argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Christopher Stephen Grayling (Conservative, Centre-right): That is the most important thing. It is why we are pushing forward with the integration of track and train to make the railway more reliable, and it is why we have a strategy to bring in digital technology to improve the performance of the railway. It is also why, for the first time in a long time, we are investing in significant extra capacity across the rail network We sat in opposition looking at things that needed to be done but just did not get done, but now we are in government, they are happening. Last week the fantastic new London Bridge station opened. In the summer, I will be in the midlands to open the new Kenilworth station. In July, I will be opening the expanded Liverpool Lime Street station. These are big and positive steps forward for the railway In total, over the next five years, we will be investing £20 billion on renewing the current infrastructure and another £9 billion on further enhancements, including the flagship trans-Pennine rail network. We are building HS2; we will shortly be opening Crossrail; we are just opening the Thameslink tunnels through central London; and we have done the Ordsall chord in Manchester. [Interruption.] The £2.9 billion trans-Pennine rail upgrade will begin in the spring of next year and make a massive difference to passengers The thing that passengers will probably notice the most, however—this is being funded by the private rather than the public sector—is all the new trains that are arriving. Every single train in the north of England is being rebuilt, starting from later this year, with all the Pacer trains going to the scrapyard, and every train in East Anglia. The new trains asked for by Opposition Members are arriving on the east coast main line later this year, and new trains are coming to the south-west, the midlands and the south. There will be new trains across the whole country because this Government are investing in our rail network. This Government want to give a better deal to passengers, and this Government are going to do what works. All we hear from Labour Members is ideology from a party that cannot quite work out what it is actually talking about, and I think we have one big job for this country: make sure they never get anywhere near government.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Stephen William Hammond (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a great honour to speak in this debate, and I am looking forward to making a short contribution—certainly no longer than six minutes. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown). I note that he chastised Government Members for saying that the explanation was simple, but it appears that he does not understand the difference between revenue projections and debt, which is fundamental here. At its heart, the motion seems to be about the east coast main line, how it was franchised, how it is now operating, the solution and also the future of the railways. The divide between the two sides of the House is clear: the Opposition believe that everything should be nationalised, and the Government believe that a public-private partnership will work for the benefit of passengers I listened to the opening remarks of the shadow Secretary of State, and I understand his frustration, but surely he appreciates a Secretary of State who comes to the House to announce changes, rather than one who, as happened in the case of National Express, made an announcement on the radio at 7.30 am. When this Government had less talent available to them and I was a Minister, I met a number of people from the rail industry and I can say that to think that the railways are not run by professionals is an insult to the many who work on them. They will have been disappointed to hear the shadow Secretary of State say that today This is about rail franchising, the principles on which it is based, and then whether the Secretary of State has followed those principles. After the problems with the franchising of the west coast main line, the Brown review set out the principles for franchising and re-franchising. The principles contain clear guidance on the capital that must be put up by franchisees, on the risks and on the Secretary of State’s duties—duties that this Transport Secretary has surely followed. It is his job to ensure that passenger services are not disrupted and that there is a smooth transition if a franchise is failing. By getting the operator of last resort involved last autumn, services were preserved, and the reality on the east coast main line is that more trains are being run, more money will be generated for the taxpayer and more people are being employed. In addition, the most recent passenger satisfaction survey shows that 92% are satisfied with the privatised railway.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Stephen William Hammond (Conservative, Centre-right): If the hon. Lady reads on, she will see that that recommendation states that franchisees "should not be expected to take external macroeconomic" risks. Surely this franchise has underestimated the risk to itself by overestimating revenues. Now, whether the Department for Transport took the appropriate advice is for the Transport Committee to dwell on, but the Brown principles are quite clear The next duty on the Secretary of State is to ensure that taxpayers are protected, and this private failure has not resulted in public sector liability or taxpayer cost. The Secretary of State is right in what he says about that Finally, there are processes that must be followed. Like it or not, whether someone is a Minister or a Member of Parliament, there are many times when frustration with some public or private service can boil over, but due legal process must be followed. Looking at what this Secretary of State has done, I do not think that anyone can argue that he has not followed the process. He came to this House in February, and before that he set in place the operator of last resort. He has ensured continuity of service and that there will be no loss to the taxpayer. He has taken the appropriate legal advice. Against that test, the motion must fail.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Stephen William Hammond (Conservative, Centre-right): The former Minister of State is a friend of mine from when we were both in the Department for Transport. I wholeheartedly concur, as ever The second part of the motion is about the future, which is where the biggest divide is. I enjoy a good reminiscence as much as the next person. I remember my fifth birthday treat—my parents took me on the railways, because I always wanted to do it.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Stephen William Hammond (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, steam was still around For most of the first part of my professional life, I used British Rail to commute. The idea that it was a paragon of virtue and good service is just nonsense. My memory, which I do not think has deserted me, is of old and failing rolling stock, poor maintenance, timetables that were never operated and a lack of investment. That is not the reality now. Since privatisation, the Government have invested billions in railway infrastructure. Over the next five years, they will ensure that there is another £20 billion—actually, there will be much more than that coming directly from the private sector investing in new rolling stock, which will be the biggest benefit for the public.