Unveiled last week, ‘the biggest ever public investment in Britain’s rail network’ was almost universally slated. So what went wrong?

 
Boris Johnson toured the North of England to coincide with the announcement of the Integrated Rail Plan

 
The most striking element of last week’s Integrated Rail Plan was the reception it received. Here was the government committing itself to a huge £96bn investment in rail, in a programme which they accurately termed “the biggest ever public investment in Britain’s rail network”. And it was almost universally slated, particularly by those in the Midlands and the North whom it was most seeking to please and whom it will benefit most.

I can’t think of another example of such an inherently good news story turning into such a public relations disaster.

So what went wrong? The answer lies not in the contents of the plan which, although it has its faults and limitations as discussed below, overall is positive and reasonably coherent. It is the sort of plan which, had it appeared from nowhere for the first time last week, would have been received with enthusiastic accolades.

No, the explanation lies elsewhere, and specifically at the door of No 10 Downing Street. The chair of the Transport Select Committee, the increasingly impressive Huw Merriman, elegantly captured the mood on the Tory backbenches and in the world beyond. He observed that the prime minister has been “selling perpetual sunlight and then leaving it to others to explain the arrival of moonlight”.

It is sensible in politics to under-promise and over-deliver. The PM, who has acquired the sardonic nickname of Bertie Booster, has developed a habit of doing the exact opposite. He can’t seem to help himself. He wants to deliver good news and be loved. Don’t we all? But most of us manage to exercise appropriate self-restraint.

As recently as last month’s Tory party conference, he reiterated his commitment to a full Northern Powerhouse Rail, the centrepiece of which, a new high speed line between Leeds and Manchester, has now been chopped

Perhaps because he has a notoriously short attention span, he expects others to forget his upbeat promises. And people would have to be very forgetful. As recently as last month’s Tory party conference, he reiterated his commitment to a full Northern Powerhouse Rail, the centrepiece of which, a new high speed line between Leeds and Manchester, has now been chopped.

For Tory MPs, this is just the latest occasion when they have been led up the hill and down again. The publication of the Rail Plan comes hot on the heels of Johnson’s gargantuan unforced error when he clumsily tried to get his chum Owen Paterson off the corruption hook but only succeeded almost overnight in re-attaching the word sleaze to the Tories, causing a damaging by-election, and setting off a feeding frenzy in the media which, three weeks later, shows little sign of abating.

The new Red Wall Tories are incensed that they were corralled into a grubby vote to try to save Paterson, only for the PM to do a screeching u-turn less than 24 hours later, and the old guard are furious that they have now had a spotlight shone on their second jobs and may well have to give them up. The arrival of the rail plan, backtracking somewhat on previous promises, was the catalyst to explode in anger.

The Labour opposition called the Plan “the great train robbery” and the tabloids labelled it a “bet-rail”. Under normal circumstances, there is no way those lines would have stuck or indeed even been tried. Just to remind you, we are talking about £96bn of expenditure. But criticism has latched onto the original price tag of £185bn.

So let’s look at the plan. It is certainly regrettable, and I think a mistake, that the promised high speed line between Manchester and Leeds has been pulled, and this accounts for much of the local anger. It is particularly unfortunate that Bradford, Britain’s seventh largest city, which has poor connectivity to the railway network, will not now get its new station.

Even so, the plan does promise a new journey time of 33 minutes between Leeds and Manchester, down from the present 55, and just 12 minutes between Bradford and Leeds.

As well as Bradford, Leeds is seen as the big loser, not only with the loss of the new Manchester high speed line but also with the decision to turn the eastern leg of HS2 into a stump that ends at East Midlands Parkway.

I note incidentally that Edward Leigh, the Tory MP for Gainsborough, no fan of HS2, described the new arrangement as “a white elephant with a leg missing”. I am not clear if he is in favour or against the amputation.

More seriously, Andrew Adonis, the Labour transport secretary who kicked the whole thing off, suggested the decision to extend HS2 to Manchester but not Leeds means that the “economic geography of England may be seriously deformed” as a result.

