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Planning for public ownership
Labour’s Shadow Minister for the Railways, Tan Dhesi, on holding the government to account after its ‘betrayal’ of the north
Shadow Minister for the Railways and MP for Slough, Tanmanjeet Singh ‘Tan’ Dhesi, has called the scrapping of the eastern leg of HS2 and the downgrading of plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail “a betrayal of the good people of the North.”
Talking to Rail Director, the MP said: “This has been promised on more than 60 different occasions, by people including the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers, all of whom have wheeled out soundbites and false promises.
“There was a commitment to the eastern leg in the Tory party’s manifesto. Now there is no longer an aim to build increased capacity and connectivity. The people of the North have in essence been offered crumbs and that is no replacement for a proper integrated rail system, which is what the North deserves.
“The £100 million-plus that will now be spent on studies exploring how HS2 will connect to Leeds should have been spent on delivery.”
Levelling up The Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps told the House of Commons in November that £23 billion would still be invested to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail and the Transpennine route upgrade, providing 110 miles of new high-speed line and 180 miles of newly electrified line in the Midlands and the North. He also claimed that the new £96 billion Integrated Rail Plan for the North and the Midlands will deliver faster train journeys earlier and cheaper than the original HS2 plans would have.
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Mr Dhesi said: “I was in the chamber when Grant Shapps told us that his new Integrated Rail Plan would bring benefits much sooner than originally planned. It was some gaslighting performance by him but we are all aware of what is happening compared to what was promised, which amounts to billions of pounds of cuts to the North.
“We know, whether we are talking about HS2 or Northern Powerhouse Rail, that it is not only about improving journey times but about increasing capacity. We know that many routes across the North are at or close to capacity. These decisions will hurt not just this generation but others to follow if the government doesn’t do another U-turn and reverse this decision.”
The Department for Transport, seeking to cut spending by 10 per cent following the autumn budget and against the proposed cost savings of £1.5 billion over the next five years outlined in the Plan for Rail, recently sent letters to operators asking them to deliver cuts, albeit not a finalised decision, according to government.
Mr Dhesi said: “We are forensically going through the detail of the proposed cuts now. We have seen inflation-busting fare increases year-on-year and another 3.8 per cent increase was held back this year, so that’s still around the corner. This is contrary to Labour’s position that sees us take a more transformative view of the way we look at rail. Further cost-cutting for operators will make matters worse.”
A strong connection to rail There is a current preconception that MPs are so far removed from reality that they don’t understand the issues around the areas that they hold the portfolio on. However, Mr Dhesi can draw on hands-on experience of the rail industry as he considers how a future Labour government would deliver improvements across the network.
Two decades before becoming an MP, the Shadow Minister worked in construction with a company that was Network Rail Link Up approved, and worked on stations that included Birmingham New Street and London Bridge.
“I feel very passionately about the industry and believe that I intrinsically get it,” he said, “and I make sure that my Labour Party colleagues are in tune with that too. I am 100 per cent optimistic about the role that rail can play in the future. Rail is very much at the heart of transforming our economy and rebuilding but we need to make sure that significant investment is there in order for that to materialise.
“We have to take a long-term view, whether we’re talking about the decarbonisation of the transport system, our economy, or tackling the climate crisis.
“A Labour government would deliver the whole of Northern Powerhouse Rail and make sure we have that connectivity because east to west is just as important as north to south. We’d also make sure that the promised new station at Bradford materialises.
“We’re talking about much more than HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail. Labour would also deliver a mass rolling programme of electrification because we are falling way behind our European counterparts.”
Electric dreams The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) statistics on rail emissions and Rail Infrastructure and Assets state that 38 per cent of the mainline railway route is now electrified. In comparison, Germany has over 60 per cent of electrified routes, Italy more than 70 per cent and Belgium over 80 per cent.
Mr Dhesi added: “For the nation that pioneered rail that is just not good enough, so we have to make that investment. In meetings with stakeholders and industry experts over the past 18 months I have begun to build a strong picture of what is required.
“We need investment in jobs, skills and apprenticeships, we need to invest in accessibility, in rail infrastructure and new stations, tackle the climate crisis and make the transition to electrification and alternative power, to reform our ticketing systems and have integration with the wider public transport system so that people can move from one mode of transport to another easily.
“If we make our rail system and wider public transport more convenient, affordable and accessible, especially for people with disabilities, then we will make it a lot easier for everyone to use rail rather than resort to their cars.
“A Labour government will take rail back into public ownership, rather than making adjustments to this fragmented and failed franchise system that has had its day. We will replace that with a publicly owned railway system where we prioritise people over profit.
“At the moment the government has created the worst of both worlds with their plans for Great British Railways. The Plan for Rail nationalises the risk but privatises the profits. The government approaches rail reform from an ideological position that blinds them to the reasons why the system simply doesn’t work. We will hold this government to account on rail as we have in the past. What they should do and we will do is work towards a unified system that places the onus on quality and the reliability of services.
“Labour intrinsically understands rail. The last Labour government prioritised investment in modernising old, inefficient rolling stock. Having invested those billions, the priority of the past decade should have been a rolling programme of electrification instead of a decade of missed opportunities and failure.
“We will make sure that investment in major transport infrastructure programmes happens. We’ll also invest in a rolling programme of electrification and deliver on our promise in terms of the wider economy, with £28 billion invested in green industries and green jobs, which rail sits neatly within.
“Whereas rail accounts for 10 per cent of passenger journeys, it only accounts for one per cent of CO2 emissions. So it doesn’t take a genius to work out if you get more people onto rail, that will have a greater, positive impact on our environment.”
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