Methinks he doth protest too much. “This is not renationalisation,” the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, had said in his statement to the Commons on the overhaul of the rail network. Yet you couldn’t help thinking that many of the proposals being put forward were all but that in name. Something to which the Tories would have raised countless objections had they been put forward by the Labour party. Instead it was yet another Conservative minister looking to take the credit for sorting out the mess caused by a previous Tory government. We’re getting a lot of that these days.
Shapps started with something on which anyone who used trains in the 1970s and 80s could agree. That British Rail had been a bit crap. Trains were filthy, seldom ran on time, ran a sketchy service, and the sandwiches were inedible. Not that the catering was a great deal better on Virgin trains, as far as I can remember. But the minister was also forced to admit that while the part-privatisation of the rail industry under John Major’s administration in 1993 had reversed some of the decline, the record over the past 15 years or so had hardly been a glowing success.
The rail network had become fragmented, the franchises had lacked leadership and accountability and some had repeatedly failed and had needed to be taken back into public ownership. Operators were frequently more interested in allocating blame for late-running trains to Network Rail than in customer service. Indeed, the franchises had 400 full-time members of staff whose sole job was to argue about who was responsible for the delays. A small bird strike, such as a pigeon or sparrow, was down to the operators; swans and geese were Network Rail’s problem. It was those tricky medium-sized ducks that no one could agree on.
So Shapps’ brilliant plan was to have one overarching body, Great British Railways, that would be responsible for all areas of the network. Not just maintaining the track but ticketing, timetabling and pricing as well. Where it fell short of complete renationalisation was that the services would be run by private companies on a fixed-profit basis.
Not that Grant wanted to talk about renationalisation, though he frequently seemed unable to prevent himself. Much like an offender returning to the scene of a crime. Couldn’t we look at the failure of the original privatisation as a stepping stone to the new system he would implement? Better still, could we forget about ideology entirely and just focus on what worked best for passengers? Which just happened to be something closer to renationalisation. Don’t mention the war!
The shadow transport secretary, Jim McMahon, rather went through the motions in his reply. So much so that it wasn’t entirely clear if he had fully read the white paper. But then there wasn’t that much for him to disagree with, as much of what was being proposed could have been more or less Labour policy. After all, it’s a model that’s worked well in London under two Labour mayors. So all that was left for him to do was chip away at the edges with some questions about the private operators. What level of profit would the government allow them? And could the minister give an assurance that ticket prices wouldn’t rise? At which Shapps looked a little shifty and declined to give any guarantees. You’d have to ask his alter ego, Michael Green, about that.
That was about as tricky as it got for Shapps, with most MPs from both sides of the house less interested in the detail – such as it was – and more in what the changes might mean to them. Would there be new or improved train connections to their region? Would flexible season tickets for those wanting to work two or three days at home be applicable to their constituents? Now Grant turned into a genial, smooth-operating fat controller, promising everyone the world. Some people were bound to be disappointed, but they could find out from someone else in due course. This was his big day and nothing was going to spoil it. Apart from talk of part-renationalisation, which this definitely wasn’t. Even though it was.
Next up was an entirely unnecessary debate about the renovation and restoration of the Palace of Westminster. Unnecessary because everyone thought this had been settled in 2018 and again in July last year, with the house having decided it safest – and most cost-effective – to decant out of the crumbling building while the work was done.
But Jacob Rees-Mogg and many other Tories had had second thoughts. They would quite like to remain in a fire hazard and walk past open sewage because they didn’t want to end up having to work in makeshift, temporary accommodation. Imagine the ignominy of having to debate in an old council chamber. The very thought was enough to send them into a cold sweat. Levelling up is something for the little people, not MPs.
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