Standing Committee A
Tuesday 23 February 1999
(Afternoon)
[Part II]
[Mr. Edward O'Hara in the Chair]
(Except clauses 1, 2, 3 and 4 and schedules 1 and 2)
[Continuation from column 742]
8.30 pm
On resuming--
Mr. Ottaway: I have been caught unawares, Mr. O'Hara, and have not quite marshalled my thoughts other than to say that clause 163 is a failure in terms of developing power to the people of London and their elected representatives. It starts from a situation in which the Secretary of State has the last word and goes round the houses and back out the other side to that, once again, the Secretary of State has the last word. That is why we intended to divide the Committee on the clause.
Ms Glenda Jackson: I dealt comprehensively with the point that the hon. Member for Croydon, South has just made when he first made it. I can understand that he did not like hearing what I said, and particularly disliked that it was factual to the point of being barbed.
I shall address my main remarks to the contribution of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey. He asked five questions about clause 163, some of which related specifically to the powers of the mayor. First, he asked whether the mayor's powers would be sufficient to buy in additional services; the power to modify services would be included in that. Secondly, he asked if the mayor could buy in completely new services as well as additional existing services. Thirdly, he asked whether the mayor will be able to buy in extra frequencies. The answer to all three questions is yes. As we made clear in the White Paper, the mayor will have to pay for those services, and the franchising director will retain the final say in advising the mayor on how his or her requirements can best be met. That will be done in the context of the three criteria that are set out in clause 163(5).
Fourthly, the hon. Gentleman asked about the consultation between the franchising director and the mayor on timetables. We intend to table an amendment at a later stage that will place a duty on the franchising director to consult the mayor about the level of provision of services within London. Such consultation may, of course, include timetabling issues. In addition, the GLA and Transport for London will be consulted on timetable changes by the train operating companies under the terms of their franchise agreements.
Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked whether the mayor would be able to introduce a package of additional services in London without intervention by the Secretary of State--for example, on the Chelsea-Hackney line. I can confirm that the mayor will be able to do so, subject to the franchising director, in line with subsection (5), and the financial constraints to which I have already referred. I trust that I have satisfactorily answered the hon. Gentleman's Questions.
Mr. Simon Hughes: The pause for reflection, or the cause for reflection, was clearly helpful. If the Minister is always to be as helpful after dinner as she has been today, we must arrange our timetables accordingly. Liberal Democrat Members had intended, for the first time in the Committee's proceedings, to abstain. Now that we have heard the Minister's reply, however, we shall vote that the clause should stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Brooke: I apologise to the Committee for not having risen before my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South. I was in 1 Parliament street when a great procession of police trucks drove across Westminster bridge at a major pace. That caused me to be one minute and 30 seconds late in getting back into the Committee.
Mr. Pound: It was noted.
Mr. Brooke: My remarks are addressed to my Whip.
When the Committee discussed clause 136, I looked forward to clause 163. The Minister was kind enough to recognise that I had done so, but at the time I said that I thought that the clauses had a degree of inconsistency with one another, because the franchising director was to have the ultimate power under clause 163. I did not pick the Minister up on her remark, and I do not mind it in the least, given the current hour.
The clause has brought us to the reality of the mayor's powers vis-ã-vis the franchising director. There is no point either in blinking or pretending that the provisions are not as they are. There is a genuine problem, because of the limits on the mayor's powers.
I shall make one final plea. Before the sitting was suspended for dinner, the Minister referred to the Government's inheritance from the previous Administration, as she does very occasionally. I allow her one or two such remarks a day, because they are a form of therapy, and we need to keep her going if we are to get through the Bill. I have referred to my father's association with the Southern Railway. I reflect with interest on what British Rail did to the Southern Railway after 1948, when the railway was remarkable and was making all the profits of the private companies before nationalisation, which were subsequently transferred into looking after other railways. Much of the inheritance of which the Minister spoke derives from strategic and policy decisions taken after 1948, which drained what became the Southern region funds and put them elsewhere. The cattle truck mentality goes back to that era.
I remember when I was growing up sitting in a deck chair watching the Southern Railway Cricket team play at Raynes Park, with Mr. Rogers the traffic superintendent sitting in a deck chair next to me with his back to the embankment. He never looked at his watch, a piece of paper or anything except the cricket. If a train rumbled past on the embankment behind him, however, he would say either "One minute late" or "Two minutes early", quite clearly having a metronome in his head.
