Oral evidence: Rail technology: signalling and traffic management, HC 67Monday 13 June 2016

Oral evidence, 13 June 2016.

Witness

Nigel Jones, Rail Freight Group, gave evidence.

Chair

Good afternoon and welcome to the Transport Select Committee. Could we have your name and position, please?

Nigel Jones

My name is Nigel Jones. I am a board member of the Rail Freight Group. I am also DB Cargo’s alternate member of the Rail Delivery Group. I chair the group that is putting in place a commercial framework between Network Rail and the freight operating companies for the ETCS project.

Chair

Thank you very much. What are the specific challenges in improving rail technology for freight?

Nigel Jones

The biggest difference between passenger and freight is that freight does not operate neatly along classic railway lines and routes. We go where our customers want us to go and when our customers want us to go. That means that we cut across the traditional railway routes and railway administrative boundaries. For freight, that means addressing whatever the ETCS, ERTMS or digital railway roll-out programme ends up being. Freight has to be prepared with all its fleets to be able to manage any scenario much quicker than any part of the passenger business. Effectively, we have to be made ready for the digital railway and ETCS faster than any other part of the railway industry.

Chair

Do you feel that the needs of freight have been considered in developing the rail technology strategy?

Nigel Jones

On the digital railway, yes, certainly. There has been intense involvement and working together between Network Rail, the supply industry and the freight community over the last three to four years for precisely that reason. Network Rail, even as we speak, are towards the end of the procurement process and, hopefully, they will be letting contacts that will allow all the freight locomotive fleet to be retrofitted for ETCS. If everything goes well, that process should begin either later this year or early in 2017.

Chair

Does that mean that you do not have any concerns? We have often heard in this Committee concerns expressed by the freight sector that their needs are very secondary or are overlooked when the focus is on passenger needs. Do you have no concerns about the way future strategies are being drawn up?

Nigel Jones

When I read the transcript of the evidence that Mr Carne and others gave a few weeks ago, I was interested to see a reference to the Institute of Railway Signalling Engineers, which I did not recognise. Network Rail are very aware that freight is different. They are aware that the solutions that are put in place, whether for digital railway or for the ordinary operation for freight, have to be different from those for the passenger world, and that things that matter to freight customers and operators will be different from things that matter to passenger operators. Do we have any concerns? Of course we have concerns. Some of the technology is not yet proven, and we are obviously very keen to work with Network Rail and the suppliers to make sure that any concerns we have are addressed as part of the process of designing and then fitting the equipment.

Robert Flello

As the ability to run more passenger trains with this system becomes a reality, I wonder whether there is a risk that the effect of that is to squeeze freight out. What are you doing in terms of representations to make sure that does not happen?

Nigel Jones

Anyone who knows the freight industry—the freight operators and freight customers—knows that no part of the freight industry would take that situation lying down, and we would do all we could to work with Network Rail and our colleagues in the passenger industry so that everyone’s interests could be accommodated. There are conflicts in capacity that arise today. They arose last week and they will arise next week, and we have to find ways within the industry of handling them. We defend our customers’ interests as much as we can.

Robert Flello

Do you feel that the balance is about right at the moment?

Nigel Jones

Yes. There are good processes, and ultimately even regulatory processes, which ensure that a very fair view is taken of the needs of all users, not just passenger TOCs or indeed the primary passenger TOC on a route. That is where the process of access rights and indeed the role of the ORR is very important.

Chair

The freight sector has often complained about the way timetabling works and that that can be an impediment to developing freight on rail. What are you looking for in this new system that could ease that?

Nigel Jones

We very much hope that the benefits that Network Rail is very confident will be delivered, of greater capacity and indeed greater speed and flexibility, will develop and come to pass, and that we can take advantage of them. On key parts of the network there is not enough capacity for freight trains today. If there was more capacity, for example, to and from some of the key ports, we could run more trains, but it does not exist. The average speed of a freight train on the network is less than 25 mph. Anything we could do to improve that would be a significant productivity improvement and would be welcomed by freight customers. One aspect potentially of the digital railway that is not often focused on, but which could be very significant for freight, is that the digital railway solution should make the building and connection of new rail freight terminals and strategic rail freight interchanges much easier and cheaper than hitherto. If you want to build a new terminal for handling containers, for example, it takes a very long time and costs many millions of pounds, particularly on the sections of railway with modern signalling. One thing digital railway ought to do is to make that process much easier and much cheaper. That would be a real win for the freight sector.

