Why does this current U.K. Government hate rail so much.

[LNW-GW Joint]

For as long as I can remember, all Governments of all (both) colours have mistreated railways (and, indeed, public transport generally) whilst supporting ever increasing car use and associated tarmac use to a greater or lesser degree. Let us not forget: Harold Wilson (Lab) continued apace with the Beeching plan despite manifesto promises to halt the closures. I think I'm right in saying that Barbara Castle (as the minister with final approval of rail closures) was responsible for the loss of more rail miles than anyone else. Absolutely none of them have ever given non-car use the level of encouragement (= support) that it (IMO) ought to have. I seriously doubt anything will change after the next GE, irrespective of who sits in #10.

The coalition government (Con/LibDem 2010-15) did authorise Crossrail and GW/NW/E&G electrification, and took the HS2 Phase 1 Bill to parliament.
We even had the Electric Spine, TP wiring and a full E-W plan in 2012.
All this despite the impact of the 2008 financial crash and "austerity" in public spending.
The railway made a hash of much of this largesse, so the generosity has been withdrawn until costs are under control.
Not helped by Covid and other "events" damaging the public purse.

 

[yorksrob]

Yet if there was an election next week, the Conservatives would get in.

On what planet would this be ?

 

[zwk500]

On what planet would this be ?

Well, about 150 tories would get in

We even had the Electric Spine

Did thr Electric spine even make it to White Paper?

The Tory party has squandered a lot of this expenditure on such money-go-round wheezes as rolling stock leasing, so they are primarily to blame for their own policy failures.

I know leasing is a favourite hobby horse for you but the costs are pretty marginal if you take into account the railway would have needed to finance the debt somehow anyway. The actual place that money has been squandered (by both parties it has to be said) is ministers getting way too involved in operational decisions and constantly changing project scopes.

The problem is, it's the revenue expenditure that's being cut on the railway, meaning a deterioration in day to day services.

What do you mean by 'revenue expenditure'?

 

[railfan99]

The problem is, it's the revenue expenditure that's being cut on the railway, meaning a deterioration in day to day services.

Apologies for being 'thick' but can you explain the term 'revenue expenditure'?

Do you mean 'recurrent expenditure on revenue protection officers, fare barriers/gates, booking clerks and ticket machines' or something else?

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Didn't Labour initiate the HS2 project? And the West Coast Modernisation Project.

WCRM was committed by the John Major government as part of the railway privatisation process.
It guaranteed work for Railtrack and scoped the Intercity West Coast franchise won by Virgin in 1997.
Labour did invent the SRA which brought the project under control after Railtrack bungled the upgrade and became insolvent.

Labour (Brown/Adonis) initiated the HS2 project in 2009, but all the heavy lifting was done by the following Con/LibDem government.
The project has had cross-party backing since the beginning.

 

[yorksrob]

Apologies for being 'thick' but can you explain the term 'revenue expenditure'?

Do you mean 'recurrent expenditure on revenue protection officers, fare barriers/gates, booking clerks and ticket machines' or something else?

I mean day to day expenditure on the running of the railway, as opposed to expenditure on capital enhancements.

 

[Falcon1200]

Does anyone know what Starner and Labour would bring to the industry

The Leeds leg of HS2 would be restored for one.

Not so sure about that - Remember which party cancelled the Channel Tunnel in 1974, after construction had started? It was not the Tories!

 

[JamieL]

Not so sure about that - Remember which party cancelled the Channel Tunnel in 1974, after construction had started? It was not the Tories!

If you have to go back half a century to find an example, it is almost certainly not a good pointer.

 

[yorksrob]

I know leasing is a favourite hobby horse for you but the costs are pretty marginal if you take into account the railway would have needed to finance the debt somehow anyway. The actual place that money has been squandered (by both parties it has to be said) is ministers getting way too involved in operational decisions and constantly changing project scopes.

Both are a Government policy choice.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Did the Electric spine even make it to White Paper?

It did get into the CP5 HLOS and SoFA, meaning there was money allocated to NR for its development (not delivery in CP5).
It also included conversion of 3rd rail to OHLE between Basingstoke and Southampton.
I don't think NR ever addressed the project seriously, and the GW wiring experience killed it off.
We were left with MML electrification (initially cut back to Corby, and now extended to Wigston), and a non-wired EWR branch line between Oxford and Bletchley.

