’s project is both good and bad news for the industry. The good news is that sorting out a new more coherent structure for the industry has long been recognised as a priority. Remember, this whole process of change was started by the Tories after the May 2018 timetable debacle. The industry has been in a period of limbo ever since then with the creation of the Great British Railways transition team which ran up spending of at least £64m but probably much more given this figure did not include the organisation’s work on ticketing reform, without showing any concrete results. So getting on towards rapidly establishing the new structure for the railways is undoubtedly a positive.
The problem is that it remains unclear whether the new ministers have a clear understanding of what they are trying to do and, most important, how it will show results quickly enough to justify the haste and the upheaval. Little is known about the precise nature of the second bill which is likely to be presented to Parliament early in the New Year but some indications about it were given in a separate announcement by Haigh confirming that she would be creating a new organisation to be called Great British Railways despite the fact that this was Boris Johnson’s baby.
In the announcement, Haigh set out five missions for the shadow GBR she launched, – everything for this government is about ‘missions’ and usually five of them – much of which are motherhood and apple pie such as ‘improving services for passengers and freight customers’ and ‘delivering financial stability’.
The interesting bit over which people in the industry are seeking clarity is the leadership of this new
organisations. There is much talk, for example, about who will chair it, but in a way that is an irrelevance. Haigh has already said she will be the ‘passenger in chief’ and therefore will be expected to make – or at least oversee – major decisions. Confusion remains, however, over the precise structure of the railways once GBR has been established. This is work in progress as one of the missions is rather confusingly termed ‘designing end state GBR’. In other words, the shadow GBR will be tasked with devising the structure of the permanent organisation. We are, therefore, no further forward in the pre-election debate over whether the GBR will be ‘Network Rail with lipstick’, as one insider put it, or a completely new organisation with a group of directors appointed by Haigh and who will run the show. Interestingly, in her letter to stakeholders, she emphasised that this new organisation will not interfere with any of the existing duties and accountabilities of the various existing players – the Department for Transport, the Network Rail, the Operator of Last Resort, etc. Therefore, we await with bated breath what emerges from this but we are no nearer any clear indication of what is in store after the second bill is passed.
Beyond Barton
One of the pleasures of my job, or rather my self-employment, is going round the country giving talks to railway and historical societies. The latest one took me to Barton-on-Humber and despite the big clue in its name, I had to look it to discover that it was south of the river in the shadow of the bridge. Interestingly, too, it was one of the few places that could not be reached with just one change of train from London.
That’s because the branch line that ends at Barton was built in the 1840s from the coast inwards in the from a junction with the lines to Grimsby and Immingham. This is lovingly told in a delightful book, The Railway comes to Barton-on-Humber 1844-1914 by Anthony Berridge who has also uncovered details about the most amazing network of 32 mostly narrow gauge lines that led to every substantial factory in the area, an astonishing illustration of the importance of the railway in Victorian times when no other efficient means of mechanised transportation was available. It is learning about such history that makes giving talks at these distant parts of the network so rewarding.
Therefore, today, to reach Barton from London, one has to change first at Doncaster, onto a Transpennine service and then at Habrough on to an East Midlands train. This second change is not a good connection since I was scheduled to sit for nearly an hour at Harbough in order to reach Barton – which in fact is a mere four miles from the much better frequented service at Hessle on the other side of the bridge. In fact, Barton only survived the Beeching closures as it was the terminus for the ferry before the bridge was built and now it apparently merits only with a two hourly service
No matter, I wanted to get to Barton by train but unfortunately, I failed neither reaching the town or managing to leave it by rail. All was well until Doncaster when there was a wonderful range of reasons for services that were cancelled or arrived too late for my purposes – ‘difficulties with unruly passengers at Sheffield’, ‘a police incident’ and ‘signalling problems in the Scunthorpe area’. Suffice to say, that after two hours in Sunny Donny, I ended up on a service to Scunthorpe where the kind host of my talk had to pick me up, a dozen mile drive from Barton.
I had hoped to take the train back from Barton the following morning. But to no avail. Because a 170 train had broken down and there was no spare sets, all trains to Barton had been cancelled because the branch there is the first to be sacrificed when there is a shortage of stock. So rather like Godot’s mates, I was left waiting to experience the service on the line. But, to be fair, the bus replacement service, with a very skilled and efficient driver, was excellent and got me to the connection at Habrough 10 minutes early – which, in fact, was a bit naughty as he had not waited for the normal departure time at the intermediate stations. No matter, the return journey was remarkably efficient. Barton used to have an hourly service, and local people found that much more useful. A two hourly service means that no one is ever really going to rely on the train, as I found out. By road, Barton is only nine miles to Barnetby which is a junction and offers a far greater range of train services both to the east and west. In a rational world, Barton would not have a train service, but since it still does, there is little point if it is so infrequent and vulnerable to the whims of the train company.