Chair

What would need to be in place to make sure that happened?

Nigel Jones

Implementing the digital railway system in the way we understand it ought to be sufficient.

Chair

Who should be in charge of doing that?

Nigel Jones

It comes as part of the systems that Network Rail is proposing to introduce over the next 25 years.

Chair

Do you feel confident, with the structure we have, that it will actually deliver for freight?

Nigel Jones

I very much hope so. We will be intensely—

Chair

You hope so, but do you think it will?

Nigel Jones

In terms of the connections, I am very confident that will happen, yes. In terms of the greater capacity for a mixed traffic railway, I am less confident, because I have never seen any evidence from anywhere around the world as to a significant capacity benefit for level 2 ETCS in a mixed traffic environment.

Chair

Is that for freight specifically?

Nigel Jones

It is for freight or slower trains, but primarily the difference between freight and passenger trains.

Chair

What would have to happen to make that deliver a benefit for the freight sector?

Nigel Jones

Network Rail and some suppliers are very confident that the systems they are offering will deliver that benefit. I was interested to see in the evidence given to you three or four weeks ago reference to the introduction of ETCS level 2 on the Gotthard base tunnel in Switzerland. That is a mixed traffic railway. I have never seen any output from that, but if, as was suggested in that evidence, there is a demonstrable mixed traffic capacity benefit, it would be very compelling evidence, which would be very good news for the freight sector.

Chair

How is ETCS cab fitment in freight stock progressing?

Nigel Jones

That is the procurement programme that I referred to earlier. Network Rail is in the middle of that. Obviously there is a limit to what I am aware of, or indeed could say, because of the procurement process that Network Rail is in. Assuming that it proceeds as intended and those contracts are let later this year, it will be, if you like—pardon the pun—the green light for the freight retrofitment ETCS programme to begin. Later this year or early in 2017, we will see the first in class process for the first six freight locomotives begin. That is the process by which the engineers actually work out how the equipment will physically be fitted into different classes of locomotive. That will take us through to the end of the control period. The plan would be that in CP6 not only the first in class programme would continue, but actual freight fitment would continue. Freight operating companies would be releasing locomotives every week for equipment to be retrofitted. If those contracts are let later this year, the freight sector starts to prepare for ETCS in a fairly major way.

Chair

We have been told there is a lack of enthusiasm for fitting ETCS in freight cabs. Is that right?

Nigel Jones

Yes, I think that is true. We recognise that the railway is changing. We want Network Rail, and we support Network Rail in trying to modernise the control and signalling of the railway system. It is really difficult to offer customers 21st century solutions when the underlying technology of the industry is at best 20th century, and sometimes 19th century. It is not easy. Our customers are quite challenging in their demands, and quite rightly. Our competition in road transport is very quick to adopt new technology, so we are strong supporters of what Network Rail has set out to do.

Chair

The cab fitment fund has been cut back. What difference is that going to make?

Nigel Jones

Post-Hendy, yes, there were some changes and reductions. The procurement process that Network Rail is going through is still funded to do the first six first in classes for freight by the end of this year, assuming it is authorised and that process concludes. We would then expect the CP6 funding settlement to be able to continue that and to commence the actual fitment of the bulk of the freight locomotive fleet. While there was a reduction, it has not impacted on the cab fitment programme to any significant degree.

Chair

You are absolutely confident that the funding to do this will carry on as before.

Nigel Jones

I cannot answer that. It is obviously a matter for Government. What will come from the planning process over the next two years that the industry goes through in discussing it with Government will determine the amount of money there is to continue the programme. I am quite sure that the contractual frameworks that will be put in place will be such as to cater for all eventualities.

Chair

Are there any particular concerns about the programme that you would like to express to us today, or do you feel optimistic?

