Shapps: strikes make case for driverless trains
Transport Secretary insists industrial action will cost jobs by making automated services more attractive
‘Mick Lynch may be holding the country to ransom but what he’s doing is holding a gun to his own industry’s head’
EVERY hour the rail strikes continue, public support for driverless trains will increase, Grant Shapps has said in a warning to union bosses taking industrial action.
The Transport Secretary said he is already in talks with Transport for London (TFL) about making a London Underground line automated.
Mr Shapps also called on local transport authorities to consider pausing roadworks this week to ease traffic congestion as people travel by car during the train strikes.
And he warned that this new round of industrial action could send the rail industry into “irreversible decline”, convincing more people to permanently work from home.
The intervention came as Mr Shapps and Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the RMT trade union, which is striking this week, exchanged claims and counter-claims on the airwaves.
Mr Shapps has been accused by Labour and Liberal Democrat opponents – plus some Tory MPS – of an error in judgment by refusing to join the strike negotiations himself.
But he in turn has accused rail union bosses of seeking to take Britain back to the 1970s and undercutting attempts to modernise the rail network for the 21st century. Mr Shapps predicted that support for bringing in driverless trains – the technology for which exists – will soar this week.
Mr Shapps said: “Every hour of strikes will surely increase the enthusiasm from the travelling public to have their trains automated to get rid of this threat over their heads that the workers will strike.
“These strikes are severely counterproductive, not just for people who can’t get to their exams this week and to hospital appointments but also fundamentally to railway workers who will find in the end that automation just becomes more attractive than striking employees.”
The Transport Secretary has already included a push towards automation in agreement between the Government and TFL, which runs the London Underground and has received close to £5billion of financial support during the Covid pandemic.
Last June, Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, and TFL agreed to “make progress towards the conversion of at least one London Underground line to full automation but with an on-board attendant” as part of the latest funding deal.
The Docklands Light Railway, which opened in 1987, is an automated railway but others have not been constructed in the UK. The Paris Metro is also partly automated.
Mr Shapps warned that the strikes may end up undermining RMT’S own members because it could put scores of people off using the railways.
Mr Shapps said: “Mick Lynch may be holding the country to ransom but actually what he’s doing is holding a gun to his own industry’s head. It’s reckless vandalism.
And if it continues, it could drive thousands of passengers away for good and turn what should be a very bright future for the railway, that we’re investing billions of pounds on expanding, into one of irrelevance and irreversible decline.
“He has not only taken his workforce to these strikes on false pretences, but he’s actually damaging his own members’ interests by doing this.”
That has been denied by RMT, which argues its members have been overlooked for a pay rise for three years and warns the Government’s modernisation plans could imperil safety.
A question posed by scores of MPS – including Jake Berry, the Tory MP and Northern Research Group chairman – is “why is Mr Shapps not at the negotiating table?” If the strikes – which will see train services severely restricted tomorrow, Thursday and Saturday – are so damaging, why does Mr Shapps not pick up the phone to RMT to try to secure a resolution?
He rejected the idea outright: “It’s a total red herring thrown in by Mick Lynch at the eleventh hour to obscure the fact that only last month he was saying he wouldn’t be seen dead negotiating with the Tory government.
“I can’t think of a single example in any industrial dispute where government ministers got into the room with the employer, the unions and employees and negotiated.
“It’s just not something that happens and there’s a good reason for that. The last time it did happen I think was under Harold Wilson in the 1970s and it was sandwiches at Downing Street.
“It was a disaster for industrial relations then and I don’t think anybody should want us to go back to those days.” Attempts to probe how long that position could last, if rail strikes drag on for weeks or even months – as RMT is warning – failed to bring any change in the stance.