The Railways Bill

[See update (added Jan 9) at end]

Come January 9^th, the Railways Bill is scheduled for its Second Reading in Parliament. Bristol's MPs should be well-placed to support it – but will they?

The Bill, introduced by the Greens' Caroline Lucas with formal support from a number of Labour and Plaid Cymru MPs, has been hyped as renationalising the railways.

It doesn't do that though. This Bill is more modest and very much cheaper. It sets out to bring the passenger train operating franchises, the ones currently held by Virgin, Stagecoach, First, and a fistful of foreign owned companies, back into public control.

picture from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_operating_company

Instead of buying these companies out, it waits for the end of each contract, then awards the new operating contract to a publicly owned company – thus turning the trains back into a public service instead of the cash cow they've been for the private operators.

Test bed - East Coast Main Line

Of course, cash cows don't always cough up, and when franchisee National Express East Coast found that they couldn't fulfil their contract and show a profit, they walked away (very cheaply!) from their expensively negotiated franchise. To keep the trains running, a public company East Coast Main Line was created to fill the breach. They filled it very successfully from 2009 to date, increasing passenger numbers and revenue, and cutting the net subsidy to a mere 1% (the industry average is 32%, and a lot of that leaves the country!)

Even so, the current government has insisted on returning the route to the private sector.

Public Opinion

Very positive. A YouGov survey shows overall backing of three-to-one; even Tory voters were evenly divided. It's not unreasonable to think that Bristolians' opinions won't be much different.

Party policies.

MPs in this parliament aren't as enthusiastic as the general public, according to a recent Ipsos-MORI survey – as you'd expect given the make-up of the House. But in practice, few parties have a clear-cut policy - just Conservatives who are ideologically against, while Greens are strongly committed in favour. 

SNP have made positive noises, but where would that leave their funding from Brian Souter of Stagecoach? LibDem conference agreed that public bodies could enter the franchise bidding against the private sector – though, as Christian Wolmar points out, the franchise bidding system is hugely expensive and wasteful. Labour, while famously once espousing the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, now seems frightened of any formal endorsement of even having anyone but the private sector run the country's train services. That's in contrast with Labour's position in the Welsh Assembly, where they're looking at setting up a non-profit arms length company to run the Wales and Borders services, when the franchise enjoyed by Arriva (Deutsche Bahn) ends in 2018. That's a proposal backed by Plaid Cymru in the Wesh Assembly, but dismissed by the Welsh Tories as 'Marxist'!

As for UKIP, who knows?  Maybe, if he still reads this blog, Mike Frost could tell us?

On January 9^th, the Railways Bill could be killed stone dead, or it could trigger a sea change in which passenger train services can run primarily for the benefit of the public. That depends on which MPs can find the time to be there to vote, and how they balance the pressures from their party whips, their constituents, and their consciences. We'll see.

[Added Jan 9:]   There was no time for the second reading today in the House of Commons, so it's been put back to February 27.   Meanwhile, not much enlightenment from local MPs about their voting intention.  Just Kerry McCarthy, who seems to be saying NO - she wants to keep the franchise bidding market going, but to allow a publicly owned company to join the bidders.   No word from Stephen Williams, while Dawn Primorolo still pretends her deputy speaker's role demands that she express no opinion on anything parliamentary!

Leader Column

It was something usually experienced only by celebrities and those facing trial for heinous crimes. I was trying to walk along looking nonchalant, as if the photographers and cameramen in front of me, shooting away while walking backwards, didn't exist.

Behind me was a column of local Green Party activists. I was explaining to the person alongside about our long-running campaign to get Plot 6, alongside Temple Meads, to become home for Bristol's all-purpose transport hub. And it was she who had brought the cameras out - Caroline Lucas, our first Green MP and our first 'leader' (though given our suspicion of leadership, and seeing the way some recent Prime Ministers have chosen to exercise it, our Caroline is more constrained than most by the party constitution.)

Caroline was here in Bristol on Thursday, taking the scenic route from her Brighton consituency to the Greens' biannual conference at Cardiff by way of the north of England,, London, Devon, and Bristol - and concentrating, as you might expect, on places where the Greens look set to do well in the local elections.

