Amid all the doom and gloom, transport secretary Mark Harper outlined his positive vision for a growth-orientated railway
We have had a pilot of single leg pricing in place on some LNER journeys since 2020, and the promise is only to extend this to other parts of the LNER network
I can hear one of my friends from Liverpool telling me I am going soft in the head, but for my money, Mark Harper’s Bradshaw lecture last night (as I write this on Wednesday morning) was one of the best and most encouraging speeches I have heard from a transport secretary.
Perhaps it was because of the doom and gloom all around, all the deterioration in public services, all the rough rides that rail has had over the last couple of years that I feared the worst: a Treasury-led belt tightening, and cuts to services, leading to a downward spiral where more people abandon the trains and more cuts are made to make up the income shortfall.
Instead, Mark Harper signalled the opposite: a drive for more passengers and more freight on the rails to generate more income and make up the shortfall that way. He went further and made the entirely sensible point that there is no use in cutting services if it reduces income.
All this is an approach I have long advocated but did not frankly expect to hear in such committed terms from a Conservative transport secretary.
Mark Harper was at pains last night to stress that his approach had the full support of both the prime minister and the chancellor, which suggests some pretty effective lobbying on his part, and doubtless also by his impressive rail minister Huw Merriman.
Given the preponderance of pretty useless ministers to be easily found across the government, we are fortunate indeed to have Messrs Harper and Merriman at the Department for Transport.
The transport secretary mentioned the support from the PM and chancellor on at least three occasions
The transport secretary mentioned the support from the PM and chancellor on at least three occasions, with the intention of assuring the audience of the great and the good who were present that his approach was a government one, and not simply a DfT one. It also had the effect of boxing the PM and chancellor publicly into what Mark Harper wants to do, which may also have been the intention.
This is clearly part of the message. I was given an advance brief on his speech earlier in the day by DfT officials who volunteered the same point. Indeed, one suggested (accurately I think) that this was the first time a transport secretary, PM and chancellor had all been pointing in the same direction on rail. The best they had had before was two out of three.
That is intriguing of course, because the inside track back then suggested Shapps and Johnson were largely of one mind, but that that mind was not shared by the then chancellor, one Rishi Sunak.
The same optimism was shown by the promise to roll out single leg pricing, again something many, including me, have advocated for a long time. The frustration is this roll out is still somewhat limited. We have had a pilot in place on some LNER journeys since 2020, and the promise last night was only to extend this to other parts of the LNER network.
I suspect that the Treasury has baulked at going any further at present. After all, there are people who at the moment are buying off-peak returns or indeed off-peak singles at virtually the same price who for whatever reason do not intend to make the return journey by rail and who in future will be very happy with a single leg ticket at half the price. That means a loss of income from that passenger.
When I queried that with DfT officials, I got back the line that the growth in passenger numbers would offset that. That may be right, and it is certainly right to try, although I am surprised that this argument got past the bean-counters at the Treasury.
Mark Harper stated that fares and ticketing issues are top of passengers’ concerns, and referenced the fact that there are 55 million different tickets available. It did occur to me that there may well be even more with his promise to trial a demand-based system.
This is the idea that train tickets would be sold like airline tickets, with prices fluctuating according to availability. To some extent, that system is already in place, in a crude sort of way, with peak tickets more expensive than off-peak ones, and advance tickets priced differently according to the train you want to catch. For those who want the best price from Liverpool to London, for example, a train mid-evening arriving late in London will almost certainly give you a better price than one mid-morning. But it seems more sophistication is going to be built in.
There was also a commitment to extend Pay-As-You-Go to 52 more stations feeding trains into London which was welcome, even if the roll-out overall appears to be frustratingly sluggish.
The transport secretary was also at pains to assert that it was not appropriate for ministers to micro-manage the network
The transport secretary was also at pains to assert that it was not appropriate for ministers to micro-manage the network, and referred to a decision he had taken that day over whether to reallocate a train path from a passenger service to freight which he thought was ludicrous for him to be deciding.
He is right of course about that, though in this regard it may well be he needs to worry more about his civil servants than he does about himself or his fellow ministers. Many enjoy the minutiae and will not easily be weaned off. Ministers themselves, judging by past experience, will also find it difficult to resist interfering when something is clearly not going well.
Linked to that, he made the striking observation that when a train is cancelled, he will often get the blame on Twitter, but nobody blames him if a plane is cancelled.
Overall, he set out four objectives: one, a streamlined Great British Railways (a thin, as opposed to fat controller); two, operators empowered to attract passengers in a way that simply doesn’t exist at the moment; three, fares reform; and four, an aim to grow railfreight threefold by 2050.
On that last point, he opined that goods currently on the road would be better on rail, which is a welcome if indirect commitment to modal shift.
