There is a bit of a mystery – if you have time to worry over such things – about Devizes MP and Transport Minister Claire Perry and her newspaper columns and the holiday rail chaos at King’s Cross.
In the House of Commons yesterday (January 5), Michael Dugher MP (Labour’s shadow Secretary of State for Transport) said Mrs Perry had sent a “message to the thousands of passengers who had had their Boxing Day and weekend ruined. What words of sympathy and consolation did she offer? She said she was ‘so chuffed’ with the state of the railways – Calamity Claire, the gift that keeps on giving.”
A report of Mr Dugher’s exchange with Secretary of State Patrick McLoughlin said that she was left seething on the front bench – and, because of the rules of the House, was unable to speak in response.
On 30 December, Mr Dugher wrote in the Daily Telegraph that Mrs Perry’s had written a newspaper column under the headline “Why I’m so chuffed “ with the railways. This column was in the Sunday People and the Daily Mail immediately spotted her ‘bad timing’ in using such words.
On January 1 the Marlborough and Pewsey edition of the Gazette and Herald did not carry her usual column – instead they printed a column by James Gray (MP for North Wiltshire) all about the general election and 2015 events in his own constituency. Until we get clarification, we must assume that her column was ‘pulled’ at the last moment because –in the light of the rail chaos – it was inappropriate.
However, the Daily Mail also picked up on her remarks in her earlier column in the Gazette and Herald for December 23. Before Christmas, she wrote, “I also have to make sure that there are no loose ends in my ministerial portfolio as we come to one of the busiest periods on the railway – in engineering terms that is. More than ten thousand Network Rail employees will be working over the holiday period on thousands of engineering projects across the country, carrying out the biggest upgrade of the network since Victorian times.”
Now that is very strange as in the Commons on Monday the Secretary of State got quite cross with Mr Dugher: “Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the Secretary of State should tell Network Rail which safety aspects and bits of engineering works it should not do? Is that the kind of micro-management we could expect from him?” So who is responsible for ‘loose ends’?
Mr McLoughlin has been at pains to pass the blame for the delayed completioin of engineering works onto Network Rail. Quite how ‘micro-management’ squares up with looking after ‘loose ends’ is hard to fathom.
One thing we do know is that Mrs Perry was in Newcastle for New Year’s Eve – she told us so on Twitter. Whether or not she went there by rail from King’s Cross remains another mystery.
