Contribution
My Lords, I support my noble friend in his remarks about his own amendment, to which I added my name, and will speak to the two further amendments that I have tabled in this group. I will not go through them line by line, but I would describe this as the “Please do not go back to British Rail” group. The reality is that British Rail did some good things, but it also did some bad things and failed to deliver in many respects.
We have to avoid just going back to what was there before. All of us grew up with British Rail and, as I say, it did say some things well, but an awful lot of things were not done for passengers. One simple example is the changes to the Chiltern line, the line I grew up on, which pre privatisation was, frankly, being lined up to become a coach route. Marylebone station was going to be closed, there were serious discussions about not running trains any more and services were more limited by far than they are now. Post privatisation, with innovation, the service was completely transformed. Quality improved in every respect, and the range of services and the stations improved.
I have a big concern about what the Government are doing. I supported the reunification of track and train wholeheartedly. I started that process. I never intended us to end here in this particular structure, but we are where we are. However, the Government must not allow the new Great British Railways approach to exclude the private sector in a variety of different ways. My amendment, which would require them to look for value for money for the taxpayer, is based on my concern that I can see more and more just being taken in-house. On maintenance, we have already had the unions saying, “Well, let’s just take DB Cargo back in-house as it’s up for sale”. The reality is that the private sector can and does offer innovation that the public sector generally does not to the same degree.
My concern is that there has to be a clear duty on Great British Railways to look for the best option, and it must look for that best option in a way that genuinely benefits passengers. I go back to British Rail: it was to some degree unfair but, in common parlance and discussion about British Rail at the time, it was about running a railway rather than delivering a service for passengers. Great British Railways must not do that. We know that the public sector has never been great at delivering a high-quality service for its customers. I am not sure I understand why Great British Railways in the public sector will be any different. It is therefore beholden upon us to really challenge the Minister and those who will be running Great British Railways to demonstrate why they will do the things set out in these amendments and how they will constantly seek best value to try to deliver for the taxpayer—and also, frankly, for the railway and passengers. The best value they get, the more likely it is that there will be some funds available in the future to do some improvements of, for example, the rail freight that we discussed earlier.
I am therefore looking for reassurance from the Minister that Great British Railways will still kick the tyres on getting best value; that it will still look at doing innovative things to improve quality for passengers; that it will not simply be subsumed each year in the Budget round where other parts of the public sector take precedence for the funding that is available, as always happened in the past; and that we will not go back to the world where, when that happened and the pressures came in the Budget rounds, the response was to put up fares, close services, close lines and strip out sections of double track and turn them into a single-track railways—all things that have left our rail network today much less substantial than it should be and much less able to adapt to the needs of the moment. I am simply looking for reassurance from the Minister as to how he will make sure that none of that happens.