Rail Reform Bill published

[LNW-GW Joint]

Doesn't the potential structure of the railways in England under Labour already exist in Scotland?
Scottish government own ScotRail and Transport Scotland set the direction and budget of ScotRail and manage Network Rail in Scotland.
In Wales, Welsh Govt own TfW and set it's direction, and the Core Valley Lines are now devolved to Welsh Govt and managed by TfW.
Network Rail in Wales otherwise remains managed and funded by DfT in London. (Needless to say Welsh Govt are not happy with this and would much rather have the Scottish setup in Wales).

Scotland and Wales can tweak priorities and funding for railways on their patches, compared to other spending areas, which is a degree of freedom.
But their overall funding is derived from Westminster and set by the UK Treasury (using local "Barnett consequentials").
The railway structure (public/private with central regulation) is set in UK legislation, with some local variations.
(eg Scotrail and TfW have to operate like any DfT TOC under current legislation, regulated by ORR).

Scotland and Wales are not fully autonomous governments, though they often pretend that they are.
They also have tax and capital-raising powers for local spend, but seem reluctant to use them.

 

[dax123]

Scotland and Wales can tweak priorities and funding for railways on their patches, compared to other spending areas, which is a degree of freedom.
But their overall funding is derived from Westminster and set by the UK Treasury (using local "Barnett consequentials").
The railway structure (public/private with central regulation) is set in UK legislation, with some local variations.
(eg Scotrail and TfW have to operate like any DfT TOC under current legislation, regulated by ORR).

Scotland and Wales are not fully autonomous governments, though they often pretend that they are.
They also have tax and capital-raising powers for local spend, but seem reluctant to use them.

The difference between Scotland and Wales is that Scottish government has full control over Network Rail in Scotland and the funding fully devolved to manage it. So Scotland benefits from any increase in NR spending in England by getting extra consequential funding through the Barnett formula, for example from HS2, that has allowed Scotland to have a rolling program of electrification.

In Wales, control and funding of NR remains the responsibility of the DfT in London.
There's no extra funding to NR in Wales through the Barnett formula if there's extra NR spending in England. So for example Wales has not had any Barnett consequential funding from HS2, whilst Scotland has.
(I don't want to get into the rights or wrongs of this, but just pointing out the differences in how NR in Wales is managed & funded, compared to how it's managed & funded in Scotland. Yes, the funding all comes from London, but NR in Scotland is Barnett-ised, NR in Wales is not)

 

[domcoop7]

It was said upthread that other countries subsidise their rail networks more than the UK. I had a look but couldn't find any figures anywhere - the best being Wikipedia, which is a very unreliable source for anything remotely political and even then only has figures going from 2005 for rail generally and 2013 for France. If anyone has any actual figures I'd be interested to see.

Also whilst trying (and giving up) to find the true sums involved, I came across an article saying that France has reorganised its railway just last month. Rather than have a separate Network Rail (RFF) and TOC (SNCF), they've created the French version of a company limited by guarantee (called SNCF Epic) which has network and operator subsidiaries both owned by SNCF Epic (called SNCF Mobility and SNCF Network) and a beefed up Rail Regulator to ensure open access. Sounds slightly familiar!

 

[Meerkat]

The attitude survey linked to above. It isn’t a question of paying more tax to make railway fares cheaper, it’s being prepared to pay more tax to ensure decent public services. Many voters are in favour of this, as linked to above.

Unless I misread it the attitude survey didn't say people were happy to pay more tax themselves, and didn't say that railways were something they would be happy to pay more tax to support (bearing in mind most people rarely use railways and a good few never do (or don't have one to use))

Not sure how that is a “problem with democracy”?

Democracy is by far the best option available but the problem I am referring to is that voters realise that they can vote for more spending whilst also voting to pay less tax. Hence the somewhat crazy reality that BAU spending is chucked on the national debt to be future generations problem.

But I think we may be drifting into a general, if not ideological, discussion rather than the Reform Bill.....where the ideological discussion is about structure and private sector involvement!

 

[The exile]

Or indeed a road pricing scheme where you need to book a slot months ahead of time to get an affordable mileage rate.

