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Sustainable Railways

I seem to be in the unenviable position of being the only Back-Bench Member present apart from Government Back Benchers—I am ringed by a series of enthusiastic trainspotters. May I say first what a good report this is and what respect I have for the Chairman of the Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman)? She understates, in a very self-effacing way, her knowledge and command of the subject of railways. She knows the subject inside out. I served on a Committee with her some time ago and I was very impressed with her grasp of the subject and her ability. She does not resemble the previous Chairman, but she has many additional and important qualities. I share the same network as her, so I see the same problems on a regular basis. I also share her view about the lack of vision for the railway that exists, or has existed, in the Department for Transport. Fundamentally, the report appears to be about capacity. There are clearly appreciable strains on the capacity of the railway system, with overcrowded trains and an inadequate service. Common sense tells us that we need new trains and new lines. Both relate to the theme of expansion, and expansion is extraordinarily difficult for the railway system. Procurement is a convoluted process. When I was serving on the Standing Committee that considered the Bill that became the Railways Act 2005, we considered umpteen clauses about how to close a railway line, but not a single clause about how to open one. When pressed about why that was so, the Minister dealing with the issue said that it was because everyone knows how to do it; it is fairly straightforward and uncontentious. In fact, it does not happen. In my area, I suffer all the problems outlined in the report, which is why I was so keen to attend the debate. For example, the company that has the Northern franchise, which I brought to the attention of the Secretary of State in response to his statement earlier today, uses very old, possibly unsafe and certainly overcrowded carriages. It is absolutely disgraceful that mums and other people who get on at Manchester and are heading to other towns in Lancashire and who have paid good money for a ticket have to stand for long periods in rather dirty and unpleasant trains. When I have discussed that with the TOC—Northern Rail—it has said that it would like to improve matters but that it is handicapped because it requires the consent of various bodies, including the Department for Transport, before it can do so. When it comes to rail expansion, Lancashire is a strange place. We are probably now subdivided into three or four basic city regions. There is the Preston city region, the Merseyside city region and the Manchester city region. People are now looking at the connections between the city regions; for example, those that might exist between Preston and the surrounding towns and Liverpool. Naturally, they have looked at where the routes intersect and they have found that there are two completely separate rail networks, which funnily enough coincide in a little town called Burscough, where a curve was taken out by the good Dr. Beeching. Restoring that link makes eminent sense from all sorts of strategic points of view, but it has not been done because it is infernally hard to progress; there are different transport authorities, we need the consent of a variety of bodies and we need to construct something mysterious—it is never quite made clear—called a business case. Progressing rail capacity is an extraordinarily complex business. We need to tick various boxes. We need to line up a series of ducks. We need a high-level output statement on our side. We need regional and sub-regional plans, all co-ordinated and pointing in the same direction. We need funding in place, which is always a bit of a swine, and we need to present something called a business case. However, if we go to the Department and say, ““What should a business case look like? Please show me a business case so I can model one for you,”” it will say that it does not have many that it can point to, because very few people have made business cases for railways extensions in the past 20, 30, 40 or 50 years. Political leadership and direction are clearly needed, but we do not always get them, particularly when we have railway schemes that intersect between two politically different conurbations. Furthermore, Network Rail needs to support the proposal, but its line when people talk about expansion is normally, ““Well, we will do it if we are asked to do it,”” but the organisation does not take a particularly pioneering view, even though it can often see a good case for one. To get the whole thing ready is extraordinarily problematic.