Nigel Jones

There is a lot to do. Do we feel optimistic? Yes, I think we are broadly optimistic, but there is a tremendous amount to do. This is not just a programme to fit equipment to locomotives, or indeed line-side equipment. As the previous panel explored in some detail, it is a big change to how the whole railway operates, and that applies to freight probably more than it applies to the passenger world. It means that a lot of the operating rules will have to be changed. It means that there will be a training requirement, partly for drivers and also for maintenance staff and operational staff such as shunters. The way freight trains operate and the way heavy freight trains are sometimes helped at the rear by an assisting locomotive may have to change. The way that freight trains are shunted into and out of customers’ sidings may have to change as part of the move to the new railway. There is a tremendous amount to do, and the further we get into this and the nearer we get to the next control period, the more the operational elements of the changes that the industry has to encompass will begin to come forward.

Chair

How is improved timetabling going to be achieved?

Nigel Jones

The key to the improved timetabling and to the traffic management systems, which again were talked about at some length with Mr Cobbe and Mr Roth, really comes down to the assumptions that are made about the acceleration and braking characteristics of trains. Getting those right and making sure they are appropriate is so important, both for traffic management and, flowing through that, for train planning. If the assumptions that are made on the physical performance of trains, particularly freight trains, are very conservative, we could find that the way the algorithms within the systems work means that they allocate more time to the operation of freight trains rather than less time, which was the assumption in my colleagues’ evidence just given to you. There is a huge piece of work to be done across the industry in making sure that the physical characteristics of the trains are accurate when they are then planned into the various systems, whether that be traffic management or train planning. If we get that right, the benefits could be very substantial.

Chair

Is the rail sector working together sufficiently to deliver all those things, including the training needs that you spoke about?

Nigel Jones

Yes. There is almost a hierarchy of needs. One of the previous witnesses talked about the complicated series of industry groupings that were addressing the digital railway. Certainly that is the case for freight. There is a very well organised and very coherent set of groups looking at commercial matters, operational matters and people matters, including training and technical matters. They talk to each other and there are feeds across between passenger and freight, freight and passenger, to and from Network Rail. As different issues are flagged up by those groups, or as they become clearer as work develops, there is a framework by which they can be addressed.

Chair

Thank you very much. Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses

Mick Whelan, General Secretary, ASLEF, and Mick Cash, General Secretary, RMT, gave evidence.

Chair

Good afternoon and welcome to the Transport Select Committee. Could we have your name and organisation, please?

Mick Whelan

I am Mick Whelan, general secretary of the train drivers’ union ASLEF.

Mick Cash

I am Mick Cash, general secretary of the RMT.

Chair

What can you tell us about the experience of train drivers and operators within the European train control system?

Mick Whelan

It is very early days. I heard the previous witness give an awful lot of weight to how the industry is working together. Unfortunately, in our experience at this moment in time that is not quite the case. We are a long way off. The proposed timescales for the introduction of all the systems, whether it be at the quicker rate or the slower rate, will not see any real development for 20 years or so. There seems to be an underlying belief that we will remove the need for training across the industry, when in reality, specifically for train drivers, we will double the need for training; because of the way we currently train drivers, they will have to be trained from scratch.

Chair

Mr Cash, what can you tell us about experience to date across Europe?

Mick Cash

I would echo Mick’s comments. A lot of this seems to be planning technical things and getting stuff put in the ground. I am not so certain that those plans are well advanced. It seems very up in the air and blue-sky thinking. They even keep changing the names these days. I was confused when doing the brief between ETR, ETCS and ERTMS, and now we have the digital railway and GSMR. All those arrangements are about creating a situation where we put a quart into a pint pot, or convert a pint pot into a quart, which is around rail capacity. There is a lot more to communicate about how it operates in practice and what the real impact is going to be. There is a lot more to communicate. It is a very simple system at the end of the day, but we seem to be having a lot of technical debate about what can or cannot be achieved.

Chair

In your evidence, both of you talk about fragmentation in the industry as an obstacle to moving forward on new technologies to benefit the whole system. This afternoon we have heard—we have also had written evidence—that the industry is working together and has come together to deliver this. Why is that wrong? Why do you think that what is happening is not going to deliver it?