That may well come…

It was said upthread that other countries subsidise their rail networks more than the UK. I had a look but couldn't find any figures anywhere - the best being Wikipedia, which is a very unreliable source for anything remotely political and even then only has figures going from 2005 for rail generally and 2013 for France. If anyone has any actual figures I'd be interested to see.

It would be a very hard task to create a “level playing field” for comparison. What is seen as “rail subsidy” in one country may be local government paying for what is their responsibility in another. (Eg who pays when you replace a level crossing with a bridge and is that a rail or road enhancement)

 

[jayah]

It is clear from various statistics freely available online. We spend less per capita on health and rail transport by most measures.

Depends what it is compared to.

As a % of GDP, which is what you have to spend in the first place, UK health spending is similar to other Western European countries, a common misconception is that it must be much less, because the service is much worse.
Rail subsidies are quite a bit lower, but peak fares are higher and UK rail staff pay is also higher - drivers in Germany and France are paid around £40k.

The attitude survey linked to above. It isn’t a question of paying more tax to make railway fares cheaper, it’s being prepared to pay more tax to ensure decent public services. Many voters are in favour of this, as linked to above.

So much of the tax take is paid by the better off that they are really saying they support other people paying more tax for those things. Nobody is ever asked which taxes and if they were it would show these are actually taxes paid by other people. The appetite for an extra 5p on fuel duty or 5% more VAT on heating bills isn't there at all.

It isn’t - albeit its’s presented as such by the government who claim we can’t afford decent public services, but who seemingly think we can afford tax cuts for a minority of high earners - it could mean reforming the existing system, reforming the rolling stock leasing market etc.

Public services as a whole are not underfunded, how and on what it is spent matters. There is a misconception that because something is badly delivered it must be underfunded.
Cutting very high marginal taxes that drive people into working abroad or into early retirement are self funding. Inheritance tax cuts no.

ROSCOs really is tinkering with the edges, their annual profit largely stems from the contracts being indexed to RPI, which is the same as many contracts. Try asking why a basic two platform station now costs about £70m when BR built them for about £1m.

 

[YorkRailFan]

The Transport Committee is conducting pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Rail Reform Bill.
The draft Bill proposes the primary legislative measures required to deliver rail reform envisaged by the Plan for Rail, including the creation of Great British Railways, a new body which will have responsibility for infrastructure, operations, and oversight of the rail industry in Great Britain.
The proposed legislative measures and policy intent were publicly consulted on in June 2022 and the Government’s response to that consultation has been published alongside the draft Bill.

Call for evidence​

The Committee would welcome written submissions which address at least one of the following questions, or make suggestions for amendments. We emphasise that this inquiry relates to the scope of the draft Bill, and not to issues relating to rail reform more generally.
The deadline for written submissions is Wednesday 27 March 2024.
The Integrated Rail Body

• If enacted, would the draft Bill provide the necessary legislative foundations for an integrated rail body with franchising powers (Great British Railways), as envisioned in the Plan for Rail?
• Will the integrated rail body (IRB), as proposed in the draft Bill, achieve the Government’s aim of a ‘guiding mind’, providing: (i) better accountability, (ii) more reliable services, (iii) greater efficiency, and (iv) coordinated growth, across both passenger and freight sectors?
• Would the provisions of the draft Bill establish an IRB with the independence and accountability to achieve its aims? If not, what amendments would be needed?
• Are the arrangements set out for the granting and amendment of the IRB’s licence and the inclusion of specific conditions within that licence appropriate?
• What will be the effect of the requirement on the IRB to prepare an annual report setting out what it has done to increase private sector involvement in the running of railway services?
• What arrangements should be put in place for scrutiny of the IRB’s business plan?
• Are there further elements of the Government’s aims for the IRB that should be given a statutory footing?

Other provisions

• Are the interests of passengers and freight users sufficiently promoted by the provisions of the draft Bill?
• Does the draft Bill make effective provision for the role of the Office of Rail and Road?
• What assessment should be made of the draft Bill’s provision that the Scottish and Welsh governments may arrange for the IRB to exercise their devolved franchising powers?
• What will be the effect of the implementation in UK law of the Luxembourg Rail Protocol? Is the range of powers granted to the Secretary of State in clause 15 necessary to achieve the aims of the Protocol?

