Louise Haigh – 2023 Speech on Improving Rail Services
The speech made by Louise Haigh, the Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, in the House of Commons on 20 March 2023.
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. What a relief it is to see him in his place. Since he announced huge changes on HS2, affecting billions of pounds of investment and jobs, costs to the taxpayer and particularly affecting the north of England, this is the first we have seen or heard from him. You can call the search party off, Mr Speaker.
I welcome the deal on Network Rail, but it is overdue. After 10 months in which the Government refused to negotiate and, according to the chief executive of Network Rail, engaged in “noisy political rhetoric” that had been “counterproductive” to negotiations, a compromise has finally been made. However, passengers across the midlands, the north and Scotland, Members from both sides of the House, and possibly you, Mr Speaker, will be looking on in disbelief today as millions more in taxpayer cash is handed to an operator that is so demonstrably failing passengers. For the Secretary of State to stand at the Dispatch Box and hail a turnaround in the service demonstrates how staggeringly out of touch he is with the lived reality of people in this country.
The figures speak for themselves. Over the past six months, under the Secretary of State’s intensive improvement plan, Avanti West Coast has broken several records—records for delays and cancellations: the highest ever number of trains more than 15 minutes late and the highest single month of cancellations since records began. In one month, almost a quarter of services were badly delayed. That is higher than during the chaos in August and during the height of the pandemic.
That is not all. Under the Secretary of State’s so-called improvement plan, the number of trains on time actually fell to just one third. If that is what success looks like to the Government, is it any wonder that people question whether anything in this country works any more? They look on in disbelief as the answer to this prolonged failure is always millions more in taxpayers’ cash.
This issue matters because across the north, services remain in chaos. Today alone, more than 35 services have been cancelled on TransPennine Express. This has been an issue for not months but years. Six years ago, TransPennine Express had exactly the same issues that it faces today. Then, as now, it blamed staff shortages and the unions. It said then that it would recruit drivers and improve resilience. Then, as now, the Government shrugged their shoulders and let it off the hook as performance plummeted. The Secretary of State dismisses as pointless debates about the future of railways—little wonder, when the answer to the enormous challenges facing the railways is always more of the status quo.
The Conservatives promised competition that would serve passengers and lower fares; instead, as is happening today, contracts are awarded without the faintest hint of competition while fares rise again and again, and passengers suffer. Their answer to it all is more of the same: the same failing operators; the same waste and fragmentation; the same broken system. Labour will end the fractured, fragmented system holding our railways back and put passengers back at the heart of our rail network, prioritising long-term decision making. But the message that today’s decision sends could not be clearer. Under the Conservatives, our broken railways are here to stay. Under the Conservatives, passengers will always come last.
Mr Harper
The hon. Lady must have been listening to a completely different statement; what she just said bears very little relationship to either facts or the things I set out. Let me take her points in turn. I am pleased that she welcomed the acceptance by RMT members of the deal on Network Rail, and that—she obviously did not say this—she recognises that my approach since I became Transport Secretary has clearly been the right one, having helped lead to the situation we are in today. I did not expect her to pay me any credit for that, but I note that she welcomed the result.
The hon. Lady said that the Avanti figures speak for themselves, and they absolutely do. Weekday services have risen in the new timetable since December to 264 trains a day. The cancellation rate that she talked about was last year; the most recent rate is down to 4.2%, the lowest level in 12 months. That is a clear improvement. I have said that it needs to be sustained, which is why Avanti has an extension only until October. Some 90% of its trains now arrive within 15 minutes of their scheduled time, which is not good enough—it is in the pack with the other train operating companies, but at the bottom of the pack. I have been clear that Avanti needs to deliver improvement in the next six-month period. But the figures do speak for themselves: they demonstrate an operator that is turning things around but still has more to do, which was exactly what I said in my statement.
I was clear that TPE’s current service levels are unacceptable and that no options were off the table. I am interested in the hon. Lady’s focus on guarding taxpayers’ money. If I have added this up correctly, she and her Front-Bench colleagues have made unfunded promises of £62 billion of rail spending with no demonstrable means to pay for them. I am afraid that she will have excuse me for finding her professed concern for the taxpayer a little incredible.
Finally, I was surprised that the hon. Lady does not seem to have noticed that far from talking about the status quo, last month I set out in detail a clear set of proposals for reform to bring track and train together in Great British Railways, which I reiterated in my statement. That is what we will continue doing: not having an ideological debate about who owns the railways but talking about delivering better services for passengers. That will remain our relentless focus.
