Lilian Greenwood: Commuter Programme

“Journalists, they like talking about the railways.” Lilian Greenwood drops this observation deep into our interview – an interview which has largely focused on... rail.  “In London obviously trains are hugely important for commuter journeys into the city, but outside of London much less so.”

Trying to rebalance the terms of the transport debate has been one of Greenwood’s priorities since becoming shadow transport secretary in September.

Events, however, can conspire against politicians’ intentions. An hour before we meet, news emerges that Crossrail will be known as the Elizabeth Line. And the legislation for the first phase of HS2 will return to the Commons shortly, meaning Greenwood faces a packed agenda on rail alone – without even mentioning a decision about aviation capacity in the south-east or the crunch facing local bus services.

Greenwood makes clear that Labour is not suggesting relegating rail. Having visited one of the tunnels that houses the new line last week, she says the naming of Crossrail is another example of a major infrastructure project set in motion by the last Labour government bearing fruit.

Like Crossrail, HS2 is a “Labour project”, Greenwood notes, brought forward at the back-end of the Brown Government. If Jeremy Corbyn has previously seemed a bit lukewarm on the new high-speed rail line, Greenwood straightaway dispels any uncertainty on where the party stands.

“It’s essential to tackle the capacity issues on our network, particularly at the southern end, but also to provide really good connections between the great cities of the Midlands and the North,” she says. “It’s absolutely essential to the future success of the whole of our rail network.”

When the legislation for the line from London to Birmingham returns to the House of Commons, Labour will be “pushing for improvements”. Among the changes she expects to put forward are making sure there is a “proper integrated station designed” for Euston, the putative London terminus for HS2, and mitigating the disruption to residents in Camden and other built-up areas. 

The Transport Secretary when HS2 was proposed was Lord Adonis, who has since become head of the National infrastructure Commission – another concept that many would see as a “Labour project” given its uncanny resemblance to the Opposition’s plans going into the last election. “I don’t know if we should be flattered or annoyed, really, that George Osborne has taken up our ideas,” she muses before reluctantly settling: “I suppose we should be flattered.”

The NIC is designed to offer independent recommendations about infrastructure investment opportunities and needs in the UK. Although supportive of the principle, Greenwood is under no illusions about where the final responsibility lies: “They’ll always be political decisions and decisions about major infrastructure projects will always be controversial. But if you can ensure that you’ve got a body like that pulling together the evidence, I think it can make it easier for politicians to make those final decisions.”

One glaring example of infrastructure sclerosis is aviation expansion in the south-east. The Davies Commission was given the task of answering where a new runway should be built; it replied that Heathrow was the best choice. The Government has since ordered some new analysis on the environmental impact of expansion at Heathrow. Those results will be published – rather too conveniently, Greenwood thinks – after the London Mayoral election, thus postponing or avoiding a potential clash between Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith and the Government.

“We see what is a very clearly politically motivated timetable for coming to a decision... Obviously having a commission can help to make those decisions easier but it still requires governments to make decisions when they say they’re going to, rather than allowing short-term political opportunism to get in the way... The timetable was clearly around getting beyond the London Mayoral elections, rather than about properly answering those questions.”

She is less forthcoming on Labour’s own stance on Heathrow expansion. “It’s too early to form a view on how we’d vote,” she insists. Instead, Greenwood highlights Labour’s four tests – will it increase capacity? Is it compatible with carbon and air quality emissions targets? Have local noise and environmental factors been minimised? And will it support the economy of the whole country, not just London and the south-east? – that will decide how it will vote on a deal: “We’ve been clear about what our four tests are; it’s for the Government to bring forward further proposals that enable us to make that assessment.”

Greenwood, no stranger to the transport brief after served in more junior roles under Maria Eagle, Mary Creagh and Michael Dugher in the last Parliament, accepts there are “differences of opinion within the Labour party” on Heathrow, with Jeremy Corbyn and, most vociferously, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell counted amongst the opponents of a third runway. But she refuses to be drawn on whether a free vote could get the party out of a tricky situation.

If cautious on Heathrow, Labour’s policy on renationalising the railways is certainly bold. When the HS2 legislation returns to the Commons, Labour will be “looking at” an attempt to have it run by the public sector, as she said in her conference speech.

Privately operated routes have been a bête noire of the left ever since privatisation. But Greenwood is eager to emphasise what she sees as the tangible benefits of nationalisation rather than more abstract matters of principle. She highlights a piece of analysis that estimated a 40% efficiency gap between Britain’s railways and European comparators. 