General

• Are the delegated powers envisaged by the draft Bill necessary and sufficient to meet its aims?
• What lessons should be learned from previous legislative changes to the institutional architecture of the rail sector?
• Are there further provisions within the draft Bill that the Committee should focus its scrutiny on?

Start

https://committees.parliament.uk/call-for-evidence/3352

The Transport Committee is asking for evidence in a survey regarding the Rail Reform Draft Bill.

 

[Adrian1980uk]

Depends what it is compared to.

As a % of GDP, which is what you have to spend in the first place, UK health spending is similar to other Western European countries, a common misconception is that it must be much less, because the service is much worse.
Rail subsidies are quite a bit lower, but peak fares are higher and UK rail staff pay is also higher - drivers in Germany and France are paid around £40k.

So much of the tax take is paid by the better off that they are really saying they support other people paying more tax for those things. Nobody is ever asked which taxes and if they were it would show these are actually taxes paid by other people. The appetite for an extra 5p on fuel duty or 5% more VAT on heating bills isn't there at all.

Public services as a whole are not underfunded, how and on what it is spent matters. There is a misconception that because something is badly delivered it must be underfunded.
Cutting very high marginal taxes that drive people into working abroad or into early retirement are self funding. Inheritance tax cuts no.

ROSCOs really is tinkering with the edges, their annual profit largely stems from the contracts being indexed to RPI, which is the same as many contracts. Try asking why a basic two platform station now costs about £70m when BR built them for about £1m.

Tax and spend policy and surveys associated with it are very open to miss representation, ask someone should the government increase taxes to fund better public services, the answer is nearly always yes but I always go back to John Prescott with trying to get people to use cars less, most of the country agreed until you start saying that means you then the tune changes.

Should we subsidise rail more/less/the same, the same thing happens, all in agreement until the reality of less money hits services. As an industry though, consistency is what's required, I would argue we more or less had that 2010 to 2019 and look how passenger numbers increased.

 

[43066]

Unless I misread it the attitude survey didn't say people were happy to pay more tax themselves, and didn't say that railways were something they would be happy to pay more tax to support (bearing in mind most people rarely use railways and a good few never do (or don't have one to use))

But as I’ve pointed out nobody is going to be asked for a personal list of priorities, however they are prepared to pay more tax for better public services in general. There’s no evidence that people generally see subsidy as bad as you asserted earlier; that is merely your own viewpoint stated as if it were fact.

Democracy is by far the best option available but the problem I am referring to is that voters realise that they can vote for more spending whilst also voting to pay less tax.

The point is many voters are happy to see taxes increased. You’re now changing your argument to suggest that it’s somehow a problem because people wouldn’t vote to pay more tax themselves necessarily, but I don’t see how that’s relevant when most voters aren’t high earners. Low earners might quite legitimately vote for a government raising the lowest income tax threshold, but increasing the rates paid by the highest earners, for example.

Depends what it is compared to.

As a % of GDP, which is what you have to spend in the first place, UK health spending is similar to other Western European countries, a common misconception is that it must be much less, because the service is much worse.
Rail subsidies are quite a bit lower, but peak fares are higher and UK rail staff pay is also higher - drivers in Germany and France are paid around £40k.

So much of the tax take is paid by the better off that they are really saying they support other people paying more tax for those things. Nobody is ever asked which taxes and if they were it would show these are actually taxes paid by other people. The appetite for an extra 5p on fuel duty or 5% more VAT on heating bills isn't there at all.

Public services as a whole are not underfunded, how and on what it is spent matters. There is a misconception that because something is badly delivered it must be underfunded.
Cutting very high marginal taxes that drive people into working abroad or into early retirement are self funding. Inheritance tax cuts no.

ROSCOs really is tinkering with the edges, their annual profit largely stems from the contracts being indexed to RPI, which is the same as many contracts. Try asking why a basic two platform station now costs about £70m when BR built them for about £1m.

Split hairs if you like, but there are plenty of figures to show that we pay less than similar economies for healthcare (and I agree it’s badly delivered, but we still pay less for it):

• Average day-to-day health spending in the UK between 2010 and 2019 was £3,005 per person – 18% below the EU14 average of £3,655.