 

[Falcon1200]

If you have to go back half a century to find an example, it is almost certainly not a good pointer.

Fair enough, but others on here have gone back to the early 1960s to show how much the Tories apparently hate the railways!

It would be instructive to see a list of major rail improvements made under the last Labour Government (1997-2010) compared with those of the Conservatives since then?

 

[mike57]

I dont think 'hate' is the right word, but I dont think they like railways, and some politicians would be pleased if they didnt have to deal with the railways, the reasons:

• The railways are seen as a 'banana skin' and I think that is why some politicians like the system of frachises carrying out DfT instructions, it means they can distance themselves
• Railways require long term investment, longer than the political cycle, and this goes against the 'lets bin everything the opposition has done, because it must be bad' mindset that seems to be prevalent in both main parties
• The public are still very wary of 'cutbacks' even those who hardly ever use rail, this came about as a result the cuts initiated by the Beeching report. The fact that the incoming Labour government failed to keep its promise with respect to slowing/stopping closures mean that the public are rightly cycnical of politicians.
• Even after 60 years the sceptre of 'Beeching' is still around, and people who were not around during the Beeching era are aware of the issues.
• Recent infrastructure projects have gone way over budget, and this is very unhelpful with respect to promoting railways, any undertaking, from a simple household to "UK Ltd" needs to be able to budget reasonably accurately. The railways need to improve in this respect if they want investment.
• Costs have risen much faster than inflation, this needs to stop, and ways found of delivering improvements at more moderate cost

I also dont think HS2 is helping, yes we probably want it, but as a country can we afford it at the moment? I suspect if work had not started to the level it has it would have been canned at the last spending review

I dont believe the current privatisation model is working, as is evidenced by the drip drip of OLR takeovers. The rolling stock leasing system also seems flawed, and again I dont believe it is delivering value for money to the railways.

Just my opinion, I accept that others may disagree. In general I would say I am a 'conservative' and in general support private enterprise over state control, but on the railways in my opinion it has failed big time.

So if I was apolitician I would see railways as a poisoned chalice

 

[zwk500]

I mean day to day expenditure on the running of the railway, as opposed to expenditure on capital enhancements.

Usually referred to as Operational Expenditure, or OpEx, versus Capital Expenditure or CapEx.

Both are a Government policy choice.

Which one is a government choice, but even if BREL had been building them the money to pay for design, materials and labour would have needed to be borrowed. Manufacturers don't charge millions of pounds a vehicle for a laugh.

 

[yorksrob]

Usually referred to as Operational Expenditure, or OpEx, versus Capital Expenditure or CapEx.

Which one is a government choice, but even if BREL had been building them the money to pay for design, materials and labour would have needed to be borrowed. Manufacturers don't charge millions of pounds a vehicle for a laugh.

However, we would have still had a lengthy period of running rolling stock at depreciated value.

 

[43066]

I really don't want to get into yet another DOO argument, but the reality is that a one off spend on DOO installation would free the railway from employing large numbers of very expensive staff for the rest of time.

In the long term DOO would save vast sums of money given it would allow substantial reductions in railway headcount (on the order of 'thousands' of staff according to the RMT, at the time of McNulty there were 6,800).

It isn’t a DOO argument in the traditional sense.

It’s small numbers of staff in the scheme of things, and would involve a disproportionately large expenditure with an extremely long payback period to get rid of them - and all this at a time when the government is scaling back capital spending budgets.

Your stance perfectly mirrors the government’s: an irrational preoccupation with staffing costs over and above other areas of rail railway expenditure.

This ideological opposition to unions means you’re are happy to squander public money attacking Ts and Cs, while simultaneously complaining that too much is spent on the railway!

 

[zwk500]

However, we would have still had a lengthy period of running rolling stock at depreciated value.

And then an asset that's a massive liability we couldn't shift sitting in sidings the public railway would be paying to maintain (directly or indirectly) as we had to get rid of it.

