It was an away game: one of the short debates MPs can call that are held in Westminster Hall. The subject was Network Rail and ‘who runs the railways?’
The teams were, at one end, Claire Perry MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (aka Minister for Railways) and at the other end UKIP MP Mark Reckless who was joined on the field by his colleague Douglas Carswell also now wearing a UKIP shirt.
It was like one of those football occasions when a player who has recently taken a shilling or two and left a club, suddenly finds themselves back at their old ground playing against their old team. At the player’s first touch of the ball there will be jeers and whistles – then all is forgotten (if not entirely forgiven) and the game goes on.
In the aftermath of the Christmas rail chaos, Mr Reckless wanted to know who was really in charge of the railways and what the position was now that Network Rail was officially on the government’s account books – as demanded by EU accounting rules.
Mrs Perry made a swift move against Mr Reckless: he had, she said, made only two mentions of his local trains this Parliament. One was to back HS2 and the other to complain against the RPI plus three per cent annual rise in rail fares – which the coalition had got round to ending.
Mrs Perry then swerved past Mr Carswell: he had not mentioned railways throughout the whole of the present Parliament. Mr Carswell tried to explain that as a Conservative he had been bound by the Whips so could not complain on behalf of his constituents: “…and I am grateful that I am now at liberty to do so.”
But Mrs Perry pointed out that he had defied the Whips (and she should know she had been on the Whips bench) to make 42 mentions of the EU: “It is rather depressing that his last comment on the railways dates from seven and a half years ago. …no matter. I am delighted to welcome his nascent and new-found interest in the railways, which raises several questions. What is his party’s policy? The UK Independence Party’s 2010 manifesto, of course, called for three high-speed lines, not two, with no mention of cost control. We will leave that point and move on.”
And move on she did to “…canter through Network Rail’s current governance structure…” It all got terribly technical and Mrs Perry was obviously out to bury the UKIP members in a highly efficient torrent of facts and figures. She was fully in control of the complex brief her manager had given her and was not put off by Mr Carswell “…chuntering away from a sedentary position, and I am trying to answer some of the questions. He is not particularly interested in railways, but perhaps he might be after today.”
Mr Reckless thought he had found a way to goad ‘team coalition’: now Network Rail was a public sector body it no longer faced the risk of going bust. Mrs Perry delivered a firm put down:
“Like me, the hon. Gentleman has a background in finance. He should therefore know that investors will always have considered that debt to have been effectively underwritten by the public sector, so the reclassification is simply a formalisation of what I suspect savvy investors have known for many a year.”
But she had had enough and turned the debate towards the Christmas chaos. But her pass was too short and Mr Carswell intercept the ball: “The Minister says that the failures were inexcusable, but she is now excusing the failure. She says that she is sorry for what happened, so what is she actually going to change about Network Rail’s governance to ensure that it does not happen again?”
With only a few seconds to go to the end of the game, Mr Reckless (UKIP MP for Rochester and Strood) came to Mrs Perry’s rescue by dribbling the ball towards his own goal: “I rise to congratulate the Government and Network Rail on the new station in Rochester, which will be fantastic…The new station is half a mile or so closer to London, and significant investment has been put into signalling changes. It would be useful to know how many minutes that is likely to knock off train times from Rochester into London.“
Claire Perry: “I do not know the answer, but I am happy to find out and write to the hon. Gentleman.” In league terms, she had won a full set of away points – as it were.
But perhaps there would still be a Conservative MP for Rochester and Strood if the government had provided the new station at Rochester a bit sooner.