Freight in fact – or the f-word as one questioner termed it – actually featured much more prominently than many of us expected. Harper announced, albeit in general terms, a duty on the industry to grow freight volumes, and the creation of a dedicated freight unit.
There have been mutterings among Tory backbenchers that the creation of GBR as envisaged in the Williams plan (the Shapps bit of the title has been quietly dropped) constituted renationalisation, so perhaps they will have been reassured by Mark Harper’s clear intention to give a greater role to the private sector and to competition.
There is to be more competitive ticket selling. This has already been subject of a toe in the water in Wales, but in principle, if you will be able to buy a ticket to Beckenham Junction and a Mars bar, why not? Many might prefer that to using a ticket machine.
We also heard from the transport secretary a commitment to more open access which, although he did not specify this and indeed said the details were not a matter for him, must mean a new service or two on the West Coast Main Line.
On the East Coast Main Line, we have not simply seen Lumo and Hull Trains prosper, but LNER too, as London-Edinburgh is increasingly being seen as a rail corridor. The train-plane split is now 67-33, compared to 50-50 on the west coast.
This new emphasis on the private sector does however raise a couple of big questions. The first relates to the nature of the freedom that the private sector will have, and specifically the balance between risk and reward.
This new emphasis on the private sector does however raise a couple of big questions. The first relates to the nature of the freedom that the private sector will have, and specifically the balance between risk and reward.
It is widely accepted that the franchise system had failed even before Covid kicked in, so we will need to understand the differences between the risk-reward mechanisms that applied then and those envisaged now.
The second big question relates to what might happen after the next general election which by law is less than two years away and could come much earlier.
As things stand, the Tories will be out and we will have a Labour government, or a hung parliament with a non-Tory administration.
Labour is committed to “renationalisation” though it is not clear what exactly that means. We do know that there are no plans to touch the ROSCOs and that their plans seem to relate only to the TOCs.
At one end, it could be a return to a central body directly running services itself, as British Rail was. Or it could mean central control of trains, fares, timetables, but delivered by private companies, so a bit like the operation of buses in London. That of course would not be very different to what exists now.
In the only overtly political part of his speech last night, Mark Harper criticised the idea of renationalisation, suggesting that when under public control, the railways had seen a steady decline in passenger numbers, and contrasted that with what had happened since privatisation where numbers had broadly doubled, at least before Covid kicked in.
The challenge he and Huw Merriman face, therefore, is to demonstrate that his vision works and is the way forward, and to do so by the time the next general election is called.
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.
Has Harper got rail on the right track?
by Passenger Transport on Feb 10, 2023 • 4:33 pm No CommentsAmid all the doom and gloom, transport secretary Mark Harper outlined his positive vision for a growth-orientated railway
I can hear one of my friends from Liverpool telling me I am going soft in the head, but for my money, Mark Harper’s Bradshaw lecture last night (as I write this on Wednesday morning) was one of the best and most encouraging speeches I have heard from a transport secretary.
Perhaps it was because of the doom and gloom all around, all the deterioration in public services, all the rough rides that rail has had over the last couple of years that I feared the worst: a Treasury-led belt tightening, and cuts to services, leading to a downward spiral where more people abandon the trains and more cuts are made to make up the income shortfall.
Instead, Mark Harper signalled the opposite: a drive for more passengers and more freight on the rails to generate more income and make up the shortfall that way. He went further and made the entirely sensible point that there is no use in cutting services if it reduces income.
All this is an approach I have long advocated but did not frankly expect to hear in such committed terms from a Conservative transport secretary.
Mark Harper was at pains last night to stress that his approach had the full support of both the prime minister and the chancellor, which suggests some pretty effective lobbying on his part, and doubtless also by his impressive rail minister Huw Merriman.
Given the preponderance of pretty useless ministers to be easily found across the government, we are fortunate indeed to have Messrs Harper and Merriman at the Department for Transport.
The transport secretary mentioned the support from the PM and chancellor on at least three occasions, with the intention of assuring the audience of the great and the good who were present that his approach was a government one, and not simply a DfT one. It also had the effect of boxing the PM and chancellor publicly into what Mark Harper wants to do, which may also have been the intention.
This is clearly part of the message. I was given an advance brief on his speech earlier in the day by DfT officials who volunteered the same point. Indeed, one suggested (accurately I think) that this was the first time a transport secretary, PM and chancellor had all been pointing in the same direction on rail. The best they had had before was two out of three.
That is intriguing of course, because the inside track back then suggested Shapps and Johnson were largely of one mind, but that that mind was not shared by the then chancellor, one Rishi Sunak.