Don't get me wrong, there's pros and cons to both sides, but let's not kid ourselves that Leasing the trains is rinsing us dry.

If purchasing big equipment outright by credit was so much better, why do pretty much all large companies lease so much of their kit from printers to vehicle fleets to their offices?

 

[43066]

If purchasing big equipment outright by credit was so much better, why do pretty much all large companies lease so much of their kit from printers to vehicle fleets to their offices?

Because commercial asset leasing generally isn’t done in an artificial market with ridiculously high barriers to entry, lack of real competition and and almost zero commercial risk. However that is exactly the way the system was set up on the railway.

 

[stuu]

This I think is probably quite close to how things are.

Whilst the NHS seems sacred, in terms of welfare it’s a bit more nuanced. Many voters *don’t* want their tax funding excess welfare, however governments run frit because they know this is still likely to be a politically charged issue - not to mention that cutting certain types of welfare would likely cause significant cohesion issues.

The Welfare spending is almost entirely on the elderly as pensions, housing benefit and the like. The alleged workshy are a rounding error - total unemployment benefits account for a low single digit percentage.

The problem is that so much expenditure is on things the vast majority think sacrosanct: health, education and pensions, that any savings have to come out of the rest of the budget which includes railways. There were warnings thirty years ago about the effect of an ageing population and we did nothing about it. We are where we are now because of that collective failure. We need to accept higher taxes, or far worse services

If purchasing big equipment outright by credit was so much better, why do pretty much all large companies lease so much of their kit from printers to vehicle fleets to their offices?

Because there are enormous tax benefits. Leasing equipment is opex and can be accounted against tax

 

[Tetchytyke]

I know leasing is a favourite hobby horse for you but the costs are pretty marginal if you take into account the railway would have needed to finance the debt somehow anyway.

It’s only in the last few years that we’re seeing new trains across the board, before then we were paying huge leasing fees to ROSCOs for trains that were bought and paid for by the taxpayer long ago. Sale-and-leaseback is nothing more than asset stripping. Always has been, always will be.

As for the more recent lease-and-maintain, it isn’t just the cost of the debt, which is higher on commercial markets.

If the government bought the trains outright then the cost is the depreciation of the asset and the interest charge. But at the end of it all you have an asset and no further charges.

As we’re on a lease we have the cost of the depreciation- which is likely accelerated to account for the fact the train won’t have a guaranteed lease after x years- as well as the interest charge, plus a profit margin, plus extras to account for risk. And, at the end of it, you’re still paying the same rent for a fully depreciated train as you were for a brand new one.

I can- just about- see the point of build-lease-and-maintain. But it depends. Build-lease-and-maintain has another name: PFI. Which went well and delivered real value…not.

It would be instructive to see a list of major rail improvements made under the last Labour Government (1997-2010) compared with those of the Conservatives since then?

I can’t think of any major improvements that weren’t planned and started before 2010. Even shiny white elephants like HS2 started before then.

 

[zwk500]

If the government bought the trains outright then the cost is the depreciation of the asset and the interest charge. But at the end of it all you have an asset and no further charges.

Except for the charges to store, maintain, or dispose of the asset. Modern trains aren't like Mk1s, you can't just leave them in a yard over the winter and then send somebody with a 47 to drag them out for a control relief on a busy saturday. Even the Mk3s needed to be regularly to keep the batteries and electrics from degrading.

 

[Tetchytyke]

If purchasing big equipment outright by credit was so much better, why do pretty much all large companies lease so much of their kit from printers to vehicle fleets to their offices?

Because it’s more tax efficient.

There’s an argument it’s better for short term consumables- Network Rail no doubt lease their vans and cars and that makes sense. For long term assets, though, I really don’t see the benefit.

Except for the charges to store, maintain, or dispose of the asset.

Why would you need to store the asset? You’d still be using it until it was time to turn it into baked bean cans.

That’s the other thing with the current ROSCO situation, it’s as cheap to hire a new 331 as it is to hire an old 321. So perfectly serviceable trains, with plenty of life left in them, are going off for scrap. That all adds waste to the industry, and waste costs money.

 

[nw1]

I agree re individualism. Many politicians I've known couldn't understand how I can live in inner Melbourne without a car, and how my family is more materially affluent for instead using mass transit.