The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey spoke about the line between Waterloo and Basingstoke. He referred to the example of Surbiton. Trains on the Waterloo to Basingstoke line have no difficulty in stopping at Wimbledon during the tennis fortnight. All of the problems referred to by the Minister related to why it is impossible to inject extra resources. If enough money is available from the passengers to whom it is convenient to get on and off at Wimbledon, however, the system is capable of being adjusted. That is why the Bill runs the risk of raising Londoners' expectations. They might believe that with the mayor all the problems will be resolved. Hon. Members who are Londoners know that the train system operates much further out than the scope of our own considerations. We need to convince our constituents and Londoners that under the relative powers of the mayor and the franchising director, the benefits that they will receive from the Bill and the new arrangements will be relatively modest.
Ms Jackson: I shall be brief. I have been at some pains to point out the difficulties inherent in transforming surface rail services within and without London at the behest of the mayor, for reasons that I have defined more than once. I have made it abundantly clear where I believe the blame lies. I was interested in that brief history of the Southern Railway. I remember travelling on another line at a time not far distant from the era to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.
Mr. Ottaway: The hon. Lady is not that old.
Ms Jackson: The hon. Gentleman would be surprised.
I distinctly remember the poor service that was being provided even then. That reminds me of the point that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam made about setting standards far too low for the services that we expected after benighted privatisation. I trust that I am accurate in this, but one of the reasons why there was so little money to spare for investment immediately after the nationalisation of our railways was that sizeable amounts had to be paid year on year to the previous owners of those railways. That said, I hope that the clause will stand part of the Bill.
Question put, That the Clause stand part of the Bill--
The Committee divided: Ayes 16, Noes 6.
Division No. 39]
AYES
Burstow, Mr. Paul
Coleman, Mr. Iain
Darvill, Mr. Keith
Davey, Mr. Edward
Dowd, Mr. Jim
Fitzpatrick, Jim
Gapes, Mr. Mike
Gordon, Mrs. Eileen
Hughes, Mr. Simon
Jackson, Glenda
McDonnell, Mr. John
McNulty, Mr. Tony
Perham, Ms Linda
Pound, Mr. Stephen
Raynsford, Mr. Nick
Smith, Mr. John
NOES
Brooke, Mr. Peter
Forth, Mr. Eric
Ottaway, Mr. Richard
Randall, Mr. John
Taylor, Mr. John M.
Wilkinson, Mr. John
Question accordingly agreed to.
Clause 163 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 164
Authority and Transport for London not to be railway franchisees
Mr. Simon Hughes: I beg to move amendment No. 880, in page 83, leave out line 28.
This is a simple amendment, which would take out of clause 164(2) the second category of authority--Transport for London. Clause 164 is one of those funny clauses that amends an Act in which there is another list. This is a probing amendment. It is more a question of the Hackney-Chelsea line or the north Woolwich line than of the Raynes Park express.
We want to explore whether inserting the reference to Transport for London in the Railways Act 1993 would preclude the railways in London from having TfL as their contracted operator after the creation of the Greater London Authority. I shall give one example, and I should be interested to know how it would work.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake), who looks after transport issues generally for my colleagues and I in London, has identified railways lines on which the tube could be run. An interesting prospect has just resurfaced in the press, and I hope that we would all sign up to it in principle and take it forward. It relates to the creation of something that this week's Sunday papers called the "Rail M25 for London". We could create an orbital railway by adding one mile in east London to the existing lines round London. The price would, on all estimates, be considerably lower than that for one mile of the wonderful Jubilee line extension, which is currently being dug through the constituency of the Minister for London and Construction and through mine, which contains the largest section. The estimate for the additional mile was £350 million.
It would be a good idea to have flexibility. It would be a good idea for the railway operators, the strategic rail authority and the franchising director to be able to commission from Transport for London that, if necessary and appropriate, the underground could run on those tracks.
8.45 pm
This is not an identical parallel, but I expect that you are aware, Mr. O'Hara, that in Brussels, the tram above surface becomes the metro underground. It is the same in many other cities. In Manchester, the new metro railway line acts effectively as a light railway. It is not the conventional old railway; it is run, in part, through the same stations and on the same track, although sometimes on the old tram track and sometimes on new lines. Such flexibility seems entirely desirable. Other bodies are also keen to see such flexibility.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington has committed us to supporting the idea of an orbital railway. We had a regional party conference the other week, to which he put a paper and about which, I am sure, all hon. Members read voluminous reports. My hon. Friend committed us to that project in a paper called "Capital Gains: new transport for London". It is a cost-efficient and logistically sensible way of using the different networks together.
Can the Minister give us some encouragement? We would need to delete this reference to Transport for London if we were to allow the tube, for example, to be a franchisee in the new Greater London authority in the wonderful century to come. I hope that that is possible, and that the amendment, at least in principle, can be accepted. We are quite happy to sit in a dark room doing the drafting later.
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