As a general point we pay less as a % national income for various public services, and they’re worse as a result. That’s what 15 years of austerity has given us (while inequality has grown massively, and standard of living for the majority has declined). People are now starting to see through that - the railway is just one example.

The rest of your post just reads like a Liz Truss speech: train drivers are paid too much due to evil unions, but ROSCOs’ making enormous profits subsidised by the taxpayer somehow don’t matter, and tax cuts to the wealthiest are self funding. Well we know what happened there.

Fully back on topic, The Guardian have published an opinion piece on the railway reform bill, the final paragraph of which I think sums up the current position perfectly:

The Guardian view on rail reform: think growth, not managed decline | Rail transport | The Guardian

<strong>Editorial:</strong> A shortsighted cost-cutting strategy risks driving a vital industry into the buffers

amp.theguardian.com

After a period in which industrial relations have reached rock bottom, the rail unions and train operators should be seen as partners in that wider vision. A new era of ambition and collaboration is required, after the scandalous dysfunction of recent years. The curtain must come down on a period in which passengers have been paying more for less, victims of an overbearing Treasury that has known the price of everything and the value of nothing.

 

[yorksrob]

Depends what it is compared to.

As a % of GDP, which is what you have to spend in the first place, UK health spending is similar to other Western European countries, a common misconception is that it must be much less, because the service is much worse.
Rail subsidies are quite a bit lower, but peak fares are higher and UK rail staff pay is also higher - drivers in Germany and France are paid around £40k.

Percentage of GDP isn't a useful comparitor though as countries with similar populations could have very different GDP.

The way to compare health services is to look at cost per head of population compared to outcomes.

 

[domcoop7]

The point is many voters are happy to see taxes increased. You’re now changing your argument to suggest that it’s somehow a problem because people wouldn’t vote to pay more tax themselves necessarily, but I don’t see how that’s relevant when most voters aren’t high earners. Low earners might quite legitimately vote for a government raising the lowest income tax threshold, but increasing the rates paid by the highest earners, for example.

Of course they do, if they think they aren't going to pay it. Personally, I don't think it's "legitimate" that someone should be able to take a greater share of my earnings than they already do (bearing in mind we have the highest tax burden since the second world war) without a very good justification.

And even if you do, there's a limit. In all honesty that limit has already been reached and breached. There's a reason Rachel Reeves will only ever mention "banker's bonuses", "offshore funds" and "private schools" because the current government has already scraped the bottom of the barrel and those three are about the only dregs left. Labour isn't - as far as I know - even continuing to push the "proper windfall tax" they were talking of last year, and the "offshore funds" proposals have been weakened as reality draws closer.

So even if voters do say they want to take more money from people, I very much doubt they'd expect the additional money was going to pay to make sure:- all trains have a guard on (for safety); all stations have a woman in an office reading Facebook on her phone for at least 10 hours a day (because a disabled foreign tourist might want to buy a ticket from Atherton); and train drivers on £60k get another "technology payment" (because the ipad it's convenient and helpful for them to carry instead of level arch files has a different operating system to the one used last year).

Indeed I can pretty much guarantee that your average woman and man in the street who hears of "more money to support the railway" simply wants the ticket price to be lower. That's it. Nothing more. Even the concept of capacity and demand pricing is lost entirely on most people (I know because I debate them on Twitter and they all basically want the specific train they get on to be cheaper, without any conception of whether that would be a benefit - whether that be a peak commuter service from Surrey or a random long distance journey from Plymouth to Newcastle)

Your Guardian article quote indeed sums it up nicely - the only things they think about are the price passengers pay and whatever the unions are demanding this week.

 

[Adrian1980uk]

Of course they do, if they think they aren't going to pay it. Personally, I don't think it's "legitimate" that someone should be able to take a greater share of my earnings than they already do (bearing in mind we have the highest tax burden since the second world war) without a very good justification.

And even if you do, there's a limit. In all honesty that limit has already been reached and breached. There's a reason Rachel Reeves will only ever mention "banker's bonuses", "offshore funds" and "private schools" because the current government has already scraped the bottom of the barrel and those three are about the only dregs left. Labour isn't - as far as I know - even continuing to push the "proper windfall tax" they were talking of last year, and the "offshore funds" proposals have been weakened as reality draws closer.

