Shapps committed to William Review action
Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps says the Government will implement all of the proposals of the Williams Review, and that review chairman Keith Williams has been effectively asked to create a White Paper.
The review is due before the end of the year, and Shapps says legislation will follow in a future Parliamentary session.
Outlining his view of the railway, Shapps told a House of Commons Transport Select Committee hearing on October 16: “The problem is, we have a railway which is extraordinarily fragmented. The plus side is that passenger journeys have doubled.
“Having said that, I think the existing railway franchise system has run its course. The problems are things like the May 2018 timetable debacle, where absolutely nobody could identify who was responsible. The truth is no one was in overall charge.
“The key thing about Keith Williams’ proposal is that there will be a person who you can say: ‘that is the person who is overall responsible for it’.
“How do you get there while still keeping private investment? I think, move away from traditional franchising and have much longer contracts - 15-20 years rather than the five, seven, ten years - so that organisations are properly able to invest and get pension funds involved.
“Then the third big critical part is to not just incentivise them by running a service. It’s pretty blinking obvious, but - as I’ve said before - the culture of a railway that actually runs on time hasn’t been at the centre of a lot of what we’ve been doing for quite a long time.
“That’s what we want to get out of it, and it will require a new ‘Rail Transport for Britain’ body that will be in charge. We will then have those longer term contracts.
“It is quite revolutionary - the first thing you need to do is to set up some sort of shadow body, and there’s a lot of things that could be done in advance.
“In allocation of the West Coast Partnership contract, I made sure this was Williams-compliant. I declined a third South Eastern franchise because I didn’t want to let a new franchise on the old model. We’re in the process of preparing the railway for these widely signalled changes. There is a remarkable level of agreement [within the industry] on some of these changes. The system’s not working. We’ve got to make it work.”
Shapps told the TSC that he was “hugely impatient” about withdrawal of the Pacer diesel multiple units, but added: “Is it a dilemma? Yes. We can remove them, but what will go in their place? Nothing - there will just be a gap in the timetable.
“When you’re faced with that dilemma, no one in their right mind is going to say ‘just don’t run any trains’. But we will do everything possible, including looking at whether there are other trains that could be used.”
On HS2, Shapps said he has not received the final report from the Oakervee Review, but refused to express a view on what he thought would happen. He also said he would write back to the TSC about why the Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline had taken so long to be published (it appeared on October 16, see page 20), and added that he would include third-party funded proposals in future updates.