Mick Whelan

The original trial of the ERTMS system on the Cambrian was an abject failure. Every day there were SPADs. It was designed incorrectly. There was lack of investment in it. Originally they were changing the infrastructure to deal with the advent of ERTMS, which is in metric. Then they realised that, if they did the trial in metric on the Cambrian line, they would have to make the whole of the network metric, so they went back to imperial. It comes back to my original thing about how we train drivers. Unfortunately, we have trained drivers for the last 136 years on the basis of Pavlov’s dog. If you know the railway and you put the brake in at a certain speed at a certain point, you will stop at a certain location. Once we go to this new system, all the fixed points that people have been using will no longer exist; it will be a bit like a car driver when they brake. There has been no real dialogue about how we are going to achieve this.

Chair

Mr Cash, can you give me some evidence as to why fragmentation of the current system is going to be an impediment to moving forward?

Mick Cash

How many people have you got to come in to talk to this Committee about one unified network and ERTMS and ETCS? I see a list of people from different organisations. They are from Network Rail, rail freight and suppliers. That indicates to me that in this one rail network—dare I say it, one British Rail—we seem to have to talk to a whole host of people to get one unified system in place. While I am not saying that what used to happen under British Rail was perfect, because they had their own difficulties about procuring and developing systems, it seems to me that you have to talk to a whole lot of people to get one system in place. If that is your experience, you can imagine our experience and who we have to talk to with the different train operating companies. We do not even have a relationship with the group—is it called the RDG?—that is supposed to oversee what is going on in the industry. With regard to what we call fragmentation, it is still there in the industry. It is about getting big projects in place. It is still one of the core issues that needs to be addressed.

Chair

We are told that the different sectors of the industry are coming together in moving digital technology forward. You are telling me it is not. Can you show me what is wrong?

Mick Cash

I am just giving you our belief and feeling about how it operates. You might get a lot of people in the room talking about things. If that is people getting together, that is fine. If that gets things delivered, that is fine. I am not certain why in one rail network, if it was structured properly, we would have to have a whole host of different people rather than one management structure delivering what is a very complex and difficult project across different arrangements. Every single one of them by the way, whether it be the TOCs, Network Rail, freight, the suppliers, the ORR or the DFT—I am giving you headlines now—brings its own particular views on life or its own mandates to the table. If you think that makes something like this easy, then fine. Getting everybody in the room talking is fine, but in terms of getting things delivered I just think it adds another layer of complexity.

Chair

Given the structure there is, are you saying that the Rail Delivery Group is failing in bringing the sector together?

Mick Whelan

I do not think they do. We do not meet with them; we do not engage with them; we have nothing to do with them; they give no leadership or ownership to any stakeholders, whether they be employees of the railway, the travelling public or those who fund the railway. It is a quango that was set up to give a degree of distance between the DFT and certain decisions that are made. We have no engagement with them at all. We deal with each individual TOC and FOC as an individual undertaking. We have up to 32 different training agreements for driver training, which are then subdivided depending upon tractions and routes and other areas. It leads us into the hundreds of agreements that we have across the industry. We have no overarching agreements nationally and nobody to negotiate with.

Chair

Are you saying that, whatever the theory of the Rail Delivery Group, in practice you are negotiating or having discussions with each individual section and individual companies?

Mick Whelan

May I give an example?

Chair

Please do.

Mick Whelan

GSM-R is spoken about within the document quite clearly. I have various comments about the adequacy of GSM-R, but the reality was that we agreed a standard training process through Network Rail and the stakeholders. Then it was delivered piecemeal in so many different ways that the original train package in certain parts of the country was unrecognisable to that being delivered in other parts of the country. That was one overarching national agreement reached with the joint trade unions and the rail bodies about how we would deliver it, and then delivery became a problem. It weakened the training packages themselves.

Mick Cash

This is a big infrastructure project. The infrastructure controller, which is Network Rail, obviously needs to take a lead and make sure that matters get delivered. I know that Mark Carne has been here. He says that they need long-term planning and long-term security of finance to be able to do the supply chain. The one thing that is important in all this is that the change in the industry from one type of management system to another is done in a proper fashion. The structure does not help. There is one example of the difference, which for us is Network Rail. They employ 34,000 people. When they used to manage as Railtrack for different contracts versus themselves, we found the training was very fragmented. As soon as they brought their maintenance in-house they got a grip on training. We started to see proper training and facilities. They started to manage the training and development of the people they employ. I do not think we will get that arrangement in place with the number of different players in place. HS2 for example, another big project, is trying its best to develop a training regime to manage the change going through—we were at one of the presentations recently. To do that you have to make sure that you put arrangements in place and allow people to turn up and get trained. There is sometimes a disconnection between what the plans are and people actually turning up, getting trained and developed.