So even if voters do say they want to take more money from people, I very much doubt they'd expect the additional money was going to pay to make sure:- all trains have a guard on (for safety); all stations have a woman in an office reading Facebook on her phone for at least 10 hours a day (because a disabled foreign tourist might want to buy a ticket from Atherton); and train drivers on £60k get another "technology payment" (because the ipad it's convenient and helpful for them to carry instead of level arch files has a different operating system to the one used last year).

Indeed I can pretty much guarantee that your average woman and man in the street who hears of "more money to support the railway" simply wants the ticket price to be lower. That's it. Nothing more. Even the concept of capacity and demand pricing is lost entirely on most people (I know because I debate them on Twitter and they all basically want the specific train they get on to be cheaper, without any conception of whether that would be a benefit - whether that be a peak commuter service from Surrey or a random long distance journey from Plymouth to Newcastle)

Your Guardian article quote indeed sums it up nicely - the only things they think about are the price passengers pay and whatever the unions are demanding this week.

I tend to agree that if you asked for a 2p increase in the basic rate of tax, most people would disagree but if you asked 2p on the higher rate then you'd get agreement from everyone who doesn't pay it!

All this agreement to pay higher tax for better public services is generally others should pay more but I shouldn't because I can't afford it.

 

[jayah]

Tax and spend policy and surveys associated with it are very open to miss representation, ask someone should the government increase taxes to fund better public services, the answer is nearly always yes but I always go back to John Prescott with trying to get people to use cars less, most of the country agreed until you start saying that means you then the tune changes.

Should we subsidise rail more/less/the same, the same thing happens, all in agreement until the reality of less money hits services. As an industry though, consistency is what's required, I would argue we more or less had that 2010 to 2019 and look how passenger numbers increased.

Most people support subsidy for public transport in the expectation that other people will use it.
Freight subsidies are even more popular.

The main constraint on rail passenger numbers fares, which in turn are derived from the lack of capacity. The network is wedged with 120 seat trains, while the spending goes on bling projects like HS2, electrification and replacing mid-life rolling stock, often making only marginal increases in capacity. You could double the capacity on many 2 car Northern diagrams and XC 4 car diagrams and in 3 years the crowding would the same as it is today. Just as in BR days, fares are being used as a demand throttle for lack of capacity.

Arguably rail is one vast bling project as spending on buses and mass transit offers vastly better value for money on any factor imaginable - pollution, model shift, economy, accessibility.

 

[jayah]

Split hairs if you like, but there are plenty of figures to show that we pay less than similar economies for healthcare (and I agree it’s badly delivered, but we still pay less for it):

As a general point we pay less as a % national income for various public services, and they’re worse as a result. That’s what 15 years of austerity has given us (while inequality has grown massively, and standard of living for the majority has declined). People are now starting to see through that - the railway is just one example.

You aren't comparing similar economies by using spending per capita.

GDP per capita and purchasing power is very different between many countries that people imagine to be similar. Like football teams think their nearest large club is their rival, the UK is not a similar economy to Norway, Switzerland or Germany.

In 2022 UK spending on healthcare was 11.3% of GDP, 4th from a long list of selected European countries. It is a complete myth the health system is starved of funding or even underfunded and the same of true of most other public services including rail, where politics has allowed funding and bad organisation to become conflated.

https://www.statista.com/statistics...as-a-share-of-gdp-in-selected-oecd-countries/

The rest of your post just reads like a Liz Truss speech: train drivers are paid too much due to evil unions, but ROSCOs’ making enormous profits subsidised by the taxpayer somehow don’t matter, and tax cuts to the wealthiest are self funding. Well we know what happened there.

I didn't actually say drivers were paid too much, I said they were paid a lot less in Germany and France, which they are.

It is also true that as a proportion of the cost base, drivers pay is not as significant as many people think. Network Rail have rather more bridges than ASLEF have members. Dedicated infrastructure, used and monetised only by trains, on many routes only passenger trains, is fantastically expensive. 120 seat trains might look good to an accountant, but they will never touch the magnitude of of fixed costs. For the past 25 years the railway has only increased capacity by adding more platforms, tracks, services and costs.