For once, the media took interest in us. Both regional TV stations were there, with the BBC doing lengthy interviews for The Politics Show. Even the Post, not usually one to take an interest in Green Party events, sent a photographer (it's political editor was too busy writing yet another piece about stadia and superstores). So we got coverage on ITV news, Radio Bristol, Jack FM, and the Evening Post; with (I hope) more to come, from Venue (soon, I very much hope, to be reborn) and the Politics Show.

But the biggest impact of the day was certainly Caroline herself. The fluent way she handled questions and made all the key points, whether on national or local issues, (she did far better on those than I would have done!) left most of us in awe.

Kerry and the Bill-killers

Kerry McCarthy MP is rightly aggrieved. Arcane parliamentary procedures allowed neighbouring MP Jacob Rees-Mogg to recite poetry as part of a government strategy to 'talk out' the second reading of the Sustainable Livestock Bill yesterday.

Yet again, a Friday afternoon "Private Members Bill" that made a great deal of sense and had very strong support, was lost not though argument, not through a vote, but through the abuse of Parliamentary procedure. And it's become a habit. No wonder Kerry tweets that
"We've got to sort out these Friday procedures".

Pity she wasn't so keen when her party was in power, and, as a junior whip, she was only too ready to use those same procedures to block Bills that, for its own reasons, the government didn't want discussed.

Bills like Lord Morris's Haemophiliacs Bill, to compensate victims of "the worst medical treatment disaster in the history of the NHS" the contamination of haemophiliacs with HIV/HCV through plasma imported from US prisons. That one was killed stone dead by Kerry's call of 'Object!' one Friday back in February.

There have been innumerable popular Bills killed off the same way. I know, I've often been part of the lobbying to persuade MPs to try to get them taken up in the first place.

Caroline Lucas MP was, like Kerry, appalled at the way yesterday's Bill was stopped. Unlike Kerry, Caroline hasn't got a history of killing Bills herself, or of using arcane procedures to avoid debate - the legislative equivalent of using legal loopholes to avoid paying tax. As she told this autumn's Green Party conference:

" I remain conscious of how strange, even alien, Parliament is.

It isn't just the odd language, the arcane procedures and strange costumes.

It's an institution designed for, and run by, an elite, who simply don't want to let the people have a real say in decisions. "

Kerry and the rest really need to get their act together if they really mean to challenge this shameful side of 'the mother of parliaments'.

But will it happen?

The Latest LibDem PR trick

“The Alternative Vote ...... does not give voters real power over both the party and the person elected as MP.

“Only the Single Transferable Vote in multi-member seats would abolish MPs’ meal tickets for life, and we will fight to amend this proposal to give people a real choice for a more significant change.” Chris Huhne, setting out the LibDems' flagship policy, 1st Feb 2010


Thanks to Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, together with Douglas Carswell (Con) and Austin Mitchell (Lab) we could all have had a referendum vote on it, if their amendment to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill hadn't been voted down by most MPs, including the LibDems themselves, led by Nick Clegg and including our very own Stephen Williams!

How do LibDems live with such a betrayal of promise and principle?

Caroline's amendment, which would have allowed us voters, not the MPs, to choose the voting system that we use to elect them, can be found here. Then 'FIND' 'I am pleased to move' to get to the debate itself, which is actually worth a read, though it won't add to your confidence in our democracy!

Kerry, Caroline, and Tobin

Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy complains on her blog that Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MEP was invited to speak at the Labour conference fringe meeting.

Fortunately, not everyone in the Labour Party has such a closed mind, and Caroline was warmly received at meetings yesterday of the Fabian Society and the progressive group 'Compass'.

It's not unusual for politicians to 'guest' at other parties' conferences. For me, one of the most memorable fringe meetings at the Green Party conference was addressed by Labour's Alan Simpson MP, when he spoke powerfully and convincingly about the virtues of the Tobin Tax.

It's not just the left and the Greens that support such a tax. In the last few weeks it's been backed by Adair Turner, who heads the Financial Services Authority, and by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

None of us seem likely to persuade the Labour/Tory establishment though, who clearly favour 'the treatment as before' - the banking system awash with money, along with savage cuts in public spending.