Sir Michael Holden on the Williams Review
After - finally - discovering what the Williams Shapps Plan for Rail actually said, I got together with Sir Michael Holden to discuss it.
After all, who better to pick it apart than someone who’s actually run trains for the Government.
Michael Holden has first-hand experience of the strengths and weaknesses of both public and private sector, having twice been the Government’s go-to guy for bringing trains into the public sector when private sector franchisees collapsed.
We talk through the strengths and weaknesses of Williams.
Join us for a wide-ranging discussion of the potential and pitfalls of the biggest change to the railways for 30 years.
His overall summary is 4 stars out of 5.
“I was impressed. As a piece of policy from central Government, it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen”
He was particularly impressed with the analysis of the past, and the prescription for the present:
“The analysis of the problems of how we got to where we are was precise, elegant and extraordinary frank; coming from central Government, which is the author of a lot of our misfortune. The problem is that there was no detail to support any of it. There was a lot of lofty aspiration to support how things could be in the future but little to support how we’ll get there other than faith. I don’t think as much thinking has gone into this White Paper as went into the 1992 White Paper that led to the Railway Act. It’s a bit light on how we’re going to get there.”
And he was delighted that the railway will gain a certain degree of independence from the Department for Transport:
‘The single most important feature of the whole white paper is the acceptance of the need to take stuff out of the DfT and create an agency that sits outside Government. The fact that it’s not Network Rail but something that sits on top of Network Rail with decision making devolved to the five regions gets big ticks from me. With an important caveat: this agency needs to be given enough licence to operate so that it’s not keep on a really tight leash from the industry. At the moment, the Treasury is making all its decisions itself. The decision to outsource all these decisions is great but it needs to be given a clear strategic framework, a funding envelope and then be allowed to get on with making its own decisions.”
However, he is worried that neither the Treasury nor DfT will give up their influence in practice:
“If the Treasury doesn’t loosen its grip and if the DfT doesn’t allow GBR to get on with stuff as independently as possible, we could find ourselves in even worse treacle than now because there’s another agency in the alphabet spaghetti.”
While he was pleased to see the creation of strong regions within GBR, he was worried that they went against the grain of current Government policy. At its best
“I’d like to think we’re going to end up with these five regional gurus who are going to have profit and loss responsibility for their railway and are going to make sure that they’re structured to do the very best they can with the resources available.”
But his worry is that
“The Government seems to be emasculating Transport for the North, setting out a battle royal with Transport Scotland and something similar in due course with the Welsh Government. It’s sad that this Government seems to be taking a centralising tack as opposed to a devolutionary tack at the wrong time in history. TfL has been a model of what can be achieved when it’s allowed to get on with it and given a stable funding environment. I do worry that we’re going to see the same thing happen nationally at the very time when. you want to be getting decisions made as close to the customer as possible. We’re in danger of centralising and that’s why it’s important that these regional organisations are made as strong as possible. It’s a bit sad that the charts in the White Paper don’t refer to the customer at all: they’re all about organisations.”
Key to success, in his view, is who forms the new organisation:
“The new organisation needs a strong mix of expert people at the top of their game in the current industry plus some people brought in from outside to bring fresh culture, entrepreneurialism and a push to innovate much faster. You need that blend in the new organisation to make a success of it. There’s a lot of know-how in the DfT, so you musn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”
The good news is that the political climate is set fair:
“Peter Hendy is able to provide some political air cover. The pair of them provide a formidable team but they’re going to need a help from people out of Network Rail, DfT, RDG and fresh minds from outside the industry to bring the culture change. This must not be a bigger version of Network Rail. It’s a big opportunity but a huge risk.”
He is worried about the long-term, and feels that the White Paper is better at articulating the issues with the past and. theplicies for the present than clarity on how the future is going to work:
“There is no vision for what the transport objectives are as a whole and there’s no specification for what rail should be doing as part of that. It’s very clear on the immediate steps to get out of the mire but much less clear over the longer term.”
And he’s sorry that open access seems to have been squeezed out:
“It could be quite a cold climate for open access given that GBR has to produce the timetables and allocate space. It’s hard to see GBR welcoming a new open-access operator wishing to snaffle up paths on a network that is already congested and taking some of the revenue in the process.”
But, overall, the White Paper gets 4/5 as it
“makes you realise how much the commercial imperative has been missing for the last three years. The railway has been like a rabbit caught in the headlights, unable to respond in the way that other industries have done”
He is delighted to see commitments to electrification, contactless and smart-phone ticketing and - especially - the end to ironing board seats!
Do listen in for the full conversation, and you can subscribe to The Freewheeling Podcast at Apple or Google Podcasts to catch all the regular episodes every Thursday.
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