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Stephen William Hammond (Conservative, Centre-right): I am mindful of the six-minute limit. I have taken two interventions, so I will not take one from the hon. Gentleman That private investment, which Labour so heavily opposes, is the very investment that will greatly benefit the people who travel on the trains, about whom all hon. Members should be most concerned. Under Labour proposals, that investment would disappear I applaud my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who has come to the House with a future rail strategy. It is a great start, but he knows I would like him to go further in a few key areas. I went to speak to the managing director of South Western, which runs the trains around my area. The reality is that Network Rail is causing the bulk of the delays. I am delighted to see public-private partnerships, but I urge my right hon. Friend to go further with his plans to devolve sections of Network Rail, which would provide local accountability and responsiveness to local passenger need. Let us not worry ourselves about nationalisation; let us make sure we get this right. It is ironic that the part of the railway that is most criticised is the nationalised part My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made the point about timetable delays and one or two other issues. The projects division inside Network Rail is responsible for many good works, but it is also responsible for a number of delays. I urge him to get the private sector more closely involved in the design and concentration of projects Finally, I am pleased to say that this motion fails at the most basic level. It is wrong to censure the Secretary of State, who has followed the right processes. The last thing this country needs is to go back to the 1970s. It needs to look forward to the 2020s, and nationalisation can never be the answer.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Anne-Marie Belinda Trevelyan (Conservative, Centre-right): It is not so much the rolling stock that I remember as not necessarily getting back for tea because the train just did not go—that used to cause my grandmother and I some disconcertion. The railway timetables were more an idea than a reality a lot of the time. That is a childhood memory, and the Labour party’s vision for train provision, which does not put the customer at the heart of all policy, will not work. The customer pays the fares and must be at the centre of those decisions. So I believe the Secretary of State has taken the right, difficult decision to use his operator of last resort powers to get the London North Eastern Railway—that lovely brand, which I believe is on a poster in one of our bookshops in Alnwick—up and running to ensure that my constituents and I can rely on it and we invest for Northumberland, knowing that our train service will be sound.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Iain Aitken Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. As a member of the Transport Committee, I hope to inject a rational perspective into proceedings. As has been mentioned, the Committee is currently scrutinising this issue. I should add the caveat that our proceedings are still under way and we might receive further evidence later The first point I wish to make is that this is not a failing railway in the sense that most passengers would understand it. It operates efficiently; there are high levels of passenger satisfaction; there is growing usage of it; and, yes, there is investment in it. Under Virgin, many of the trains have been refurbished and, although I appreciate that this is not a direct part of the franchise, King’s Cross station has been transformed in recent years, so the passenger experience is being enhanced The issue at the heart of this debate is that something went wrong with the revenue projections for the line. That is what we need to scrutinise. It is important to understand the nature of the east coast main line franchise. It has a much larger discretionary element than most other rail franchises, by which I mean that the passengers who use it have many more options for making their journeys. Those options are both on the railways, with other train operating companies running services on large parts of the line—at the southern end of the line, Hull Trains and Grand Central offer alternatives to the Virgin Trains, and further north there is TransPennine Express and ScotRail, meaning that there is a discretionary element to which service passengers use—and, because of the long-distance nature of the network, passengers can choose non-rail alternatives, including flying between Edinburgh and Glasgow or driving between some of the key towns and cities. That makes it much more difficult for anyone in the public or private sector accurately to forecast revenues over a lengthy period. I have had conversations with other train operating companies this week, and they said, "We don’t bid for these long-distance franchises because of that element of uncertainty."
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Iain Aitken Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): No, my point is that Virgin is making a profit on the line and is very able to meet the competition, but what is difficult to forecast accurately—[Interruption.] If the hon. Lady stops chuntering and listens to what I have to say, I will answer her point. The revenues have grown, but they have not reached the very ambitious levels that we set. Many factors behind that are completely unrelated to the rail industry. I shall touch on some that are related to the rail industry, but those that are not include fuel costs, which are considerably lower than was envisaged at the time the franchise was let—
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Iain Aitken Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): No; if it is cheaper for people to use motor vehicles, they are more likely to do that than to use the train. There is a question mark over the extent to which Network Rail’s non-delivery of some of the upgrade projects is a factor; that is part of the picture about which I do not yet know and is something that we will scrutinise. There is also something more fundamental happening in the nature of rail usage, relating to different travel-to-work arrangements and work patterns. There is currently no clear idea of what is behind that, but it will affect other franchises, as well as the east coast line.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Kwasi Alfred Addo Kwarteng (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend and I served together on the Transport Committee for three years, and his speech is compelling and highly knowledgeable. Does he feel that nationalisation should be part of the solution to the problems we face?
