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Question
No one in the country wants these strikes to go ahead, but even at this eleventh hour they can still be avoided. That requires Ministers to step up and show leadership. It requires them to get employers and unions round the table and address the very serious issues, involving pay and cuts in safety and maintenance staff, that are behind this dispute.
Minister reply
Despite these strikes, we are doing everything we can to minimise disruption throughout the entire network. We have invested £16 billion to keep trains running and ensure that no one at Network Rail or DFT-contracted train operating companies was furloughed.
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Question
No one in the country wants these strikes to go ahead, but as I have repeatedly said, even at this eleventh hour they can still be avoided. That requires Ministers to step up and show leadership. It requires them to get employers and unions round the table and address the very serious issues, involving pay and cuts in safety and maintenance staff, that are behind this dispute.
Minister reply
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) used a lot of words to avoid saying the four words, “I condemn the strikes.” She can practise saying it if she likes. I condemn the strikes—will she? I remind the House that the hon. Lady is a former union official. She will therefore know better than most that negotiations are always held between the employers and the unions. She calls on the Government to get the parties around the table, but they were around the table.
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Question
I find it extremely bizarre for the Secretary of State to be blamed for not being in the room when these talks, which were ongoing when the RMT called the strikes, were all about intricate, technical reforms of which we would not expect politicians to be in charge, and indeed when the RMT has said it will not negotiate with a Conservative Government. He does not need to waste his time responding to that.
Minister reply
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the cause of the strikes and about it being bizarre that the union walked out this afternoon while the talks were still ongoing, and while still trying to claim there should be more talks.
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Question
What a pile of nonsense. The glee with which the Secretary of State spoke on Thursday and again today rather tells the story. He spoke of the support for the rail industry and the fact that no one has lost their job. If only we had seen that same support for the aviation industry, which was promised, we would not be seeing the scenes we are up and down this country at airports across this land.
Minister reply
I will address the point about P&O, because the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) also raised it. I am surprised that they cannot see the glaring and obvious differences in the disgraceful treatment of P&O workers. For a start, it fired its workers and brought in foreign workers at below the minimum wage—I would have thought that was a fairly obvious difference.
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Question
What has been the monthly rate of taxpayer subsidy to the railways so far this year? What additional flexibilities could managers use to try to get a bigger proportion of services running even on a strike day?
Minister reply
My right hon. Friend is right to discuss the subsidy, which has been £16 billion as a whole through covid—or £16 billion committed, which means that we do not have the exact number yet for the amount of that which is still going towards the operations this year.
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Question
In my area, we witnessed the Paddington and Southall crashes. One of my constituents was a driver who lost his life. We were told then about the modernisation of safety inspections and it was the workers who pointed out what risks they caused. We hear today that there will be a 50% cut in the safety inspections of the infrastructure. Does the Secretary of State really think the British public have more confidence in his assessment of safety on the rails than in that of the workers who actually implement the safety inspections?
Minister reply
As the House will recall from last week, the right hon. Gentleman receives donations from the very union that is going on strike—
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Question
I think the House will appreciate that the way to deal with increasing rail safety and reducing risk to rail workers is not really across the Floor of the House but between the employers and the union safety representatives. Further progress should then come.
Minister reply
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about this. The absolute truth is that we need to have modernisation—we need to improve our railways. If we work together to do it, we can have a far improved railway and bring back passengers.
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Question
When there is an impasse in negotiation, it is the responsibility of all the partners to do whatever they can to resolve the dispute. I have been talking today to railway workers, and they are desperate to see an end to this dispute, but they do need a change in the dynamics.
Minister reply
The hon. Lady, whose own constituency Labour party received £3,000 from the RMT, may have missed the leader of her union address a press conference about an hour ago, where he made it clear that he had walked out of the talks to which she is encouraging the employers to return.
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Question
UKHospitality, the hospitality trade association, believes that the strikes tomorrow, Thursday and Saturday will have a massive effect on the hospitality industry. We are talking about not just the major employers, but the small, family-run restaurants and cafés.
Minister reply
My hon. Friend is right. These strikes will cost the railways a lot. They will particularly cost people who are unable to travel—particularly the lowest paid, because they often have jobs to which people still have to physically turn up. There is probably not a sector that will suffer more than the hospitality sector.
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Question
The Secretary of State has mentioned on a number of occasions the various different people who will be seriously impacted by the strike: the exam students; those with medical appointments; and many, many others. Given that he insists that there was nothing that he could possibly have done to avert this strike...
Minister reply
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question and, indeed, for her vote as well. When this House voted last week with a 278 majority condemning the strikes, I believe that she and her party were in the Lobby putting their position clearly on the record.
