Trains: Are we witnessing an ‘anti-rail coalition’?

Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.

Feeling lucky? Plan a train trip. For the remainder of October, most rail journeys within Great Britain look fairly feasible. In Scotland, watch for “daily cancellations and alterations to services”. Staff working for ScotRail have an overtime ban in place, culminating in a 24-hour strike next Saturday, 29 October, by members of the RMT union.

“Higher-than-normal sickness levels” are stripping the schedules at TransPennine Express, while “train crew unavailability” is causing cancellations at Northern. And Avanti West Coast is running a timetable that is well below par as train drivers exercise their perfectly legal right not to work on rest days – with train managers planning another strike for 6 November.

Come early November, though, the problems multiply way beyond these operators. RMT members will walk out in a choreographed series of strikes across Great Britain, aimed at traumatising train travel from 3 to 8 November. The union plans to “bring the railway to an effective standstill” with a trio of stoppages:

Let me sum up this seemingly intractable dispute in a single paragraph.

The rail unions demand a decent pay rise for their members that keeps pace with inflation at a time when their industry is seeing a post-Covid collapse in revenue. The employers – and the government, which holds the purse strings – say pay increases are affordable only if the railway can be run more efficiently. But the unions will agree modernisation gains only if they trigger wage rises on top of routine increases: productivity always comes with a percentage attached.

Neither side seems in a particular hurry to settle. Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT, warns of “sustained strike action” until the taxpayer stumps up more cash.

On the other side, the transport secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, is busy campaigning for Boris Johnson to come back as prime minister. Apart from that, she is working on legislation that seeks to treat the symptoms, not the causes, of strikes. She is finding parliamentary time for “minimum service level” legislation designed to blunt industrial action by transport unions.

Yet in a parliamentary timetable crushed by repeated Conservative leadership contests, the root-and-branch reform of the railway has been postponed. A wide-ranging transport bill will now not happen this autumn. Without the necessary legislation, Great British Railways cannot become the guiding mind that is so desperately needed to run trains and the infrastructure in a rational way. Everything has been moved back six months.

It is almost as though the unions and the government are colluding to perpetuate a spiral of decline of the railways. Remember that the RMT and the drivers’ union, Aslef, were bedfellows with Ms Trevelyan’s European Research Group in an anti-EU coalition.

The RMT is, presumably, happy that its stated objectives have been met: “Leave the EU to end attacks on rail workers. Leave the EU to end austerity. Leave the EU to support democracy.” And the ERG achieved the hard Brexit of their dreams.

Call me a member of the wokerati and hand me a bowl of tofu if you wish, but from the perspective of a passenger shivering on a platform waiting for a train that may never arrive, the Brexit buddies look alarmingly like an anti-rail coalition.

I look forward to being proved comprehensively wrong: frankly, a settlement can’t happen fast enough. Meanwhile, three predictions to which you can hold me.

Rail finances will turn out to be much worse than the current £2bn shortfall in annual ticket revenue suggests; I believe far more cash is leaving the industry, including many millions in delay repay compensation for the current disruption.

The “minimum service level” legislation will turn out to be about as effective in practical terms as the government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, but it holds a similar appeal for the Tory right.

And when a settlement is eventually agreed, a significant part will involve free train travel for the families and friends of rail workers; it will prove very valuable to the workers, and is revenue foregone rather than upfront Treasury money.

Finally, I remain available to work with all parties to find a settlement. But after this article I will be most surprised if anyone takes me up on the offer.