Passenger Standards Authority

Question

14:49:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in establishing the Passenger Standards Authority.

As part of the Government’s plan for change, the creation of Great British Railways will unify track and train to deliver better services for passengers, increase revenue and reduce the cost of the railway. While GBR will lead in delivering a customer-focused experience for passengers, we are committed to establishing a powerful passenger watchdog alongside it to champion their interests. My department will publish a consultation on the railways Bill imminently, which will provide detail on our plans to establish a passenger standards authority.

My Lords, passengers have faced fewer, shorter and overcrowded trains and increased fares for too long. Will the new passenger standards authority have enforcement powers and oversee a new charter for passengers confirming the minimum level of service that all new publicly owned lines will guarantee?

We have been working hard to ensure that the new PSA will be a powerful watchdog, making sure that passengers have an independent voice in the industry which stands up for them. It will have increased powers, enabling it to become a strong advocate through holding GBR to account for improving the passenger experience, and particularly for disabled people, as discussed during the passage of the public ownership Bill. The public consultation I referred to will seek the views of the public and industry on the proposed scope and functions of the PSA. After the consultation is published, I will be happy to meet the noble Baroness and other interested noble Lords to discuss it.

My Lords, the Government are establishing a passenger standards authority, but Network Rail says that the industry should not use the word “passenger”. Who is right?

The document that the noble Lord refers to was actually published during the time he was the Secretary of State for Transport—by Network Rail, I should say—so it is not a recent document. It is advice about writing letters using words of fewer than four syllables, and it is in fact good advice. Much of the correspondence that the noble Lord must have been given in his time as Secretary of State, which I am given as the Minister and which I was given as the chair of Network Rail, was indigestible in practical terms, so a guide for people about how to write letters in simple English is a really good thing.

My Lords, the previous Government introduced changes which led to reduced services and a higher cost for the passenger. Can the Minister say what that has cost the taxpayer? Does he have any estimates about the changes the previous Government brought about—the failed railway reorganisation?

I cannot easily find that number my noble friend refers to. But it is true that, for example, the failure to resolve the wages issues with the principal trade unions led to the most prolonged national dispute in railway history and cost the taxpayer and the customers about £800 million.

Can the Minister just remind the House—I am sure he knows the figure—what the passenger numbers were before privatisation and what they were just before the outbreak of Covid? What was the rise in passenger numbers over that time?

I am sure that if I cannot remember, the noble Lord will be able to. But he is right: roughly, the numbers doubled, and they did so because at the time of privatisation there was a huge amount of white space in the timetable. It is an acknowledged fact that the early years of privatisation in particular produced more trains and a better train service, partly because the old British Rail was starved of investment. But we are not dealing with a railway in that position now; we are dealing with a railway that does not have the numbers or the revenue it had before Covid but still has all the costs.

My Lords, will the Minister reflect on the fact that the increase in traffic was driven substantially by the economic boom under the last Labour Government, as well as by the increase in population?

I thank my noble friend for that, too. He is of course right: it is quite hard to distinguish what is going on on the railway from the general economy, principally because connectivity drives growth, jobs and housing, and he is right about both the features he mentions. In respect of the railway itself, the principal feature I would draw attention to is the one I did in my response to the previous question, which is to say that if you have a lot of white space in the timetable, you can run more trains at relatively marginal cost. That white space, on many parts of the railway, no longer exists.

My Lords, you wait a long time for one Secretary of State for Transport and then three come along at once. Will the Minister confirm that the Government remain totally committed to the principle of open access on the railways?

It is always a pleasure to see so many ex-Secretaries of State on the other side of the House—all of whom I have respect for and at least one of whom appointed me to my previous job. The Secretary of State’s recent letter, which was made public, sets out the precise conditions in which open access is an asset to the railway, not a detraction. One thing we have to be very careful about is that if, inadvertently, revenue that would otherwise accrue to the public purse and reduce the subsidy is diverted, that may not be a good deal for the taxpayer. I am sure the noble Lord has read that letter, and I would refer him to it as a very accurate description of the conditions under which open access is a good thing, and the conditions under which it is not.

My Lords, will the passenger standards authority have any ability to engage with the companies about the new east coast main line timetable, given that it involves halving number of services to London from Berwick-upon-Tweed and making the journey time longer?

We will see when the time comes whether the new passenger standards authority is set up in time to deal with that question, but I am glad the noble Lord raised the east coast main line timetable, because it is one of the justifications for having a guiding mind for the railway. Our nation invested over £4 billion in upgrading the east coast main line, and it has taken several years to achieve a situation where a timetable which is remotely acceptable to all the operators and passengers, even though it has detractions in some places, was capable of being put into effect. It is a startling exposition of the fact that there is no controlling mind that the person who in the end took the decision to put that timetable in was me.

My Lords, is the Minister persuaded that when the consultation document on the future of the railways is published, which I hear might even be this week, it will have a convincing explanation of how Great British Railways is going to reconcile the inherent conflict of interest that exists between its role as a passenger service operator on the one hand and its position as a strategic authority, allocating paths and resources to freight, open access operators and others, some of them in direct competition with it, on the other—or is that the issue that has been holding up its publication for so long?

The noble Lord is right: I promised him it would be ready in December. I was advised by a colleague here that I did not say which December, of course, but, as I said, it is imminent. The question that he asks is germane in a mixed-use railway, and not a question unique to this network at all. It is a question which in various forms has been a question for all railway operators for as long as there has been freight, express passengers and so on. It is clear that a controlling mind will have to have some criteria to allocate access, and those criteria will have to form the basis of decision-making. It is also clear that because there are third parties on the railway, they should have a right of appeal. The document that I am referring to, which will be published imminently, will deliver a proposed solution to those issues.

My Lords, the last thing I would want to do is create problems for one of our Ministers—particularly this Minister—but he will recall the good days of the old Caledonian Sleepers, including one that came from Stranraer all the way down to London. It was used by many of our colleagues from Northern Ireland, and very effectively so. Recently, under the unfortunate auspices of the Scottish Government, the Caledonian Sleepers are really terrible and are making a huge loss. What advice would the Minister give to the Scottish Government, and would he perhaps even consider taking over the Caledonian Sleepers and integrating them into Great British Railways?

I would not propose to take over anything from the Scottish Government. They are quite capable of running their railway themselves. The sleeper from Stranraer was abandoned some 15 years ago; it was also a sleeper from Barrow-in-Furness and other places. The purpose of sleeper trains is to enable overnight travel. Actually, the Caledonian Sleeper, now operated by ScotRail, does rather well at it. I doubt that it is particularly profitable but it must be worth running—certainly in the view of the Scottish Government, because they run it.