Huw Merriman

I am a daily commuter to this place on Southern. My train is an hourly train service, because the capacity is so full on the network. Like most commuters, I am frustrated but stoic and realistic at the same time. When I hear of plans like this and when I heard the managing director from South West Trains say that this could potentially add 30% on certain networks, I am quite excited by it. I am struck that you seem quite negative about it and not optimistic about what it can deliver. Why is that the case?

Mick Whelan

I have vast experience on the adoption of this in Europe. In a different role, I dealt with the Channel tunnel and other areas. When you do it on a new railway and you openly do it, not on the make-do-and-mend basis that we traditionally operate in the UK, it is a different proposition. If you look at the timescales for this, we are in the 21st century, still running semaphore signals in certain areas of the UK. We have two-light colour signals, three-light colour signals, four-light colour signals, RETB and half a dozen other various things. We have a non-standard network. We want now to introduce a standard process on a railway system that was not designed for it. Given our previous experience about how we have adopted these processes in the past, we are quite naturally reticent. Again, we welcome the investment. We want a thriving, green railway that is good for passengers and freight and generates for the railway and our members. We do not have a problem with that, or with the travelling public or the taxpayer. The problem we have is that we have already seen it slip from control period 5 to control period 6, whether it be a 20-year adoption period or a 25-year adoption period. Over that period of time the people who work on the railway will be going for two or three different systems of signalling at one time. The training requirement and the maintenance of knowledge will be massive, so we are reticent but not against.

Mick Cash

If I could make a particular point about the two people you are asking questions of, Mick is a former train driver and I am a former signalling technician. I spent 23 and a half years as a signalling technician. We also have a lot of experience of dealing with the industry. We support increasing capacity. We know how these things work and how they end up getting implemented. We have concerns about the ability of the industry per se to do it. It needs to have the right capacity to do it. It needs to have the right structure to do it. It needs to have the right finance to do it. The capacity is the people and the strategy to do it. The structure is making sure you get all those people to work together. The finance is cash, and it has to be cash over a period of time. We support increasing capacity, but we are just a bit sanguine about it based on our long experience of how the industry operates.

Huw Merriman

I use Southern, and I am certainly struck that there is currently a dispute between the unions and Southern. Part of that has come off the back of new technology that is being rolled out. Thinking ahead with this, and I will not go into that particular one—

Mick Cash

It is not new technology.

Huw Merriman

Okay—the ability to open and close doors by the driver using CCTV.

Mick Cash

It is not new technology.

Huw Merriman

Okay. None the less, is there a possibility, which commuters would love, for the unions and the rail companies to work together from the earliest stages to deliver this technology and believe in it, rather than always being at loggerheads? Ultimately, it is the commuters who are left to pick up the pieces.

Mick Whelan

May I correct you? There has not been a change in the industry when we have not worked in partnership, whether it be the moving block that was going to happen on the west coast but was stopped in the end by a lack of investment, or the introduction of new trains and new technology. The ATO through the core of St Pancras would not be in place without the assistance, flexibility and willingness of the trade unions working in partnership. What we are now seeing—I will choose my words very carefully having spent most of the last three weeks in the High Court—is the fact that the Government are now writing changes into the ITTs that circumvent the ability for us to negotiate or discuss these things. People are bidding for things and being forced to put them in place without the dialogue that you would like to see taking place.

Chair

In terms of the digital railway and the plans and ambitions we have heard about, do you see yourselves as unions working with the railway sector to implement them?

Mick Whelan

I can only speak on behalf of my own trade union for a moment and be parochial. If how Southern seeks to do business is the template for future negotiations within the industry, I would not hold out great hope that we can work in partnership.

Mick Cash

My experience of dealing with Network Rail and people like Mark Carne is that they won’t go to war on their own employees to get change introduced. The concept of the digital railway, which is another phrase being used but is basically ERTMS, ETCS and a communications strategy, means that there are as many opportunities there for work as there are threats. When you threaten people, as Southern have done, and if that is the standard we are going to face as the representatives of the workers, and what the workers are going to face, we are going to have a hard time. I am hopeful that with Network Rail and companies like that we see the better side of the industry rather than some of the arrangements we have seen in Southern—forced upon them by other people, I have to say.