“Some of that [inefficiency] just arises from the structural nature of the way in which our rail network is currently formulated,” she says. “It’s fragmented: we’ve got an infrastructure provider and then we’ve got a number of different operators. And everywhere you get those sorts of interfaces you’ve got the opportunity for inefficiency.

“Bringing the franchises back in can allow you to get rid of some of that fragmentation that you’ve got, for example, between different intercity operators. If you bring it back into a single public sector brand you can get rid of some of those inefficiencies that exist.”

And could the new public sector operator bid to run lines abroad? “Why not?” she responds.

Does she think, then, that consumers could see a reduction in fares as a result of renationalisation? “It’s clear that if you can be more efficient, that enables you to cut fares. We know at the moment that about £200m a year, almost £200m a year, goes out in shareholder dividends from our rail network. Potentially that money could be used to hold fares down... You can choose how you could reuse that money – and that’s without even starting to look at what are the efficiencies that could come from having a more integrated network.”

Greenwood thinks that public ownership fits with a growing appetite for devolution, too. She praises London Overground and Merseyrail for the “improved service and integration” with other forms of transport. “We can have both integrated intercity services, but also more local control of public transport networks within the regions as well,” she adds.

These issues can be used to try to energise the new members which have flooded into Labour since the Corbyn surge last summer, Greenwood believes. “The challenge is enabling those people to meet their expectations, really, on why they wanted to join the party and how they can get involved. I think there’s a big appetite for discussions around transport.”

Greenwood admits the new intake of members in her own Nottingham South constituency party has not yet matched existing members in their activism. “We’ve had some new members who got involved in activity, but I’d say there’s a potential to do more around that,” she says.

“You always know that only a proportion of your members will go out and do more than just be paying their subscriptions, important though that is. When you’ve got a larger membership base to work from, you’d hope you’d see the same sort of growth in activism in having people who are going to be prepared to go out canvassing or leafletting and I think there’s more work to be done on that.”

As well as her transport brief, Greenwood is vice-chair of the APPG on antisemitism. It is an issue that has hit the headlines again recently after the resignation of one of the heads of Oxford University’s Labour Club. An investigation into the allegations is underway by Labour Students – a move welcomed by Greenwood – but she warns the party, including a left that has been accused of failing to speak out vociferously enough, must be ready to take further action if necessary.

“We mustn’t be frightened to tackle those issues within our own party and within our own movement, we absolutely can’t be. We should shine a light on it and make clear that it’s not acceptable on the left any more than it would be anywhere else.

“We all have a responsibility, wherever on the political spectrum we come from to stand up against prejudice, discrimination and antisemitism, it’s really important... We have to be seen to be prepared to tackle it within our own party to have credibility when we raise it around others.”

Whatever the rows going on elsewhere, Greenwood argues that Labour is in prime position to make ground over transport in the coming local council campaigns. “When people see their fares are going up and they’re not seeing the investment going in, as they have with broken promises on electrification and the rest, I think they rightly feel very angry – and certainly they’ve got a low level of trust in the private operators.”

Here, she says the debate can move away from rail and onto cars, buses, and other forms of road transport. “That is the other big issue that comes up time and again when I’m out campaigning. Over the last parliament there was an 11% cut in roads maintenance spending in real terms... and that affects everybody as a road user.”

With the Budget looming, the constraints of George Osborne’s spending targets have led some to predict that fuel duty could be set for an increase. Greenwood says of the prospect: “In a way it’s less high up the political agenda because fuel prices have come down so much. Everyone will be concerned, if prices start to rise again, about the impact that is having.”

Buses, she says, are a “huge issue” for many voters. She points out well-thumbed research suggesting 2,400 routes have been cut back or withdrawn over the last five years, and that two-thirds of public transport journeys are on the bus. Why, then, does she think that buses are comparatively neglected as an electoral issue?

“It’s also about the ridership. Who rides on buses? In particular it’s people who tend to have less of a voice, so it’s women, it’s disabled people, it’s older people, it’s younger people, it’s people who are jobseekers – for them the bus is absolutely vital, but they’re probably not the people who have the greatest access to power and voice. So part of the Labour role is to actually make sure that they do have a proper say.”

Journalists may love talking about railways but Greenwood is looking at the wider transport brief.