Danger: Government dirty tricks suspected.
The Government is rushing the Railways Bill through Parliament over the Christmas period in less time than it takes some au-pairs to get a visa.
The biggest single section of the bill (over a third of the clauses) is concerned with "streamlining" the procedures for rail closures.
This is odd since only a week earlier both the Minister and the Secretary of State were launching the Community Rail report and denying media reports that closures were on the agenda.
Why has the Government chosen this moment to speed up railway closure procedures? Railfuture suspects a hidden agenda.
Railfuture is alarmed that the Bill makes no mention of public hearings or the need to avoid hardship for passengers. Indeed there is little about consultation with users, and then only through bodies recognised by the Secretary of State! It is not clear which bodies these would be. Rail users could be effectively ignored.
Railfuture branches, rail user groups and activists are being advised of the need to contact friendly MPs.
Unless time can be made available to debate amendments to put right these omissions, we must urge that the whole section (Part 4, and Schedule 7) is deleted.
Rushed legislation is usually bad legislation. If there is any real need to reform closure procedures (which is debatable) the Government should return to the issue with a better thought-out bill after the general election.
The Bill had its second reading on 6 December 2004 and goes to committee stage on 14 December. It could be back on the floor of the House in mid January for completion by the end of the month.
Railfuture does not yet know who will be on the Standing Committee which examines the Bill.
Among its other clauses, the Bill abolishes the SRA and transfers the Railway Inspectorate from the Health and Safety Executive to the Office of Rail Regulation.
The Bill also gives more powers to devolved bodies in Scotland, Wales and
London but, at the same time, waters down the powers of the passenger transport executives.
Sadly the Department for Transport has a dubious record. Ridiculous arguments about the "value" of roads appear to go unchallenged while the value of railways is questioned and the importance of rail's network effect is ignored.
The department is very "clever" at using statistics selectively to mislead the public.
The Labour government has also allowed the railways to be hampered by insisting on expensive public-private partnerships and refusing to change the basic structure of the Tory government's privatisation which doubled rail costs.
Labour also has a shameful past history of closing good rail lines. Serious errors were made by a 1970s Labour government which accelerated the rail closures initiated by Dr Beeching and a previous Tory government.
Significantly the summary of the Bill on the Department for Transport website makes no mention of the change in the closure procedures.
Unless time can be made available to debate amendments to put right the Bill's failings, the whole section (Part 4, and Schedule 7) should be deleted. Rushed legislation is usually bad legislation.
If there is any real need to reform closure procedures (which is debatable) the Government could always return to the issue with a better thought-out Bill after the general election.
Threatening rail closures will be highly unpopular, once it becomes known to the general public, and the Labour Government will lose many more friends.
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