The transport secretary is hopeful the long-running industrial dispute affecting rail can finally be resolved - but insists unions must agree on reform. Mark Harper spoke to the Manchester Evening News following a meeting with northern metro mayors on Wednesday (November 30), including Greater Manchester's Andy Burnham, about the chaos which has blighted the region's railways throughout the year.
Thousands of services have been cancelled across the north in recent weeks, and the carnage is reported to be costing the region's economy £8 million a week. Manchester's rail operators have taken a hammering in recent months - with Avanti West Coast under fire for slashing its timetable while TransPennine Express has regularly cancelled services at short notice.
It comes amid long-running disputes over pay and conditions for rail workers in the RMT union, and industrial action for the first pay rise in three years for train drivers by Aslef. Much of the disruption also comes with rail workers no longer volunteering to work overtime, affecting services at weekends in particular.
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Mr Harper believes that ending the industrial action is critical to improving railway services. He insists 'quite a lot of progress' has been made in talks between unions, Network Rail and train operating companies - but there is still work to be done.
"Unless we can resolve the industrial dispute that's going on, passengers aren't going to see much improvement," Mr Harper told the M.EN. "I've sat down and met with some of the trade union leaders.
"I've got a meeting scheduled with Aslef next week and I'm encouraging the trade unions and employers to get round the table, hammer out that deal on workforce reform, which then delivers some of the financial savings that can help make up a better pay offer. It's only really by doing that that you can get to a position where you've got a railway that's fit for the 21st century and we can then deliver some of those better services for passengers."
The government has come under fire from unions in recent months for the way it has handled the industrial action - with Labour urging ministers to do more to resolve the disputes. Mr Harper insists it's 'not my job to do the negotiations' - but says he is committed to making sure work to end industrial action can 'move at pace', particularly so the hospitality sector can enjoy its first Christmas since the covid and omicron outbreaks.
"I'd like to at least get to the point where the pre-Christmas strikes don't happen," Mr Harper said. "And there's a sense that we're on the path to getting that dispute resolved.
"But that's going to take a lot of effort from everyone, I've been doing what I can, and I want the train operating companies, Network Rail and the unions to do their bit to try and get to a solution." Mr Harper met with RMT general secretary Mick Lynch last week and another meeting with transport minister Huw Merriman in pencilled in.
He wants to ensure there are 'no blockages' to progress in the dispute - but Mr Lynch still believes the government is showing an 'astonishing lack of urgency'. In a letter to business leaders penned on Tuesday, he wrote: "By this Friday more than a week will have passed since I met the Secretary of State without an offer being put on the table. Time is running out."
Asked if plans for 'reform' would lead to redundancy, Mr Harper said he would not 'leap into the detail', but accepted: "There are going to be some areas where you are going to have fewer people working in the industry." He said that unions want to make sure the only redundancies made are voluntary.
Aslef says the key issue for its members at 11 companies - including Northern, Avanti and TransPennine Express - is securing a first pay rise since 2019 which is even more pressing amid the cost of living crisis. A source for the train drivers' union insisted that it is not against modernisation, but hit out at rail operators for failing to recruit enough drivers, adding that cost-cutting is contributing to cancellations.
'Not good enough'
Recruiting new drivers is one of the key ways Mr Harper hopes railway services can improve, particularly on the Avanti West Coast franchise. He accepts that the ongoing situation cannot continue for rail passengers.
Speaking of his meeting with metro mayors today, he said: "I made it very clear before we kicked off that they weren't having to do a big persuasion job with me about the fact services are not good enough. They obviously landed their points very strongly about reinforcing that."
Mr Harper is hopeful about Avanti West Coast's new timetable on December 11, which will see additional services return to the Manchester to London line, he believes that passengers won't see much benefit if industrial action continues. Last month, the operator was given another six months to prove it could turn things around.
"The proof of the pudding is in the delivery," Mr Harper said. "They've got a contract that runs through to the end of March and we're very clear that they have got to deliver on delivering better services for passengers."