Robert Flello

One of the things we have heard about is the systems possibly making life easier for drivers in terms of not having to learn routes so much. There are two parts to my question. First, do you think that is right? Secondly, if it were right—you have already shaken your head on that one—what would be the impact of a driver on a passenger service versus the impact on training for a driver on a freight service? How would that work in practice?

Mick Whelan

The impact for a passenger driver is quite obvious. He has far more fixed braking points in relation to an intra-urban service or something that stops every two minutes. An intercity driver has to be able to pick out a point at 3 o’clock in the morning in the pouring rain to stop at Milton Keynes or Coventry at 100-odd mph. Freight drivers have the same problem, but it is more generalised because they tend to be the people doing infrastructure work. They have to know various locations quite intensively for when they do the lower speed and more intensive infrastructure work. They are not doing the day-to-day movement of inter-modal or heavy construction. The reality is that we have a problem that I alluded to earlier. Every train driver in the UK, including myself, has been trained on a system that is location based. If you have this signal, it will take you in a certain direction. Well, signals will not exist in future. If you put the brake on at a certain point, you will stop at that certain point. The first problem will be the intensive training of drivers in a new way for a new system that does not exist. That will be from scratch for all 19,000-plus train drivers in the country, which I would imagine is going to be incredibly difficult to deliver while we are still running the system, without some sort of agreement on flexibility. At the same time, in the future it is even more frightening, because you do not have those fixed points when the system goes into a degraded mode. The driver has to know the geography far more intensively than he does now, particularly at times of snow, rain, heavy showers and all the worst-case scenarios we always give you. Therein lies the difficulty. When I have been talking to stakeholders about ERTMS, part of the problem is that they talk arrant nonsense. No train driver in the history of the railway has ever self-authorised when we have had a degraded or emergency situation. Somebody somewhere has to make the decision remotely that it is safe to continue. Some very high-ranking people within the industry have said to me, offline, “What do you think about self-authorisation of train drivers?” I say, “Where?” They say, “In ERTMS.” I say, “At what point?” They say, “At the block markers.” The system itself is just an enhanced electronic moving block. The transponder sends a signal to the train so that you do a speed that does not catch up with the train in front. If the system degrades and you do not know what is in front of you, what speed would you expect to go at? What would you expect to find around the corner unless somebody told you that the next five, 10 or 15 miles were clear? When we asked, “Where would we be asked to self-authorise past?” they were talking about the block markers. I asked, “How big is a block marker?” bearing in mind that the average driver sits about six and a half feet to eight feet off the floor. They are about “this” big. I would not expect a car driver to pick those out remotely at any form of distance, and I do not think you could expect somebody driving a freight train of up to 1,000 tonnes at 75 mph, or more if the new system allows it, to do so either.

Robert Flello

You have probably answered the other question I was going to ask. Is this potentially a move towards driverless trains? From the answer you have just given, it would be lethal to have driverless trains in those circumstances.

Mick Whelan

We have one of the most intensive railway systems in the world. The opportunity and technology is there for driverless trains, but with the greatest of respect I do not think we will see it in my lifetime. As we go towards the 20 or 25-year period that people are talking about for the introduction of this system, we are a long way away from it. Even then in degraded circumstances and given the vagaries of our railway, and whether at some point somebody says that the investment is being made for the main line only and not for other areas, it will be very interesting. While it might facilitate it in the future, it is not one of our worries currently.

Mick Cash

You should also recognise that Network Rail is moving towards concentrating its signalling staff—the staff who oversee the movement of trains; whether you get traffic management in is another matter—into 12 or 13 rail operating centres. At the moment there are about 400 or 500 signal boxes. There will be a concentration and they will be more remote from the track as such. The skillset of the drivers and on-train staff is going to be crucial in those circumstances. They may change because of ERTMS, digital railway, ETCS or whatever. They may have to adapt and there will be different challenges, but there is still going to be a need to have people on board those trains looking after the safety of the trains and the passengers, looking after the safety of the equipment and the railway, because in the middle of the night on whatever line you are you could be 100 miles away from the signaller. Somebody has to be there on site doing stuff, so some of this stuff is pie in the sky.

