Member

The case is not only about reassurance for our valued employees, though that would be worth having on its own account; there is also a productivity argument, and it is in some ways the stronger of the two. A report commissioned by the RMT from Dr Nina Jörden at Cambridge University, which has been shared with the Government, puts it in measured terms. The key argument is that a workforce that is spread across multiple employers faces barriers to the stability, mobility and shared learning on which a successful railway will depend. When staff work under different structures, incentives and planning horizons, it becomes harder to build the relationships and operational knowledge that a tightly coupled system requires. The report is careful not to overclaim, and I will not overclaim on its behalf: it does not say a single employer is always the better model—what it says is that employment structure belongs inside the productivity question rather than alongside it. That is a proposition the Government have not so far engaged with, and it ought to be tested before the structure is settled, before rather than after we proceed.