The transport secretary says the 'real issue' with performance will also be monitored on TransPennine Express services, with the franchise up for renewal next year. Mr Harper said: "The mayors gave me a verbal indication that they are not enormously impressed - I think that's an understatement."
Asked if the operator could face the same fate as Northern in 2020, which was brought back into public control, he added: "I have to be very careful about what I say. If I make decisions about awarding contracts I've got to do those based on the evidence and they've got to be well thought through, reasoned decisions that will stand up to legal challenge."
'No bottomless pit'
It's not just the day-to-day running of railways which needs improvement though. Railways in Greater Manchester and the north have been crying out for investment for decades. It's now more than eight years since then-chancellor George Osborne promised a package of works to unclog the Castlefield corridor, while HS2 has been in the pipeline for even longer and there are calls from across the political spectrum for better east-west links in the north.
Mr Harper insists the government is committed to delivering HS2 to Manchester - avoiding the 'terrible' prospect of trying to upgrade the West Coast Mainline while keeping it running, he says - but he admits there 'isn't a bottomless pit of money'. That could prove to be a blow to leaders in Manchester calling for an underground HS2 station, with fears the planned overground station would be at capacity from day one and would hamper opportunities for development.
"There isn't a bottomless pit of taxpayers' money and there are choices to be made," he said. "If you're going to make an argument for a very, very expensive underground station - I think the numbers are somewhere in the order of £5 billion - there has to be some logic to what the return is going to be on that.
"I haven't heard a very compelling case on why that is a good idea. But the legislation for delivering that section of the line is going to be going to a select committee in parliament soon.
"There will be a whole load of petitions delivered making these arguments so, given that process has got to take place, I can't really get into the detail of that. But on all of these things, there's a limited amount of money to deliver the project and we have to make some choices about how they get spent, and there are trade-offs."
It's a similar story for Northern Powerhouse Rail, the planned east-west high speed line, with the government committed to developing its 'core' elements - but no firm commitment for the line in full, with a new station at Bradford. Mr Harper insists around 80% of spend on non-HS2 rail improvement is now outside London and the south east.
Yet the railway is still recovering from covid, Mr Harper insists. Passenger numbers collapsed and are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.
"The pandemic clearly knocked back a lot of progress on rail," said Mr Harper. He believes that if services are improved, and more people are enticed to use the rail network, funds can then go towards investing in infrastructure.
What the metro mayors said
Following their meeting with Mr Harper, a joint statement from Labour northern mayors Mr Burnham, Steve Rotherham of Liverpool City Region, Tracy Brabin of West Yorkshire, Oliver Coppard of South Yorkshire and Jamie Driscoll of North of Tyne said: "The absolute bare minimum of levelling up means being able to get to work and college on time - but northerners have been robbed of this basic right because of the chaos on our railways. That must end.
"This was a positive meeting and we welcome the new transport secretary saying he will grip this crisis, which is causing misery for millions and damaging our regional economies. But the time for warm words is over. We've had enough of broken promises - passengers are rightly demanding action now.
"We made it clear to Mark Harper that he can and must step in and clean up this mess, which was made worse by his predecessors. If thousands of trains were being cancelled in London and the South East, we know this would be dealt with as an emergency - and we expect that same level of urgency.
"That means putting operators - such as Avanti, Transpennine Express and Northern - on notice to improve. The government mustn’t reward these appalling levels of service by signing-off on contract extensions when they come up for renewal. We need the Department for Transport to set out a clear timetable for reform, with ambitious targets that would bring service in the north in line with the performance enjoyed in the south.
"We have a new timetable coming in on December 11, 2022 so our challenge to the transport secretary is clear: he must get the network running properly, deliver the full timetable, and ensure the disastrous scenes we’ve witnessed over the summer and autumn aren’t repeated. We will hold him to account on that for the nine million people across the north that we serve."
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