Martin Vickers

I asked our first panel if they had confidence in Network Rail’s ability to deliver on these new signalling systems. Can I take it from your earlier comments that you would not have any confidence in them?

Mick Whelan

The Peter Hendy report was alluded to earlier by other witnesses, when I was not here. If we cannot even do the day-to-day stuff that we are doing in control period 5 on a major project like this—bearing in mind that we are in the first year or two of control period 5 and the five-year period is slipping into control period 6—given the history of major projects in the past, from experience I do not have a great deal of confidence that there will be any delivery on time. I think there will be slippage.

Mick Cash

Do I have confidence in Network Rail? I have confidence in Network Rail, because what else are you going to replace it with? The Government had a choice of replacing it with something else and decided not to do so because we would get back to those bad old days of Railtrack. Having said that, I made the point earlier that we need the capacity, the structure and the finance to do these big projects. My big concern now, with CP6 coming, is that the ORR is starting to fragment Network Rail in terms of the routes. A lot of these plans are going to be delivered by the routes, although it is a major rail network project. There have been pressures on them to deliver at least two or three key tasks; to operate the railway, maintain the railway and build some really big projects. The criticisms about some of the big projects are right, because they have been focusing on the other two, but you need one controlling mind and one overseeing arrangement in place to ensure that that capacity is being built in and delivered, and that there is a structure to bring all these things together. The finance is crucial. If it was not Network Rail, who else would you have? If you had somebody else in place, you would have to have somebody like Network Rail to be a key part of it. They oversee, maintain and renew 20,000 miles of train track, and they have the skillset to do it. It is not perfect, but what is the alternative?

Martin Vickers

We heard from Mr Jones, the previous witness, that the average speed of a freight train is 25 mph, which I think we would probably all agree is rather pathetic. If we are going to attract more business on to the network, we need to improve on that. Do you think that the proposals before us will help to achieve a better average speed?

Mick Whelan

I would hope they would. The reality is that he hinted that we would have to change the way we look at the braking curve of trains and to have greater face. When you have trains of up to 2,000 tonnes with one engine, the real problem with freight trains is getting them up to speed. If they brake for any reason, getting them back up to speed is where the time lapse and time loss is. The reality is that the braking curves on the type of wagons we have, with the age they are and the type of locomotives we currently have, does not lend itself to that proposition. Unless there is wholesale investment across the industry in new wagons and newer engines to pull them, there will be great difficulty in delivering his aspirations.

Mick Cash

I would not know what they are comparing it with. Is that good or bad? I do not know if it is the same in America or in Europe in terms of the speed. One of the other factors Mick alluded to is the lines they operate on. It is not the west coast or east coast lines, where they can get going as long as there is capacity. They will perhaps be slowed down by a train. I was caught behind a freight train yesterday morning coming into Euston, because it was too long. It was going on the North London line but it blocked the line so I could not get into Euston. The lines that they operate on are by definition sometimes at slower speeds. If you wanted not to spend money on HS2 but to create high speed lines for freight networks in and out of Felixstowe or on the North London line—which I do not think you will ever be able to do because physically it is not possible—you could increase the line speed. Some of it you will not physically be able to do because of the lines you naturally operate on.

Martin Vickers

I have one last point. Mr Whelan, you said earlier that you do not meet the Rail Delivery Group at all. Is that because they do not invite you to be part of the set-up or by choice of your union?

Mick Whelan

Originally, we sought to engage. We were not consulted, as were no stakeholders in the industry by the way, about the set-up of the Rail Delivery Group. Apparently, Mick’s predecessor and I were associate members by default. We turned up at the first AGM. We sought to speak and were not allowed to do so. We have not engaged with them since. We went with a willingness to engage and it was destroyed quite quickly.

Mary Glindon

Mr Cash, you mentioned in response to my colleague’s question that you think there is a long-term future for staff being on trains rather than going straight through to driverless trains. In relation to your members, how do you see their career prospects and the prospects for new people coming into the industry? Is wanting to get into the rail industry and working on trains as drivers or whatever a long-term prospect for young people? Is it one that you can sell to young people and your members for future career development in light of these proposals?