You complain about austerity and then quote an article about growth, oblivious to the irony that it was Liz Truss who recognised you can't tax and cut your way out of economic stagnation. A huge amount has been wasted first on bank baillouts, then lockdowns, and finally energy bailouts. The latter was actually responsible for what happened to Liz Truss. The government finances remain stretched by the debt burden to put it mildly - railways are not about to get big increases, because the government doesn't have the money. Rachel Reeves knows that even if Ed Miliband doesn't.

Breaking out of the economic malaise means economic growth and that means that work has to pay, including for people Labour lazily regard as wealthy and privileged, until they realise high taxes are why most doctors and dentists work 3 days a week, and increasing numbers of healthcare graduates leave to work abroad where the same taxes are lower. The top rate of income tax was cut from 50p to 45p under Osborne and was indeed self financing - meaning it increased economic activity. There are still parts of the tax system with 60/70/80% marginal taxes.

 

[YorkRailFan]

#Railnatter | Episode 207: What is to become of Great British Railways?

The UK government have finally published their plans for Great British Railways, or rather, the hollow shell of the original proposals, now called the Integr...

www.youtube.com

(Video of Gareth Dennis' Rail Natter. The section about the Rail Reform Bill and future of GBR starts at 15:00.(roughly) and ends at 1:27:00 (roughly))

Very interesting look through the draft Bill, I agree on the points Gareth made such as there being no real strategic plan for the railways and no plan to fix the exhausted assets.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Shades of Beeching - GBR is likely to have a highly-paid boss.

UK ministers look to install highly paid boss to spearhead rail reform plan

Salary of new senior post could dwarf DfT pay scales in effort to speed up troubled Great British Railways project

www.theguardian.com

Ministers are bidding to install a highly paid rail industry figure in the Department for Transport to entrench plans to create Great British Railways (GBR) before the general election.
The DfT could break Whitehall’s pay structure to create the new senior post, in an attempt to accelerate reforms for a new public body managing the country’s rail transport – although the Treasury is reluctant to sanction another DfT salary beyond normal pay grades.
It comes as rail fares in England and Wales rose by 4.9% on Sunday, which ministers said was “striking a balance”, with the railway still requiring large public subsidy. Labour said it meant fares had risen by 66% since 2010, almost twice as fast as wages.
A new director general overseeing the integrated railway would sit above current rail mandarins, to mirror the setup of the Conservatives’ planned GBR – a move that could slow or hinder Labour’s own eventual reform plans, some fear.

There was a furore when Richard Beeching was hired to run BR in 1961, at a salary of £24,000 (similar to his pay at ICI), when most railway employees were paid in shillings, not pounds.
When I had a brief summer job on BR in a booking office around that time, I was told the pay rate was "180" (shillings per week, ie £9).
Andrew Haines is already paid £589K to run Network Rail.
Which senior railway manager will get the job?

 

[Phil G]

BR had advanced tickets in 1975 or 76, they were called book ahead economy returns, I bought them a number of times to travel from Chippenham to Manchester on trains that more or less guaranteed to hold connections. They were very much cheaper than normal tickets and you had to specify the outward journey date but I can't remember the other details of the T&C's but I do know you could break your journey because I did it at Crewe to go around the works. So advanced tickets are not a product of privatisation other than perhaps the name.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Shades of Beeching - GBR is likely to have a highly-paid boss.

UK ministers look to install highly paid boss to spearhead rail reform plan

Salary of new senior post could dwarf DfT pay scales in effort to speed up troubled Great British Railways project

www.theguardian.com

There was a furore when Richard Beeching was hired to run BR in 1961, at a salary of £24,000 (similar to his pay at ICI), when most railway employees were paid in shillings, not pounds.
When I had a brief summer job on BR in a booking office around that time, I was told the pay rate was "180" (shillings per week, ie £9).
Andrew Haines is already paid £589K to run Network Rail.
Which senior railway manager will get the job?

Haines is the only viable candidate if that want an existing railway person. He has the vision, cross railway industry experience and political acumen to get the industry moving forward.

 

[Clarence Yard]

He will want it but Tim Shoveller is another possible candidate.

 

[WAB]

He will want it but Tim Shoveller is another possible candidate.

