“Labour will take back control of our railways” – Andy McDonald speech

This is the full text of the speech given by Andy McDonald, shadow Transport Secretary, at Labour conference today.

Conference, it’s an honour to serve our great party and be here today to talk to you about Labour’s transport policy.

I’d like to start by paying tribute to all of those in our Party who do so much to improve transport in the UK.

Our members, who, through the Transport Policy Commission, are helping to shape and inform our policies from the grassroots up.

Our colleagues in Local Government who continue to deliver transport services in the face of an onslaught against their budgets are showing that Labour values are essential in protecting and transforming our communities.

From MeryseyTravel here in this great city of Liverpool, to TfL under Sadiq Khan, who has already done more on transport for Londoners in a few months than his predecessor managed in eight years.

And, of course, colleagues in Parliament, both in the Commons and the Lords, are holding the Government to account, making invaluable contributions from both the Front and Back Benches.

It’s when we stand together across our great movement that we win the ability to transform for the better, the country we love.

And Conference, stand together we must, because the challenges facing the nation are huge and only a Labour Government will ever address them.

Comrades, we need to have an understanding and agreement about what Transport is for.

Public Transport has increasingly become detached from the concept of Public Service.

Too often it is seen as a series of opportunities to profit from an essential service that no government can let fail.

Colleagues, I fundamentally challenge that entire premise.

Transport surely has to be about the safe and efficient transport of people and goods, and at its heart, our transport systems should have fairness, value for money, quality and reliability of service and, crucially Conference, accessibility for all.

Sadly, those imperatives in the drive for profits and dividends are all too often absent.

What do we see instead?

Infrastructure work repeatedly delayed and over budget; unaffordable fares, with the cost of bus and rail tickets rising way above inflation; deliberately complex and punitive fare structures.

Over 2,400 hundred local authority supported bus routes withdrawn or downgraded.

A third of our local roads in need of urgent attention yet the Government cuts the funds to fix them and fails to shift more freight from road to rail.

At a time when we need to be encouraging people to take up environmentally friendly modes of transport, funding for cyclists is set to plummet by 70 per cent.

And despite the fact that so many people with disabilities rely on public transport, the “Access for All” budget has been slashed by 40 per cent.

And it is no surprise that under this chaotic Tory Government, HS2’s prospects for improving connections between the north and south seem more distant than ever.

And we must be clear that devolution of rail services in England is not about devolving cuts or at the expense of an integrated national network, which Labour believes should be publicly owned.

Conference, those who we seek to represent deserve better and we, the Labour Party, must provide the alternative this country needs.

Following the vote to leave the EU, we need extra airport capacity more than ever, yet the Government’s dithering and internal bickering is costing our economy millions upon millions of pounds.

Aviation and railways attract a great deal of attention but its Britain’s buses which are the most used form of public transport, with over four and a half billion journeys made last year.

But the Conservatives have cut the grant for bus services by 20 per cent and since deregulation in the 1980s, commercial bus providers have no incentives to provide those services, often to more isolated communities that whilst socially vital, are dismissed as commercially unprofitable.

The Bus Services Bill, will soon have its second reading in the House of Commons. I must pay tribute here to my friend and colleague, Daniel Zeichner MP, who has been doing a sterling job along with our colleagues in the Lords and there is much we can support in this Bill.

We want local communities to have control over their bus services.

But we want to ensure that every area that wants to has power over running their bus services – not just mayoral combined authorities.

We’ll also be fighting the proposal to ban English local authorities from forming municipal bus companies which have proved to be so very successful.

As for our railways, look at Southern trains – officially the country’s worst rail service but a nice little earner for Go-Ahead Group, which registered a £99million profit whilst thousands of trains were cancelled or delayed with the approval of Tory Ministers.

Passengers suffering unbearable overcrowding.

Parents having to say goodnight to their children by phone from a train carriage.

And people losing their jobs, unable to arrive at work on time.

Is the company stripped of the contract?

No, it gets the total support of the Government to hack away at services and jobs, and the benefit of £20million more taxpayers’ money for good measure.

They won’t be stripped of the contract no matter how bad services get because the Government is more interested in defending train companies than defending passengers, taxpayers and staff – and they have the nerve to describe us as ideological.

As East Coast showed us we can have a successful railway run in the public sector.

East Coast, placed in state ownership after the private operator walked away, delivered over £1billion to the Treasury, kept fares down, had record passenger satisfaction and engaged the workforce with unparalleled success before the line was re-privatised.

What we have now is a government clinging to a failed model for purely ideological reasons, and passengers and taxpayers are being made to pay an ever increasing price.

We are clear about this. We’ll put an end to Britain’s rip-off railways, so as private contracts expire, the routes will return to public ownership so profits can be re-invested to improve services and hold fares down.

Because passengers, not profit, should be at the heart of Britain’s railway.

Let us have the same confidence as other countries like the Netherlands, Germany and France.

Labour will take back control of our railways.

There is much to do across the transport sector.

So Conference, let us shape our transport networks and services, and secure a genuinely integrated, high-quality, socially just, greener and cleaner transport system that brings together families and friends and meets the needs of business.

The transport system under Labour would not only bring economic growth and development but would improve social mobility and cohesion for the benefit of all our people.

Only a Labour Government can make this happen.

Let’s get to it.