Does anyone on Scottish Left actually remember horrors of British Rail?
THE seldom lamented, state-owned British Rail was once the butt of a thousand jokes, from lack of punctuality to inedible food. It was mercilessly lampooned by TV comics. Ronnie Barker, playing one of its bosses, told customers: ‘British Rail intends to maintain its standards — but now for the good news…’
Norman — now Lord — Tebbit was once accosted on a train by a drunken Millwall fan who backed John Major’s plan to denationalise British Rail, telling him: ‘Norm, mate. Yer right. They’ve run out of beer. Only a nationalised pub would run out of beer on Saturday night.’
Another well-worn saying about breweries and the difficulties of organising social events therein springs to mind now the political debate in Scotland is dominated by calls for rail renationalisation.
Hapless Transport Minister Humza Yousaf wants to ‘discuss the possible shape of a public sector franchise bid’ as he fights for political survival amid a slew of statistics showing the poor performance of our railways.
Scottish Labour talks of a Soviet-sounding ‘People’s ScotRail’, apparently with a straight face — though these days it is hard to tell. Certainly, during its 13 years in office, there were no howls of protest from Labour over privatised rail — but the dawn of the Corbynistas has paved the way for a change of tack.
The automatic assumption by many on the Left that renationalisation would be a panacea for the railways is a denial of history when we remember the dreadful record of British Rail. Yet commitment to renationalisation is something of a litmus test of Leftist credentials. Predictably, Holyrood has risen to the challenge.
Both Scottish Labour and the Greens want ScotRail returned to public hands when the existing franchise expires, meaning a political consensus for the move is beginning to emerge. But this would entail a wait until 2025, at which point the contract is up for review, making the debate somewhat theoretical for passengers stranded on platforms listening to endless ScotRail apologies.
There is no doubt Abellio — the Dutch firm that owns the ScotRail franchise — must be held to account for its failings.
Some 86 per cent of trains arrived at their destination on time or were less than five minutes late from October 16 to November 12, down from 90.3 per cent in the previous four-week period.
It is equally galling ScotRail boss Phil Verster now gets a basic salary of £265,000 after a huge pay rise of up to £30,000.
This is despite the fact that ScotRail was forced to produce a performance improvement plan in September, at the request of Scottish Government quango Transport Scotland, after a sharp decline in punctuality and reliability.
But it becomes clearer by the day that some of the opprobrium heaped on Abellio has been misdirected and is a smokescreen designed to disguise Scottish Government failures.
The tactics mirror the treatment of former Police Scotland Chief Constable Sir Stephen House. He became a human lightning conductor for the SNP, absorbing public and political criticism of the fledgling single force — and of course deflecting it from the Nationalists who brought it into being.
By the same token, Abellio is also a convenient punchbag.
But Mr Yousaf — surely one of the least impressive ministers Holyrood has seen, despite fierce competition — cannot be allowed to escape blame for the growing rail crisis. Almost all fares are regulated by the Scottish Government, which is also effectively responsible for passenger numbers.
Transport Scotland has repeatedly under-forecast these numbers and, in spite of ScotRail’s planned fleet expansion, the service looks set to continue to fail to meet demand. In the past decade, annual passenger journeys increased by 35 per cent, capacity only by 10 per cent.
Even the current plan to increase capacity by 23 per cent by 2019 is unlikely to cope with a predicted 50 per cent rise in some areas between 2012 and 2023. There has been only one new seat for every 3,300 extra passenger journeys in the past decade.
Before Abellio took over the ScotRail franchise in April 2015, some carriages were taken out of service — which campaigners say was a mistake. Transport Scotland should have ensured they were kept on the tracks until replacements were ready.
All this points beyond corporate failures to systemic mismanagement at a political level; could any train firm perform to expected standards with one hand effectively tied behind its back?
The prospect of a renationalised railway is liable to offer little in the way of a morale boost to despairing commuters sardined into cramped, filthy carriages. After all, here is a Government that has presided over failures of epic proportions in the NHS and education — and has shown precious little commercial flair.
Three years ago, the Scottish Government bought Prestwick Airport for the nominal sum of £1 and is now pouring tax- payers’ money into the troubled business — a sum expected to reach £39.6million by 2021.
So the supposition that civil servants would do any better than Abellio at making sure the trains run on time is based on ramshackle foundations.
Mr Yousaf admits he is ‘no transport expert’ — a level of candour unusual in this administration — but perhaps it is no wonder he is easily confused, for the railways are a complex business. Train operators are funded by income from fares and taxpayer subsidy but must pay track access fees to Network Rail to use the railway.
However, Network Rail — underwritten by the public purse — is also liable to pay rebates to the operators if faults on the railway infrastructure, such as points and signalling failures, cause delays.
Trains are leased at cost to taxpayers, while the operator — in ScotRail’s case, Abellio — is responsible for maintenance and repair.
Tom Rye, director of the Transport Research Institute in Edinburgh, says competition has brought about ‘very cheap fares’ for passengers prepared to book well in advance and travel off-peak, as well as increased service frequency. Since privatisation in the 1990s, London-Glasgow trains have doubled from every two hours to hourly.
It is also worth remembering that even after renationalisation, the entire ScotRail fleet would continue to be owned and leased by a handful of private rolling stock companies which are in turn owned by overseas venture capital firms and pension funds from Australia to Hong Kong. The arrangement costs Scottish taxpayers £86million a year.
Buying up this stock for the state — and maintaining it — would be costly, necessitating tricky decisions about which public service budgets to plunder to pay for all of it.
If Abellio was the wrong choice for the job, Transport Scotland is to blame — because it awarded the contract. There may well be questions over its judgment, given that National Express won the bidding process on price, requiring far less taxpayer subsidy than Abellio — but ultimately losing out in a comparison of quality.
Mr Yousaf is right that Abellio must be held to account for its many failures. But it is undeniably caught up in the crossfire of a political row fuelled by a Government desperately trying to dodge accountability and others intent on a ‘People’s ScotRail’ that would be doomed before it began.