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Question
My constituents from Leighton Buzzard and Dunstable pay enormous sums of money to commute into London. Has the Secretary of State done any modelling on the impact of some of the pay rises that are being asked for and the ability of people to be able to afford to travel on the railways?
Minister reply
As Transport Secretary, I find that a lot of the time people talk or indeed complain to me about the cost of a ticket on our rail, which can be very high. It is worth knowing that one third of the ticket price is made up of the salary of those who run the trains.
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Question
The Secretary of State knows that the Government have cut £4 billion from our transport system, including £2 billion from national rail. As a result, the companies involved have decided to impose a real-terms pay cut, lengthen the working day for new starters, attack rail workers’ pensions and cut thousands of jobs.
Minister reply
I am afraid that reading the RMT brief is what leads Labour Members to believe a bunch of untruths. Let me start with the first one: a £4 billion cut, the hon. Lady says. I think I have already explained that, but that is the passengers not coming on the railway.
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Question
Meir station was announced at the weekend, and it is fantastic that we are moving to the next stage of the restoring your railway fund. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, just when we are trying to attract more people back on to the railways and investing in things such as Meir station...
Minister reply
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Here is the thing: I know the Opposition would love to paint us as being anti-railway, as if we want to close it down or we do not care about it, but the opposite is true.
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Question
To declare an interest, my father-in-law is a train driver and a member of the RMT. I am saddened that from the Government Benches we are not hearing the same loving rhetoric towards our railway staff that we did during the pandemic. The Secretary of State called our railway workers heroes.
Minister reply
I wish the hon. Lady’s relation well in his job, and I hope he can get back to it very soon. I have just explained that this Government are putting £96 billion into northern powerhouse rail, £35 billion into upgrades and more money into the restoring your railway fund.
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Question
I am sure the Secretary of State will join me in thanking the wider members of the railway economy who will have to come together to sustain a skeleton services over the coming weeks. Will he draw a conclusion, though, from the 2016 Southern and Thameslink strike, where a lack of familiarity with the Passenger Assist service for disabled passengers meant that many could not complete their journeys and in the worst-case scenario were left abandoned on deserted station platforms after the last service of the day? When he discusses contingency planning with the many train operators, will he bear that very salient point in mind, because it was forgotten last time and had to be relearned yet again?
Minister reply
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who is a distinguished former Rail Minister and knows a great deal about the service. He is absolutely right about Passenger Assist. We are expanding that service by, for example, speeding up response times and introducing things like apps and standards to make sure that people can use our trains. We will shortly complete the work that we have promised on putting in tactile pavements around station platforms to remove another potential risk of using our railways.
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Question
My mum is one of the RMT members who will be taking industrial action this week, along with many of my constituents, the majority of whom are cleaning workers, catering and gateline staff, and other ancillary roles who are not even on a real living wage and at the sharp end of this Government’s cost of living crisis. My mum and the other key workers in transport are not striking because they want to; it is a last resort because they feel they have been left no choice. A real-terms cut to their pay or the threat of losing their job altogether is far more than the wages they will lose in striking to defend themselves. Will the Transport Secretary therefore tell the House what steps he has taken to enable train operating companies to make an offer on a deal so that this crisis can be fairly resolved and the strikes averted?
Minister reply
They have actually already made an offer—the hon. Lady may not be aware—that the RMT has talked about this afternoon and clearly rejected as well. She talks about the cost of living crisis but fails to mention that it is a global inflationary problem caused not only by coronavirus but now a war in Ukraine on which this country has helped to lead the response.
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Question
Accepting that there is never a good time to strike, does the Secretary of State agree that to do so when the cost of fuel is at impossibly high levels, people are struggling to hold down their jobs and rebuild their businesses in a post-covid environment and children are in the middle of their exams shows a callousness from union bosses that should be condemned, and not supported by Labour Members?
Minister reply
Exactly. I think the whole House has noticed that their inability to simply say that they condemn the strikes is the most striking part of this debate. This will hurt ordinary people.
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Question
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. As I travelled today from Belfast to London, I was very aware of the hundreds of accents and the thousands of visitors. With all the strikes affecting so many tourists who rely on the trains to get about, what steps are being taken to provide information for visitors who do not know how a strike will affect them, and how can we do more to see an end to these strikes?
Minister reply
That is very much one of the things that we are working on through the civil contingencies secretariat. I am working with my right hon. Friend Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to ensure that tourists can still receive information through their hotels, bed and breakfasts or wherever they happen to be staying.