He's very pro-vertical integration, though. I'm not sure that the government's plans are necessarily compatible with his views.

Haines would probably be quite good to start with. But there are few other obvious candidates for the top job, and that's something that'll need to be worked on pretty quickly. Many of the managers on their way up have been brought up on thinking of the work of NWR and TOCs as two separate worlds, which is not the right mindset for the top GBR jobs. Good luck finding more than a handful of senior managers who had the experience of the integrated railway as graduate trainees, let alone as junior- or middle- managers!

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

He's very pro-vertical integration, though. I'm not sure that the government's plans are necessarily compatible with his views.

Haines would probably be quite good to start with. But there are few other obvious candidates for the top job, and that's something that'll need to be worked on pretty quickly. Many of the managers on their way up have been brought up on thinking of the work of NWR and TOCs as two separate worlds, which is not the right mindset for the top GBR jobs. Good luck finding more than a handful of senior managers who had the experience of the integrated railway as graduate trainees, let alone as junior- or middle- managers!

bring back Chris Green.....

 

[Clarence Yard]

No, please! Chris is great when there is money to spend but not so good when money is really tight. You need the skill set of a John Nelson for lean times.

 

[HSTEd]

The real question is whether the government actually wants an integrated railway, or if they are after an "arms length" body that they can use as a scapegoat for various cuts that will be coming down the pipeline.

The former requires rather different skills from the latter. The explanatory documents tend to make me think the latter, given that they aren't actually integrating much at all. Plus the requirement to demonstrate every year how much outsourcing to the private sector has been achieved.

 

[Meerkat]

Fully back on topic, The Guardian have published an opinion piece on the railway reform bill, the final paragraph of which I think sums up the current position perfectly:

I generally ignore the views of people/articles which use the utterly inane phrase ‘cost of everything and the value of nothing’. They usually have a big box of crayons and don’t want economics interfering with their fantasies.

 

[43066]

I generally ignore the views of people/articles which use the utterly inane phrase ‘cost of everything and the value of nothing’. They usually have a big box of crayons and don’t want economics interfering with their fantasies.

Nothing inane about it - it sums up the situation very well. In any case way the industry is currently being run into ground is about ideology, not economics.

 

[Bald Rick]

bring back Chris Green.....

No, please! Chris is great when there is money to spend but not so good when money is really tight. You need the skill set of a John Nelson for lean times.

He’s also north of 80, and I’m reasonably sure wouldn’t want the job!


In terms of future GBR head - assuming Andrew Haines and Peter Hendy see it over the line I can see Peter retiring (he’s over 70) and Andrew would be on abvious candidate to replace him.

In terms of cross industry experience, three of the current NR regional MDs have run TOCs as well big parts of NR, and one of them does both now.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

He’s also north of 80, and I’m reasonably sure wouldn’t want the job!

Of course he wouldn't but no harm in harking back to the good times!!

In terms of future GBR head - assuming Andrew Haines and Peter Hendy see it over the line I can see Peter retiring (he’s over 70) and Andrew would be on abvious candidate to replace him.

Need Andrew to lead it roll up his sleeves and get stuck in

In terms of cross industry experience, three of the current NR regional MDs have run TOCs as well big parts of NR, and one of them does both now.

Alex Hymes must be a favourite for sure

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Would Robin Gisby (currently running DOLR contracts for the DfT, and close to the centre of power) be a possibility?
He has had significant roles in NR and also has non-rail board positions outside the industry.
He must be a DfT "insider", even as a consultant.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Would Robin Gisby (currently running DOLR contracts for the DfT, and close to the centre of power) be a possibility?
He has had significant roles in NR and also has non-rail board positions outside the industry.
He must be a DfT "insider", even as a consultant.

Forgot about him I suspect he would be a Tory choice and Andrew Haines would be Labours choice.

 

[Meerkat]

Nothing inane about it - it sums up the situation very well. In any case way the industry is currently being run into ground is about ideology, not economics.

Its just not true - to do their job the bean counters also need to know the value of everything ; you can't do budgeting without knowing that. Its just a slur from those who put higher values (usually with no workings) on the non cash benefits (often their hobbies - hear it a lot from the arts sector wanting the taxpayer to pay them to do their hobby)