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Railways

My Lords, I am not a railway enthusiast. Like the noble Lord, Lord Snape, I simply laboured at the mill in trying to run the system, as we both did also in the bus industry. One of the most important things we can focus on today is oil prices; I mentioned it in my question to the Minister yesterday. What oil price scenario is built into the planning of the airports and the railway? If people are thinking of $20 a barrel, I can tell them that they are in cloud-cuckoo land. I am still convinced that by 2035, if not sooner, it will cost £4 a litre to put petrol or diesel into a car or lorry. The world is short of oil, demand is going up and people are increasingly willing to use oil as a political weapon to get their own way. The House needs a real explanation of the basis on which the Government are building models through which they can condemn possible expansions of the railway and justify the expansion of Heathrow. The Minister was not present last Tuesday at the Second Reading of the Climate Change Bill, but the scenarios that were painted by a number of noble Lords, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, were quite frightening, and the only way that we can confidently predict providing a railway service is if it is electrically driven because electricity can be got from all sorts of power sources. I believe that it will come from nuclear power, which will give a firm basis for our economy. It almost ranks as one of the essential elements in the defence of our national life because if the oil is turned off a lot of problems will arise. We must plan for that fairly early because even if the Minister, in a fit of generosity, were to get up today and say that we will go ahead with some electrification and with the high-speed line—which I do not expect—we shall wait years before we have the locomotives and the track, get through the planning processes and weather the protests that we shall, no doubt, have on the way. Can the Minister give us some justification for the fare rises that are taking place? The people who get franchises seem to have extracted from them promises that can only lead to fares going up. There is nothing else they can do. If they want the franchise, they have to agree to increase the fares. The Government may like to shelter behind the fact that it is the private companies that put up the fares, but the decisions behind that are all made in Marsham Street or in the Treasury. The franchising process is one of the products of the system that the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, so rightly condemned. It is a very good system for keeping lots of consultants in work and for employing lots of civil servants at the Department for Transport and it is well subscribed to by paint manufacturers because often the only new thing on a train is the coat of paint and otherwise it is the same service as before. Why can we not have a franchising process that is longer, demands that the franchisee invests money— because that is presumably what the Government are most short of—and contains a clause whereby if somebody does a good job they can put that towards their franchise bid? The people who used to run Midland Mainline recently lost their franchise, but it was voted the best railway company in the country. It is ironic and ridiculous that the system should be so. It is not beyond the wit of man to invent a franchising process that gets lots of investment, steadily improves performance and serves the country far better than the crazy system designed by OPRAF in the run-up to privatisation. The Government need to be taken to task because they have not got their mind around this major problem. I am quite happy for people who do not live up to their promises to lose their franchise and to do so quickly, but if somebody is doing a good job and is investing money, I cannot see that the public interest is in any way served by terminating the franchise. One of my noble friends mentioned that we have been told four times that we will get 1,300 new carriages. It may be that we will hear that a few more times before some orders are placed. When are they going to be placed? Many franchises around the country are absolutely desperate for more capacity. I could mention the Great Northern franchise and the First Great Western franchise, and could take the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, to many other places where that is a major problem. If the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, says that he does not have the money to buy new rolling stock, or that the rolling-stock companies will not lease it, or that they are so concerned with being brought before the Competition Commission that they will not lease it, there seems to be nothing to prevent the Government leasing it. You do not actually have to pay; you pay an annual rental charge. A market that is a sclerotic as the rolling-stock market in this country wants a good bit of old fashioned competition. The Government should buy 200 or 300 new trains and put them on the railway. Let us see what that does to the ridiculous prices that are being charged for the Pacer trains that are about to be reintroduced to Devon and Cornwall. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, might agree that introducing in 2007 what were Leyland National buses, which I think the bus industry got rid of 25 years ago, is absolutely disgraceful. The Government might also consider safety regulation, which is almost strangling parts of the railway. It has been put together in bits, and because of it, we close two lines of railway on a Sunday. There used to be single-line working on the railway for which the noble Lord, Lord Snape, and I used to work. Much of our railway is now signalled for two-way working, but we do not use the second way. If the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, cannot tell me now, will he find out later why we are not using it? We did not go around killing lots of people; that is a complete misinterpretation of the facts. When the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, answered a Question from me on Monday, he cited, "““the likelihood that, on current projected trends, over the next decade there will be an increase in the number of rail passengers of about 30 per cent””.—[Official Report, 26/11/07; col. 1026.]" He does know, does he not, that we are at present getting more than 6 per cent? If, at the end of 10 years, one trajectory is at 3 per cent and another is at 6 per cent, there will be a very big gap that will be filled with dissatisfied, disaffected customers, despite the eulogy started by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who said that things were getting better. Doubtless they are in some places—they are certainly getting better for freight, for which British Rail had almost a death wish. However, it is the satisfaction of customers to which the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, should turn his attention, because in the end the customers are voters who will get very cross with him and his Government if something more positive does not come forward.