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Passengers,
not profit, should be at the heart of Britain’s railway - Andy McDonald MP
Andy
McDonald MP, Shadow Secretary of State for
Transport, speaking at Labour Party Conference 2016, said:
Conference,
it’s an honour to serve our great party and be here today to talk to you about
Labour’s transport policy.
I’d like
to start by paying tribute to all of those in our Party who do so much to
improve transport in the UK.
Our
members, who, through the Transport Policy Commission, are helping to shape and
inform our policies from the grassroots up.
Our
colleagues in Local Government who continue to deliver transport services in
the face of an onslaught against their budgets are showing that Labour values
are essential in protecting and transforming our communities.
From
MeryseyTravel here in this great city of Liverpool, to TfL under Sadiq Khan,
who has already done more on transport for Londoners in a few months than his
predecessor managed in eight years.
And, of
course, colleagues in Parliament, both in the Commons and the Lords, are
holding the Government to account, making invaluable contributions from both
the Front and Back Benches.
It’s when
we stand together across our great movement that we win the ability to
transform for the better, the country we love.
And
Conference, stand together we must, because the challenges facing the nation
are huge and only a Labour Government will ever address them.
Comrades,
we need to have an understanding and agreement about what Transport is for.
Public
Transport has increasingly become detached from the concept of Public Service.
Too often
it is seen as a series of opportunities to profit from an essential service
that no government can let fail.
Colleagues,
I fundamentally challenge that entire premise.
Transport
surely has to be about the safe and efficient transport of people and goods,
and at its heart, our transport systems should have fairness, value for money,
quality and reliability of service and, crucially Conference, accessibility for
all.
Sadly,
those imperatives in the drive for profits and dividends are all too often
absent.
What do we
see instead?
Infrastructure
work repeatedly delayed and over budget; unaffordable fares, with the cost of
bus and rail tickets rising way above inflation; deliberately complex and
punitive fare structures.
Over 2,400
hundred local authority supported bus routes withdrawn or downgraded.
A third of
our local roads in need of urgent attention yet the Government cuts the funds
to fix them and fails to shift more freight from road to rail.
At a time
when we need to be encouraging people to take up environmentally friendly modes
of transport, funding for cyclists is set to plummet by 70 per cent.
And
despite the fact that so many people with disabilities rely on public
transport, the “Access for All” budget has been slashed by 40 per cent.
And it is
no surprise that under this chaotic Tory Government, HS2’s prospects for
improving connections between the north and south seem more distant than ever.
And we
must be clear that devolution of rail services in England is not about devolving
cuts or at the expense of an integrated national network, which Labour believes
should be publicly owned.
Conference,
those who we seek to represent deserve better and we, the Labour Party, must
provide the alternative this country needs.
Following
the vote to leave the EU, we need extra airport capacity more than ever, yet
the Government’s dithering and internal bickering is costing our economy
millions upon millions of pounds.
Aviation
and railways attract a great deal of attention but its Britain’s buses which
are the most used form of public transport, with over four and a half billion
journeys made last year.
But the
Conservatives have cut the grant for bus services by 20 per cent and since
deregulation in the 1980s, commercial bus providers have no incentives to
provide those services, often to more isolated communities that whilst socially
vital, are dismissed as commercially unprofitable.
The Bus
Services Bill, will soon have its second reading in the House of Commons. I
must pay tribute here to my friend and colleague, Daniel Zeichner MP, who has
been doing a sterling job along with our colleagues in the Lords and there is
much we can support in this Bill.
We want
local communities to have control over their bus services.
But we
want to ensure that every area that wants to has power over running their bus
services – not just mayoral combined authorities.
We’ll also
be fighting the proposal to ban English local authorities from forming
municipal bus companies which have proved to be so very successful.
As for our
railways, look at Southern trains - officially the country’s worst rail service
but a nice little earner for Go-Ahead Group, which registered a £99million
profit whilst thousands of trains were cancelled or delayed with the approval
of Tory Ministers.
Passengers
suffering unbearable overcrowding.
Parents
having to say goodnight to their children by phone from a train carriage.
And people
losing their jobs, unable to arrive at work on time.
Is the
company stripped of the contract?
No, it
gets the total support of the Government to hack away at services and jobs, and
the benefit of £20million more taxpayers’ money for good measure.
They won’t
be stripped of the contract no matter how bad services get because the
Government is more interested in defending train companies than defending
passengers, taxpayers and staff - and they have the nerve to describe us as
ideological.
As East
Coast showed us we can have a successful railway run in the public sector.
East
Coast, placed in state ownership after the private operator walked away,
delivered over £1billion to the Treasury, kept fares down, had record passenger
satisfaction and engaged the workforce with unparalleled success before the
line was re-privatised.
What we
have now is a government clinging to a failed model for purely ideological
reasons, and passengers and taxpayers are being made to pay an ever increasing
price.
We are
clear about this. We’ll put an end to Britain’s rip-off railways, so as private
contracts expire, the routes will return to public ownership so profits can be
re-invested to improve services and hold fares down.
Because
passengers, not profit, should be at the heart of Britain’s railway.
Let us
have the same confidence as other countries like the Netherlands, Germany and
France.
Labour
will take back control of our railways.
There is
much to do across the transport sector.
So
Conference, let us shape our transport networks and services, and secure a
genuinely integrated, high-quality, socially just, greener and cleaner
transport system that brings together families and friends and meets the needs
of business.
The
transport system under Labour would not only bring economic growth and
development but would improve social mobility and cohesion for the benefit of
all our people.
Only a
Labour Government can make this happen.
Let’s get
to it.
ENDS