The same optimism was shown by the promise to roll out single leg pricing, again something many, including me, have advocated for a long time. The frustration is this roll out is still somewhat limited. We have had a pilot in place on some LNER journeys since 2020, and the promise last night was only to extend this to other parts of the LNER network.
I suspect that the Treasury has baulked at going any further at present. After all, there are people who at the moment are buying off-peak returns or indeed off-peak singles at virtually the same price who for whatever reason do not intend to make the return journey by rail and who in future will be very happy with a single leg ticket at half the price. That means a loss of income from that passenger.
When I queried that with DfT officials, I got back the line that the growth in passenger numbers would offset that. That may be right, and it is certainly right to try, although I am surprised that this argument got past the bean-counters at the Treasury.
Mark Harper stated that fares and ticketing issues are top of passengers’ concerns, and referenced the fact that there are 55 million different tickets available. It did occur to me that there may well be even more with his promise to trial a demand-based system.
This is the idea that train tickets would be sold like airline tickets, with prices fluctuating according to availability. To some extent, that system is already in place, in a crude sort of way, with peak tickets more expensive than off-peak ones, and advance tickets priced differently according to the train you want to catch. For those who want the best price from Liverpool to London, for example, a train mid-evening arriving late in London will almost certainly give you a better price than one mid-morning. But it seems more sophistication is going to be built in.
There was also a commitment to extend Pay-As-You-Go to 52 more stations feeding trains into London which was welcome, even if the roll-out overall appears to be frustratingly sluggish.
The transport secretary was also at pains to assert that it was not appropriate for ministers to micro-manage the network, and referred to a decision he had taken that day over whether to reallocate a train path from a passenger service to freight which he thought was ludicrous for him to be deciding.
He is right of course about that, though in this regard it may well be he needs to worry more about his civil servants than he does about himself or his fellow ministers. Many enjoy the minutiae and will not easily be weaned off. Ministers themselves, judging by past experience, will also find it difficult to resist interfering when something is clearly not going well.
Linked to that, he made the striking observation that when a train is cancelled, he will often get the blame on Twitter, but nobody blames him if a plane is cancelled.
Overall, he set out four objectives: one, a streamlined Great British Railways (a thin, as opposed to fat controller); two, operators empowered to attract passengers in a way that simply doesn’t exist at the moment; three, fares reform; and four, an aim to grow railfreight threefold by 2050.
On that last point, he opined that goods currently on the road would be better on rail, which is a welcome if indirect commitment to modal shift.
Freight in fact – or the f-word as one questioner termed it – actually featured much more prominently than many of us expected. Harper announced, albeit in general terms, a duty on the industry to grow freight volumes, and the creation of a dedicated freight unit.
There have been mutterings among Tory backbenchers that the creation of GBR as envisaged in the Williams plan (the Shapps bit of the title has been quietly dropped) constituted renationalisation, so perhaps they will have been reassured by Mark Harper’s clear intention to give a greater role to the private sector and to competition.
There is to be more competitive ticket selling. This has already been subject of a toe in the water in Wales, but in principle, if you will be able to buy a ticket to Beckenham Junction and a Mars bar, why not? Many might prefer that to using a ticket machine.
We also heard from the transport secretary a commitment to more open access which, although he did not specify this and indeed said the details were not a matter for him, must mean a new service or two on the West Coast Main Line.
On the East Coast Main Line, we have not simply seen Lumo and Hull Trains prosper, but LNER too, as London-Edinburgh is increasingly being seen as a rail corridor. The train-plane split is now 67-33, compared to 50-50 on the west coast.
This new emphasis on the private sector does however raise a couple of big questions. The first relates to the nature of the freedom that the private sector will have, and specifically the balance between risk and reward.
It is widely accepted that the franchise system had failed even before Covid kicked in, so we will need to understand the differences between the risk-reward mechanisms that applied then and those envisaged now.
The second big question relates to what might happen after the next general election which by law is less than two years away and could come much earlier.
As things stand, the Tories will be out and we will have a Labour government, or a hung parliament with a non-Tory administration.
Labour is committed to “renationalisation” though it is not clear what exactly that means. We do know that there are no plans to touch the ROSCOs and that their plans seem to relate only to the TOCs.
At one end, it could be a return to a central body directly running services itself, as British Rail was. Or it could mean central control of trains, fares, timetables, but delivered by private companies, so a bit like the operation of buses in London. That of course would not be very different to what exists now.
In the only overtly political part of his speech last night, Mark Harper criticised the idea of renationalisation, suggesting that when under public control, the railways had seen a steady decline in passenger numbers, and contrasted that with what had happened since privatisation where numbers had broadly doubled, at least before Covid kicked in.
The challenge he and Huw Merriman face, therefore, is to demonstrate that his vision works and is the way forward, and to do so by the time the next general election is called.
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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