Turning up at any station on the Avanti west coast line is an article of faith, a triumph of hope over experience. The timetable is just wishful thinking. Trains are cancelled, delayed or disappeared seemingly at will. And if you do find one going in your general direction, you’re expected to be so grateful that you don’t notice there are no seats left. Much the same goes with the ironically named TransPennine Express. You’d hate to take the non-Express service. It might be quicker to walk.
So it was no surprise that on Thursday Labour was granted an urgent question to see if there was any chance that the performance of these two rail franchises might improve anytime soon. Similar UQs about the railways get asked at least once a month and we were now long overdue. Not that anyone was expecting any more enlightening answers. But it was important to let everyone know that someone was bothered about it.
This time it was junior transport minister, Huw Merriman, who was left with the unenviable job of trying to explain why the government still hadn’t been able to make the trains run. Not just on time, but at all.
And, to his credit, Merriman made a better fist of it than other useful idiots, AKA ministerial sacrifices, sent out to defend the indefensible in the Commons while the secretary for state runs for cover in Whitehall. He didn’t just plead stupidity for 45 minutes while trying to wind down the clock, as most do. Not only did he actually appear to know something about trains, he also appeared to care. Unheard of. It won’t catch on.
He started by making no excuses. The services were completely unacceptable. Something must be done, though he wasn’t quite sure what. The thing was, it was all a bit of a mess. There had been more people than usual who had called in sick over the past six months. And those who normally volunteered to do overtime had chosen instead just to work their regular hours. How very inconsiderate of them.
Sadly though, Merriman was unable to join the dots. Perhaps Avanti and the TransPennine Express should rethink a business model that depended on only a few people going off sick and the rest filling in for them on overtime. How about actually employing a few more people to fill the vacancies? Heaven forbid. Or how about even accepting that Avanti and TPE had had their day in the sun and getting someone else in to run the franchises?
The shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, had some sympathy for Merriman. But not much. Businesses in the north were suffering with people unable to get in to work. The number of cancellations was actually even higher than the published rate, because as long as Avanti cancelled a service by 10pm the night before it was scheduled, it wasn’t officially cancelled – it was just a train that never ran. The vanished. And, she hated to point out, the rail companies had promised to increase their staffing levels six years earlier when the trains were screwed up and, amazingly, nothing had happened.
Merriman looked agonised. It was all terrible. He briefly tried to blame the unions for not agreeing to change their working practices faster. Like coming in to work when they were sick. Or working 24-hour shifts. That kind of thing.
But he didn’t even sound as if he had convinced himself. Especially when Tory MP after Tory MP weighed in to say that train services were in a terrible state all across the country and that they wanted something done about it. Merriman ran his fingers through his hair and promised everyone a one to one meeting with him to discuss what they weren’t going to do to make things better. He won’t have a lot of spare time between now and Christmas.
The railways, along with Royal Mail, the NHS and schools, were also up for grabs on Sky News, where Kay Burley was talking to union leaders – or union barons as the Tories insist on calling them – about the forthcoming strike action. In the studio were Eddie Dempsey of the RMT, Dave Ward of the CWU and Mary Bousted of the National Education Union. Up in Manchester – either because she hadn’t been able to get a train or there just wasn’t enough room in Sky HQ with Ward and Dempsey’s manspreading – was Emma Runswick of the British Medical Association.
For the most part it was fairly gentle, undemanding stuff. There seems to be a recognition that people have been pushed far enough in the current cost of living crisis and the union demands are no more than fair. Most workers have taken a real terms pay cut over the past 12 years and a pay rise in line with or above inflation is hard to argue against. Why should people carry on working for less and less? The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, didn’t exactly help the government’s cause by saying people in work only needed to use food banks if their boiler broke or a relationship ended. As if it was their fault for not leading perfect lives.
Only once did it threaten to get nasty, when Dempsey thought he detected ongoing class war with Burley as an establishment mouthpiece. Burley had to point out that she also made life awkward for government ministers and, besides, she was only asking questions that viewers had asked. Dempsey relaxed a little at this. Runswick drily observed that it was just as well there was coordinated strike action across the NHS, otherwise patients’ safety really would be in jeopardy. Not that it wasn’t already with existing levels of pay and funding.
“We just want to be able to negotiate with government,” they all pleaded at the end. Their frustration was all too evident. But ministers don’t want to be negotiated with. They don’t know how to manage the crisis and have run for the hills. Either that or they’re lost in the Avanti black hole.
• A year in Westminster with John Crace, Marina Hyde and Armando Iannucci
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Wednesday 7 December 2022, 7pm-8.15pm GMT. Book tickets here.
