General Duties of the Franchising Director

Part of Orders of the Day — Railways Bill – in the House of Commons at 8:30 pm on 1 November 1993.

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Photo of Hugh Bayley Hugh Bayley , City of York 8:30, 1 November 1993

The Opposition welcome Lords amendment No. 108, which deletes the 26-week cut-off period for extensions of consultation in respect of closures. However, unlike the Minister and Conservative Members, we fear that it will have to be invoked because the privatisation is not just a sale of the railways, it is likely to be a closing down sale of the railways.

It is disingenuous of the Minister to say that the closure procedures set out in the Lords amendments simply build on the existing procedure. It is also misleading to say that the Government are introducing a simplified procedure for dealing with minor closures. The minor closure procedure, which we have not had before, reduces the public's right to object if they are to be disadvantaged by a closure. In the past, the transport users consultative committees decided whether a closure was so minor that they had no comment to make. In future, the committees will not have that choice and the regulator will make that decision.

Nothing illustrates better the way in which the Government have approached privatisation, by making it up as they go along, than the way in which they have dealt with the closure procedures. We had a full day's debate on the matter in Standing Committee and ended up with 17 pages of legislation on the issue in the Bill that we sent to another place. A further 14 pages of legislation have come back. They are changes which were not thought of by the Government in Committee. They have arisen subsequently.

It all seemed so easy in the White Paper. The closure provisions were summed up in two very short paragraphs. Paragraph 71 stated: There is no reason to believe that the Government's proposals will lead to closures of services. But if in future, as a result of change in demand, the Franchising Authority decided that a service was no longer socially necessary and there was no case for continuing that service then the same statutory closure procedures would apply as now. In such cases the final decision about whether a service should be retained or withdrawn will continue to be taken by the Secretary of State. Sadly, those commitments were not to be. First, the commitment to the social railway has been deleted—it does not appear in the Bill. Secondly, the commitment to provide the same statutory closure procedures as we had previously does not appear. We have tighter time limits and a new concept of a "minor closure". There used to be a requirement to advertise in two local newspapers. That is now changed to one local newspaper, although in another place an amendment was passed that there had to be two advertisements in one newspaper.

If, as seems likely with privatisation, in respect of services from Seamer to Bridlington to Beverley to Hull, if that east coast line were to close, where would one advertise? Would it be the Scarborough Evening News, the Hull Daily Mail or the Bridlington local newspaper? It is not good enough to limit it to one newspaper.

In the White Paper, we were promised that the decision on the closure would be made by the Secretary of State, as now. In fact, it is not the Secretary of State but the regulator who will make the decision. In some cases, there is a right of appeal to the Secretary of State, but what we were promised in the White Paper is not in the Bill.

The threat of closure is real. Regional Railways has published a map on which it highlights a wide range of lines that are threatened with closure. Apart from the Scarborough to Hull service, there is the Middlesbrough to Saltburn service, the Middlesbrough to Whitby service, the Grimsby to Cleethorpes service, and the Sheffield to Barnetby service. Apart from Yorkshire, the Carlisle to Barrow service is marked in red on the map as threatened with closure. Other services include Barrow to Silverdale, Aberystwyth in Wales to Shrewsbury, Llanelli to Craven Arms and so on throughout the country, including Lowestoft to Ipswich, and, in the south-west, the Exeter to Barnstaple and the Par to Newquay services. All those services are highlighted as at risk.

Those lines do not make a profit, they provide a public service, and their future depends on whether the franchising director's budget, after other calls on it to make main franchise services profitable for private operators, will contain enough money to maintain services. British Rail currently has 10,600 miles of passenger track. On Second Reading, the Secretary of State said that, after privatisation, the extent of the network would remain nearly the same as it is now. In Committee, the Minister said that there would not be a significant reduction in the franchised services compared with the May 1994 pre-privatisation timetable.

I should like the Minister to reiterate the commitment that the basis of services post-privatisation—the basis of the franchising agreement—will be the same as the services set out in the May 1994 timetable. I should like him also to comment on use of the phrase "substantially the same as in the timetable". Time and again, we have asked for a definition of what "substantially" means in that context, but we have never received one. Does it mean that 90 per cent., 95 per cent. or 99 per cent. of services will be protected?

What about the quality of service that is provided to the travelling public? The service can decline quite substantially without the closure procedures being introduced. I notice that in amendment No. 90, which the Minister described as a small technical tidying-up matter, there is a specific new provision that, if a line is changed from dual-track working to single-track working, it will no longer count as a closure at all. So the service can be radically reduced and undermined in a major way, which, in the past, would have resulted in a full and proper closure procedure, and, with the appointment of a regulator, even the Secretary of State can now get off the hook.

The commitments that we were offered in bland and breezy terms in two paragraphs of the White Paper have not been met in the relevant 17 pages of the Bill that went to the Lords or in the further 14 pages of amendments that have come back to us. What does the Minister say about the failure to honour the commitments contained in the White Paper?