There is also a legitimate concern that the continual paring back of HS2 takes it further and further away from the original concept and makes it less and less viable as a result. We have successively lost the link between HS1 and HS2 through or under Camden that would have enabled, for instance, through journeys from Edinburgh to Paris (though I understand there is some creaky bit of network north of London that could still allow that), the spur to Heathrow, and now the eastern leg to Leeds.

HS2 has been woefully mismanaged and gone way over budget. There have been far too many unnecessary consultants employed and far too many middle-ranking people paid over £100,000 a year

HS2 has been woefully mismanaged and gone way over budget. There have been far too many unnecessary consultants employed and far too many middle-ranking people paid over £100,000 a year. It is not surprising the Treasury has lost patience.

There is also some validity in the view put forward by the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, that having high speed trains running on conventional lines east of East Midlands Parkway will actually enable a better service for places like Huddersfield and Wakefield than would have been the case under the previous plans.

Leeds itself will benefit in other ways. There are promised upgrades to the east coast mainline that will knock up to 25 minutes off journey times. If that can be achieved, that is an astonishing gain.

Electrification of the whole Midland Mainline is back on the table, as indeed it should be. This was inserted into Network Rail’s forward plans in about 2011 by Theresa Villiers and myself when we were ministers at the Department for Transport before it was removed by Chris “Failing” Grayling. Overall we are promised 180 miles of new electrified line, including the whole of the TransPennine main line from Manchester to York.

And underplayed but hugely welcome is the commitment to a light rail scheme for Leeds and West Yorkshire, Leeds being the largest city in western Europe without a mass transit system. Here is another stop-go improvement. It was first promised under Blair’s Labour government, before the plug was pulled on that and all other planned light rail schemes. Next came a trolleybus scheme which I inherited in 2010 and decided pragmatically to press on with, although it was far from ideal. After the end of the coalition, that too was pulled. Let’s hope this new scheme sticks.

There is also good news in the plan for freight. Improved gauge clearance on the TransPennine route will for the first time allow shipping containers to move along this route and beyond on rail wagons. Extra tracks will double or even treble capacity along some stretches, allowing space for freight and allowing fast trains to overtake slower ones. And the electrification plans mean the ability to move freight over much longer distances with electric rather than diesel power.

Of course there are downsides to the Plan. Besides the loss of new lines across to Bradford and Leeds and the impact on the viability of HS2, there must be a real concern that opting instead for upgrading existing lines will lead to years of disruption and a bonanza for the rail replacement bus industry. The upgrading of the West Coast Main Line under the last Labour government affected services for years and turned out to be very expensive.

The CBI, in an unusually forthright response, said that “areas most sorely in need of development will lose out as a result of the scaled back plans”

The CBI, in an unusually forthright response, said that “areas most sorely in need of development will lose out as a result of the scaled back plans”. In other words, levelling up is being undermined. They also accused the government of moving the goalposts at the eleventh hour. Perhaps this was the explanation for the PM’s own goal? Still, at least the goalposts weren’t moved this time by Owen Paterson’s unhelpful badgers.

Meanwhile the Treasury, which has become increasingly concerned at what it sees as out of control expenditure on rail and which is largely responsible for the original £185bn scheme being cut back, was genuinely surprised that the £96bn plan landed so badly. I note that the wily chancellor was nowhere to be seen when it came to the unveiling of the plan.

So yes, the plan is a rowing back from Johnson’s original feel-good promises, but the improvements now unveiled are real ones that are definitely worth having. What Network Rail and the rail industry generally now needs to do is deliver these improvements on time and within budget. They have I fear some way to go if we look, for instance, at the runaway costs of HS2 and the £40m to reopen the Okehampton line where the track was already in place and carrying not just freight but until recently also passengers like me on summer Sunday services.

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Norman Baker served as transport minister from May 2010 until October 2013. He was Lib Dem MP for Lewes between 1997 and 2015.

 
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.

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