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Scotland Bill

Thank you, Ms Primarolo. I see that the Chamber is suddenly becoming a bit emptier. Perhaps it is worth pointing out that the Deputy Prime Minister is hosting a drinks reception tonight for Government Back Benchers. I imagine that hon. Members are off to make sure he does not drink all the wine himself, although after the Barnsley result he probably needs to do so. I shall return to the substantive issue of the railways in Scotland. As I was saying before I was so gently interrupted, it is obviously right that we should retain the single health and safety policy throughout Great Britain. I say ““Great Britain”” because, as hon. Members will be aware, the railways in Northern Ireland are part of the single railway system of the island of Ireland. My proposal refers only to the railway network in Great Britain. It is bizarre that, following the Scotland Act 1998 and the Railways Act 2005, we have successfully given greater powers to Scottish Ministers to do everything except determine the model of the franchise. I am not going to argue that a switch to a not-for-dividend model would necessarily be in the best interests of passengers in Scotland. As a member of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, I have worked for Network Rail. The problems that Network Rail has had in the past are well documented, and there is an ongoing issue involving the cases of sexual harassment and bullying by Peter Bennett, the head of human resources, of many of his employees. That has resulted in about £300,000 of damages and compensation being paid to employees. This is not an ideological debate; it is about who is best placed to make the decisions. I shall give a couple of examples of how the present system is not working. We have only to look at the constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. I was lucky enough to live there, in the village of Moffat, for a number of years, and the Minister will recall that I put myself forward as a Labour candidate in a local council by-election. It was a secret ballot, so I am not quite sure how he voted, but I recall his featuring on one of my rival candidate's leaflets, promising that if the Conservatives won the by-election—which, surprisingly, they did—he would ensure the reopening of the Beattock railway line. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) will know from his time in the rail industry and as a Transport Minister that that line sits on what is now the west coast main line. The Minister was also a great champion of the Eastriggs railway station, which is ably represented by my old colleague, Councillor Sean Marshall. The Minister's constituency also contains the village of Thornhill, which is in the Galloway area of the constituency. In all those places, he was a huge champion of the reopening of railway stations, yet after six years as a Member of Parliament and 10 months as a Minister in the Scotland Office, none of those railway stations has reopened. That could not possibly be because he was making promises that he could not deliver, so the fault must be with the franchise model. We need no better reason for giving Scottish Ministers the power to shape their own model.