Mick Whelan

In relation to HS2, we have both done a vast amount of work. It is one area where diversity—young people and the broad spectrum of all our community—is engaged and they are looking to do it. In TfL and one or two other companies, they actually comply with the legal requirements and look at what you need to do. I conducted an internal independent review of my own trade union in 2012 in response to the McNulty report. The average age of a train driver coming into the industry is 36. We have 4.2% women and 6.3% black and ethnic minorities, to our eternal shame. I have 95% density of train drivers in the UK but I can only get my membership from whom the employers recruit. Since then we have mounted jointly and singly campaigns with the employers to try to change the attitude. We have tried to work on getting railway apprenticeships back into the system and sought a way forward to get young people into the industry. It is partly for our own benefit. If we want to protect the pension systems that currently exist, we need young blood coming in to fund those pension systems. The reality is that we work incredibly hard to try to get young people into the industry and career-map them, move them through and get a more overarching and more diverse pool of labour within the industry itself. We are not always successful.

Mick Cash

I often make the point to employers, particularly modern employers, that we have been in the rail industry since 1871—longer than Mick’s union, by the way. Our union has been around for as long as the FA Cup, and that was founded in 1871. The point about that is that I say to them that our DNA is in the industry and the industry’s DNA is in us. The trade unions were here before they came along and we will be here after they have gone. We want to make sure that there is a sustainable future for the industry and make sure that employees’ work is going forward. That is why we get classed as Luddites or people who oppose stuff, but if we don’t fight for the workers and for the employment industry I cannot see the employers doing it, particularly if you are talking about new technology and driverless trains. We are here not as Luddites trying to stop progress; we have seen progress and we want to make sure that progress is for the benefit of our members, for workers and for the industry. The only way we can do that is to make sure that we have an agenda that still allows us to negotiate and to protect workers. There is one thing I have noticed. I joined the railway in 1978. Certainly, since privatisation, employment practices have changed. These are some of the battles going on currently at this moment in time. More and more we see the dumbing down, deskilling and casualisation of the workforce. I do not think any young person will want to get into that sort of industry. That is why we fight the fights we do, particularly on Southern.

Chair

Are you optimistic that digital railway can transform the sector for the public good?

Mick Whelan

I believe so, if we do it in a way which represents the needs of the travelling public. Partly in response to a previous question, and to answer your question, there seems to be a perception in the industry that, if you remove the second person from trains and the driver operates the doors, it reduces dwell times. When we talk about some of the problems we currently have in the industry, there is absolutely nothing to do with a visible presence, safety, economics or anything else; there is purely this overarching vision to make the digital railway work, and if the driver operates the trains, the dwell times on the platforms are shorter. Therein lies our problem. It will not be the case when you have a 12-car 700 on the Thameslink route with 1,100 passengers in the peak. We have recently been told about three major incidents that happened on the railway in the last year. If we can no longer rely on the underpinning technology that tells us that DOO can operate, we are going to have a problem going forward. It is not the cameras and the doors that make a train safe; it is the traction interlock. Basically, when we were sold DOO, on a far less used railway in BR times, it was on the basis that if you had a DOO train and the doors came open, the brakes came on; or if you went to leave a platform and somebody had a walking stick or their backpack stuck in the doors, you could not get power and that train could not move. We are now being told by several reports that have come out recently, particularly in relation to Hayes, Wickham and Croydon South, that we can no longer rely on that technology. If that is the founding base for the reduction in dwell times, that is going to allow more longer and shorter trains to move more effectively in the digital railway, I think we are going to have problems in the short term, never mind the medium term.

Chair

Mr Cash, are you optimistic about the prospects of this major investment?

Mick Cash

I think the railway over its whole history has embraced change and new technology, and made it work for itself. As trade unions we have had to deal with that, but the industry in all of this has also sought to bring along with it the workers and the employees. If we have the right process for doing it, I will be optimistic that it is not only for the benefit of the industry but for the passengers and the workers rather than just for some shareholders. I am not convinced at this moment in time that everybody in the industry has convinced us that the digital railway is the way forward. There needs to be a bit more work and they need to communicate a bit better.

Chair

Thank you very much, gentlemen. Oral evidence: Rail technology: signalling and traffic management, HC 67 21