If Melbourne is anything like any other typical large western city, very easily I'd have thought! (Caveat: not visited, but am semi-aware of the Melbourne public transport system).

Even in the country noted for the poorest public transport relative to the wealth of the country, the USA, I think it'd be possible to live in many of the large cities without a car, so it's hard to understand why politicians would have that view.

 

[GardenRail]

Not so sure about that - Remember which party cancelled the Channel Tunnel in 1974, after construction had started? It was not the Tories!

Labour didn't even bring trams to Leeds, let alone HS2.

 

[MattRat]

I think OP ignores the bigger picture. Everything is being stripped back, not just the railways. One might even say it comes across as a scorched earth tactic, to leave Labour with nothing but a mess they can't clean up, so the Conservatives can come back later by bashing Labour for not fixing the problem they made.

 

[Western Lord]

Marples has been mentioned earlier in the thread, and those who were not around at the time might have the impression that he was anti-rail and pro-car and was therefore the darling of the car lobby. Nothing could be further from the truth as this piece written by the editor of Motor Sort magazine in the run up to the 1964 General Election shows:-
"How many people will refrain from voting on polling day, fed up with inadequate roads, savage taxation and continual persecution, remains to be seen. Vote for the Tories and you vote for Marples. Yet if the Conservative Party won't look after the car-owning class who will?"
Not for nothing were M1 overbridges emblazoned with the slogan "Marples must go"!
The problem for rail is that most people don't use trains but expect them to be there for when the car breaks down, without being very interested in paying the costs. Politicians know that there's not many votes in being pro-rail and in some cases, such as HS2, it may be a vote loser locally.

 

[RailWonderer]

WCRM was committed by the John Major government as part of the railway privatisation process.
It guaranteed work for Railtrack and scoped the Intercity West Coast franchise won by Virgin in 1997.
Labour did invent the SRA which brought the project under control after Railtrack bungled the upgrade and became insolvent.

Labour (Brown/Adonis) initiated the HS2 project in 2009, but all the heavy lifting was done by the following Con/LibDem government.
The project has had cross-party backing since the beginning.

I’m glad there’s some objectivity here and not the simple ‘Labour and BR were all good, Tories and Railtrack all bad’ line.

If the government bought the trains outright then the cost is the depreciation of the asset and the interest charge. But at the end of it all you have an asset and no further charges.

Are you seriously saying the govt should own rolling stock outright? They would have to borrow way more to spend on purchasing. Leasing is more convenient, same principle why vehicle PCP accounts for 86% of new car purchases.

Marples has been mentioned earlier in the thread, and those who were not around at the time might have the impression that he was anti-rail and pro-car and was therefore the darling of the car lobby. Nothing could be further from the truth as this piece written by the editor of Motor Sort magazine in the run up to the 1964 General Election shows:-
"How many people will refrain from voting on polling day, fed up with inadequate roads, savage taxation and continual persecution, remains to be seen. Vote for the Tories and you vote for Marples. Yet if the Conservative Party won't look after the car-owning class who will?"
Not for nothing were M1 overbridges emblazoned with the slogan "Marples must go"!
The problem for rail is that most people don't use trains but expect them to be there for when the car breaks down, without being very interested in paying the costs. Politicians know that there's not many votes in being pro-rail and in some cases, such as HS2, it may be a vote loser locally.

No government has been very pro car either - more road building has always been rejected on the fact it would increase congestion rather than ease it. They take the opposite view for railways - HS2 = more capacity. I think they are neither pro rail or pro car. Plus a lot of car policy is down to local councils anyway regarding road maintenance not the government in power.

 

[HSTEd]

It’s small numbers of staff in the scheme of things, and would involve a disproportionately large expenditure with an extremely long payback period to get rid of them - and all this at a time when the government is scaling back capital spending budgets.

6,800 staff is more than 10% of all TOC employed staff - even before reductions in staffing from booking office closures go through.
It is something approaching 6% of the entire industry employment of 115,000.

It's hardly a small number of staff. It's more than treble the much-discussed Network Rail maintenance strength reduction!