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Iain Aitken Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely not. I will come to that point and refer to the evidence that the Select Committee heard on Monday from Iryna Terlecky, who has many decades of experience in the rail industry The shortfall in projected revenue would have happened irrespective of who owned and ran the railway. The difference is that under a nationalised system, the public purse would have taken an immediate hit from the loss of revenue, whereas under the system we have, the parent company and the bond that it put up has taken the brunt of it.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Iain Aitken Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): No; forgive me, but I have three minutes left and the hon. Lady’s previous intervention was not really up to scratch There are of course lessons to be learned about how we base our revenue projections over a long period. There need to be more cautious forecasts of rail revenues over the long term. Indeed, I think that that has already happened in respect of some of the franchises that have subsequently been let. We need to revisit some of the Brown recommendations on the balance of risk that an operator takes against extraneous factors that are not to do with the direct operation of the railway. In the end, though, the franchise system does work; it does deliver enhanced performance. I, too, remember what British Rail was like when I was a child, and it was not a glorious existence Let me conclude on what I hope is a more consensual point. I am a sentimental old railway buff and I cheer the reintroduction of the LNER brand. LNER was one of the big four private companies that transformed this country’s rail system in the first half of the previous century. May I make one little plea? LNER had iconic liveries, from the apple green of the Flying Scotsman to what is called the garter blue of the Mallard and the Gresley class, and the teak colour of the carriages. Please can we have that back and rekindle the romance of the railways of those years? I am absolutely certain that that would help to keep passenger numbers high and ensure that this important railway line has a bright future.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
John Henry Hayes (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is, as ever, making a valuable contribution. One of the most interesting things that has come out of this debate, thanks to him and to my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), is the business of how we integrate transport policy. We have heard that a competitive element is associated with road and rail and that all kinds of other factors affect projections and estimates. Perhaps the Minister will take that away from the debate. There has always been a call for an integrated transport strategy, and every Government have wrestled with it. Perhaps this event will stimulate and catalyse just that sort of approach.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Alec Shelbrooke (Conservative, Centre-right): The problem this afternoon is that we are just going to fall into the ideological arguments about nationalisation and privatisation, rather than getting down to some of the key causes of why we are in this position today. Quite frankly, the nationalisation argument has been blown out of the water with the single market argument, as I said earlier I am pleased to be following the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) because he raised the issue of timetabling, which has affected all of us. I have certainly seen the comments from my constituents who use the trains and heard about the struggles that they have had. What is at the heart of the timetabling issue? Well, train companies normally plan their timetable six to nine months ahead, but the delays of Network Rail meant that they had two to four months. It is therefore not exactly surprising that they ended up in a situation in which the timetabling is not exactly working as smoothly and efficiently as we would hope Network Rail had a large part to play in where we are today. We have made comparisons with the west coast main line, and talked about Virgin keeping the contract and Stagecoach making the profits and so on, but Network Rail simply has not delivered on the basis that was laid down in the bids that were put forward. Companies made promises about power upgrades in their bids, but they have not occurred. They also promised to eliminate bottlenecks, and that has not occurred.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Alec Shelbrooke (Conservative, Centre-right): I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has made that point. Indeed, that is the problem with a nationalised company. Many people have said, "Oh, it’s the Secretary of State’s responsibility in a nationalised company, " but that is not how it works—it is not how it has ever worked. On the one hand, people are saying that the Secretary of State should take complete control of the railways, and on the other that he should get out. People who are running a nationalised operation do not share the sense of urgency of those in the private sector. There are litanies of delayed or missing projects under Network Rail.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Alec Shelbrooke (Conservative, Centre-right): Railtrack failed due to the vandalism of John Prescott when he was Transport Secretary. He took advantage of the opportunity when British Rail’s failure to keep its system upgraded and safe culminated just three years into privatisation under Railtrack. The track that broke, which caused Railtrack to fail and to be transformed into Network Rail, did not degrade in the three years of privatisation. It broke as a result of a catalogue of rail mismanagement that led up to that point. It is one of the biggest disgraces—
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Kwasi Alfred Addo Kwarteng (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you very much, Sir, for your very mild and modest rebuke I find it extraordinary to hear speaker after speaker look to the network in France, in Germany and in other countries and say that things are operating well there, when clearly, if one understands anything about the EU competition policy or the single market, the whole drift of EU regulation in the rail network has been away from the nationalisation that has been lauded by Opposition Members.
Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Transportation
Kwasi Alfred Addo Kwarteng (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that goes to the slight craziness of a lot of our debate. It is clear to me that the partnership with the private sector has put far more investment—billions and billions of pounds of investment—into the network than would have been the case if it had remained under public ownership. We all know the budgetary pressures. We all know the budgetary situation in 2010, when we had a deficit of £160 billion. It does not take a particularly sophisticated mathematician to work out that, if we had had the rail network in public ownership, as well as public ownership of vast swathes of industry, the budgetary position would have been a lot worse than even in 2010.