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Question
It is sad that the Labour Front-Bench team will not condemn the strikes that are happening tomorrow, but in Wales, Labour is going further and denying their existence. In my constituency, which I assure the House is in Wales, there are no strikes tomorrow, Thursday and Saturday—Labour is calling them “travel disruption”. I ask the Secretary of State not to forget about Wales and to make sure that we get the trains running again. When is a strike not a strike?
Minister reply
I notice that the tone of the Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople has changed considerably since last week, when they each stood up and claimed that in whichever part of our great United Kingdom they run the Government, there were somehow not going to be strikes. The RMT strikes affect the entire country—Scotland, Wales and England.
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Question
May I press the Secretary of State, as a number of hon. Members have—[Interruption.] No, I have not received any money, if that is the conversation that he is having with the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton). I want to press him on agency workers. He has been asked if he will legislate to allow agency workers to effectively bust industrial action in future. What guarantees will he give that those agency workers will have the necessary training in safety and all the rest of it? Is he suggesting that Network Rail should break the law this week by hiring agency workers, and who will pay the fines if it does?
Minister reply
No, Network Rail obviously cannot do that this week, but yes, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will bring forward legislation quickly to allow for what the hon. Gentleman calls agency workers.
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Question
Tomorrow will see yet another day of tube strikes in London, which will be the 53rd day since Sadiq Khan became Mayor of London, even though he was elected on the basis of promising zero strikes. That strike will cause untold misery and disruption for my constituents at a time when businesses in London are just beginning to recover from coronavirus. Does my right hon. Friend agree that London deserves better than Sadiq Khan and his union paymasters, and that London Labour Members should condemn the strikes, rather than tacitly supporting them?
Minister reply
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She and the whole House will have noticed that while the Opposition were singing the praises of other parts of the Union, including what they call Labour Wales—I do not think it is Labour at all, but Labour runs the Administration—for not striking, they failed to mention that their own Mayor of London has had 53 days of strikes.
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Question
Earlier, the Secretary of State waved around a document relating to 28 areas of reform that he thinks need to be implemented to modernise our railway. Has he stipulated that they must be agreed before rail operators can negotiate pay?
Minister reply
I will recount, but I think it was 20 areas, and no, I have not done that, but it is the kind of modernisation we would expect. For example, I was just looking at the list, and one working practice means that paysheets have to be done on paper, whereas it would clearly make sense to do them electronically.
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Question
My constituents will have to deal with constant disruption at the weekends due to railway strikes. Does my right hon. Friend agree that weekend services should not be an afterthought?
Minister reply
My hon. Friend is correct, and I emphasise the need for a seven-day railway as any other business would operate.
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Question
What prevents the Transport Secretary from finding solutions to avoid strikes that will impact Merseyrail services despite Labour's efforts?
Minister reply
I am delighted that Merseyrail has avoided strikes, but I ask the hon. Member to condemn these strikes which are causing significant disruption.
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Question
Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that Labour Members refusing to condemn rail strikes is utterly reprehensible and callous towards students taking exams?
Minister reply
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct in her concern for the impact on students' exam performance due to these unnecessary disruptions.
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Question
Why does the Secretary of State not get around the table and deal with the issues rather than comparing workers to those from the '70s?
Minister reply
I assure the hon. Gentleman that my response is genuine and I urge him to join me in condemning these strikes.
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Question
The rail strikes are impacting Kellogg’s breakfast club awards, taking away from vital community initiatives—does my right hon. Friend agree?
Minister reply
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the negative impact these strikes have on important activities and events.
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Question
Does the Government not realise how they smear railway workers by suggesting cuts in pay, when train companies continue to make millions?
Minister reply
The hon. Member is repeating false information propagated by the RMT and Mick Lynch; we are actually looking at fair wages for days worked.
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Question
Considering the Labour party’s receipt of donations from unions, should constituents be able to claim lost wages from these funds?
Minister reply
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point.
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Question
Will the damaging strikes continue to hurt small businesses in seaside resorts such as Cleethorpes?
Minister reply
The people most affected are not white-collar workers but those trying to support tourist industries, risking significant loss of income.
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Question
Since unions went on strike without knowing the industry's offer, is this not political game playing by Labour and its trade union paymasters?
Minister reply
My hon. Friend correctly identifies that these strikes are about nostalgia for '70s union power, not actual pay negotiations.
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Question
Does the Labour party really represent misery and chaos given their failure to condemn strikes despite receiving £100 million from unions?
Minister reply
My hon. Friend is right in pointing out that we have not heard 'We condemn the strikes' during this hour-long statement.
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Question
Given hard-working taxpayers’ financial support over the past 18 months, should Labour grow a backbone and condemn these strikes?
Minister reply
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; people are furious about these strikes which disrupt their lives despite their financial contributions.