Employing 6,800 train guards is going to cost you something on the order of £250m per year, possibly more once all training and costs of employment are included.

Given that modern DOO methods require increasingly little in the way of trackside infrastructure, it is extremely difficult to believe that the payback period will be "extremely long" given the definition of extremely long we use in railway infrastructure.

Especially since trains tend to be delivered structurally prepared for DOO, in that the mounting points for the equipment is already available.

EDIT:

Ultimately I don't think we are going to agree on this, so I don't think there is any point continuing this discussion any further.

EDIT #2:

RSSB published a report on DOO that gives specimen costs for deployment of various technologies.

Train-mounted systems are estimated at £20,000 per car and £50,000 per cab.
There are only 16,000 rail vehicles in passenger service in the UK, so even if every vehicle is assumed to contain a cab and every vehicle is assumed to not be already fitted, the cost is only about £1.1bn.

There are a few years of escalation in costs since then, but given the known cost of paying all those guards I don't think it is tenable to say that it is a "very long payback period".

 

[WAO]

The real answer to the original question is that the Conservatives actually hate their own handling of the railways: the creation of Railtrack as a property company with a minor engineering interest devoid of long term policy; the complex franchising, the arms length track repair and infrastructure maintenance units, the hidden costs of leasing rather than BR's amortising over 10years and above all the inflated costs to the treasury.

The railway at all levels did however fight back; doubling usage and innovating, becoming much safer all round, so not all bad by any means.

What is needed is not a re-nationalised quasi-government department run by a modern day Lord Hurcomb, constantly at war with his No 2 but a proper, pre-grouping railway with a general manager, chief engineer and commercial manager, all responsible to a competent board committed to a cost-effective railway, answerable to its shareholder and regulator, HMG.

Dream on..

WAO

 

[43066]

6,800 staff is more than 10% of all TOC employed staff - even before reductions in staffing from booking office closures go through.
It is something approaching 6% of the entire industry employment of 115,000.

It's hardly a small number of staff. It's more than treble the much-discussed Network Rail maintenance strength reduction!

Employing 6,800 train guards is going to cost you something on the order of £250m per year, possibly more once all training and costs of employment are included.

Given that modern DOO methods require increasingly little in the way of trackside infrastructure, it is extremely difficult to believe that the payback period will be "extremely long" given the definition of extremely long we use in railway infrastructure.

Especially since trains tend to be delivered structurally prepared for DOO, in that the mounting points for the equipment is already available.

So, as I said, a small number of staff in relative and absolute terms (you might want to look up the number of nurses, or the numbers of civil servants). And of course the salaries of rail staff are partly funded from fare revenue not straight subsidy.

It’s also clear from the above that you don’t know the figures and are assuming, which rather proves my point.

I would suggest if it was a cheap/easy as you imply, it would have been done long ago. The same analysis applies to why many absolute block signal boxes remain.

EDIT:

Ultimately I don't think we are going to agree on this, so I don't think there is any point continuing this discussion any further.

I’m not expecting to agree, I’m just highlighting how you fixate on staffing costs above all others. Based on your regular contributions to IR threads, loaded references to “1930s working practices” etc. I do not believe for one second that your stance is due to genuine concern over costs. It’s purely ideological.

Others can make their own minds up!

The real answer to the original question is that the Conservatives actually hate their own handling of the railways: the creation of Railtrack as a property company with a minor engineering interest devoid of long term policy; the complex franchising, the arms length track repair and infrastructure maintenance units, the hidden costs of leasing rather than BR's amortising over 10years and above all the inflated costs to the treasury.

The railway at all levels did however fight back; doubling usage and innovating, becoming much safer all round, so not all bad by any means.

What is needed is not a re-nationalised quasi-government department run by a modern day Lord Hurcomb, constantly at war with his No 2 but a proper, pre-grouping railway with a general manager, chief engineer and commercial manager, all responsible to a competent board committed to a cost-effective railway, answerable to its shareholder and regulator, HMG.

Dream on..

WAO

A very insightful post, first paragraph especially!

 

[swt_passenger]

If you have to go back half a century to find an example, it is almost certainly not a good pointer.

But it is ok if you go back further, to Marples or Beeching?