EDM 1195: Better Jobs, Better Services campaign

That this House notes that the Government has committed to oversee the biggest wave of insourcing for a generation; welcomes the RMT’s new Better Jobs, Better Services campaign, calling for an end to outsourcing of essential rail services such as cleaning, station staffing, catering, security, infrastructure and engineering across the rail and metro networks; further notes that RMT research shows outsourcing has cost the taxpayer and farepayer £400 million annually in profits leaking out of the rail industry, the equivalent of a 3.8 per cent fare cut, while insourcing and integrating these services with the rest of the network would provide better quality, safety and value for money; also notes concerns that outsourcing is driven by employers engaging workers on inferior terms and conditions, such as poor sick pay and pensions, and that outsourcing could be embedding systemic racism on parts of the rail network where workers are disproportionally from a BME background; is encouraged that cleaning, station, catering, infrastructure and engineering services are already provided in-house, or there are discussions to do so, on many parts of the parts of the network; and therefore calls on the Government and devolved transport authorities to extend the policy of building an integrated and publicly-owned railway network to also become a vehicle to end rail outsourcing, delivering better jobs and services.