Debate on the Address

My Lords, I shall concentrate on the railways and I take for granted much of what has been said on climate change. Demand for rail travel is expanding quite fast now for which the Government deserve some credit. It has to expand further because of climate change and because of congestion. I want to talk about the Government’s part in that process in the future. I acknowledge that they took over a very bad situation. Railtrack was a company bankrupt in money, in management and in skills. We need more rolling stock. I take the point just made by the speaker opposite that modern rolling stock will be very much more energy efficient than that which it replaces. We need more capacity for passengers and freight. If we suppress growth, there will be more traffic on the roads. Access to ports is extremely important. Large containers come to this country from China and yet the percentage of large containers moved by rail from the ports has dropped from 33 per cent to 27 per cent, simply because the routes to the ports are not cleared to carry heavy containers. It is a scheme waiting for government finance. That has not been provided. The comprehensive spending review is soon to be upon us. I have a feeling that it may be very harsh, particularly towards transport and some other areas. I make a plea to the Government for franchises that encourage the franchisee to invest in the long term. Passenger numbers are now growing very fast on our railways—by about 10 per cent a year. If that rise were to continue, instead of carrying just over 1,000 million people now, the railways would carry 2,500 million people in 10 years’ time. We need action. The main elements in the package I have in mind are, first, strangely, to make friends with the motorist. I am not talking about a 20 or 30 per cent expansion in car parking at stations, but a 200 or 300 per cent expansion. My ““Make Friends with the Motorist”” campaign means that one can do that fairly easily at most stations by decking over existing car parks. Private capital is available for that and for expanding cycling facilities. In our conurbations and particularly in Wales and the north of England, we run far too many very short trains which in many cases are absolutely stuffed with people. The ROSCOs would finance more rolling stock; longer station platforms could be built and they could be privately financed. That could be done by designating a new franchising system. Franchises need to be longer. Credits need to be built into the franchising process for achieving targets so that the credits could be cashed in at the next franchising round. I pick out Chiltern Railways as one of the most successful franchises, but it is a 20-year franchise—the only long franchise. It has an enviable reputation for performance and offers the cheapest fares. Its fares from Birmingham to London are much cheaper than Virgin—not just a little cheaper, but several orders cheaper. The Government should do only what they have to do and they should look to the private sector to build partnerships, which is exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said this morning. The current process of franchising has very many faults. First, as I have said, the franchises are too short; and, secondly, they are incredibly bureaucratic. The cost of bidding for a franchise, and failing to win it, is very high. They shut out enterprise. They are so short that people cannot develop schemes to invest in long-term assets, like new car-parks which will last virtually for ever, rolling stock which will last 30 years, or new track which—in many cases—will last 40 or 50 years. Yet we confine the franchise to eight years. Of course, they give far too much power to those in Whitehall who draw up the franchises. On freight, there is plenty of private money to buy the trains to carry the containers but, on the Continent, states build the railways to the ports. Here, we seem to be fascinated by the intellectual debate and haggling about it while the job does not get done. While it is not done, more heavy traffic pours on to the roads, with those huge containers that make the life of everybody who uses the road a misery. My noble friends Lord Mar and Kellie and Lord Glasgow will talk in detail about the new cross-country franchise, which links the whole country and avoids London. It has achieved a 10 per cent growth in traffic this year, something we have waited for through the miseries of the upgrading of the west coast. There are now four short-listed bidders waiting to bid but they will be judged on the base case, which is a poor example of what could be done. It looks for 30 per cent growth in eight years, but there has been 10 per cent growth both this year and last. It is not even going to cater for the growth, and will not cater for expansion. It is not a time for cutting back. Yet the franchise specification says that we will have fewer trains, less rolling stock—some is being taken away—and fewer stations being served. The 125 mph trains, which currently provide part of the service, will be substituted by some 100 mph trains which are, at best, outer suburban trains. We will subject people to travelling in them for up to four hours. That is not how to attract people. Over 1,000 stations are currently linked by this franchise. It is proposed that only just over 500 will be linked. No doubt the Government have in their mind that the only way to suppress demand on this service, apart from one or two horrors I shall mention in a minute, is to increase fares. Instead of the present 10 per cent growth, we have 3 per cent. The franchise will force people to change trains—my noble friends will speak about that—and to use the Birmingham station. That makes three fundamental errors. In the franchise document, a plan shows how the franchise will re-route trains around Birmingham. They go that way now, so why will it make any improvement at all? The systems that the train companies use to book tickets, reserve seats and answer telephone enquiries are all driven by a big national system. The franchise document says that it will encourage companies to make arrangements for changing in places other than Birmingham, but that system has a computer system behind it which cannot be altered by individual franchisees—it will dictate that people will have to change trains at Birmingham. Lastly, at the end of next year, the Birmingham station will be in the throes of a five-year reconstruction project. The whole franchise is badly founded, a recipe for low growth and chaos, and will lead to a huge amount of customer dissatisfaction. We need more rolling stock. It can be ordered now, but not for long because the Virgin trains have nearly run the course of their manufactured life expectancy. We need a longer franchise because franchisees must pay for the trains, and to know what will happen to the 125 mph trains—the only other ones in Britain are currently deployed on the Great Western franchise. I remind Ministers of the saga of the Great Western franchise. I live on the Great Western, and there was a huge outcry of many thousands of complaints. In the face of that, the Government had to retreat and restore a great number of the services they proposed to cut. Of course, however, they had to go back to the successful franchisee and almost renegotiate the franchise. I liken the Government’s view on the cross-country franchise to that of a novice gardener who, when a plant has begun to grow—and this one has—pulls it up to see if the roots are healthy. That, I am afraid, is how they are going on. We will not have any new roads for 20 years. There is a phenomenal opportunity for growth here. This ought to be a time for expanding the role railways play and, with ingenuity, this can be achieved without dipping deep into the public purse. We fear that franchisees will be judged not on what they could achieve, but on some basic specification outlined in Whitehall. That is a bad deal for rail users and, more importantly, a bad deal for potential rail users. In a Written Statement, the Minister said, "““Our aim is to build on the recent success of current operators, meet current and future passenger demand and facilitate increases in capacity””.—[Official Report, 31/10/06; col. WS12.]" Except in that small gap between Bristol and Manchester, the franchise specification for cross-country falls well short of these aims. Quite frankly, the Government should be ashamed of this document.