Traffic & Transport
Will Andy Burnham ‘go big’ in expanding the role of the state? | Nationalisation
As he swept towards victory in the Makerfield byelection, Andy Burnham told voters he wanted to see “the essentials of life being run primarily for the public interest, not for the private interests”.
Citing the Bee Network of buses and trams across Manchester city region, brought together on his watch, Burnham repeatedly highlighted the need for more “public control” over the necessities of life. Water, energy, transport and housing are at the top of his list.
Now PM-in-waiting, he is expected to say more about his economic priorities in a speech on Monday.
Burnham’s Manchester address will garner intense interest, from his more leftwing backers to the owners of vast chunks of the British economy. They will be trying to gauge whether he is really serious about expanding the role of the state – all the way through to outright nationalisation – and willing to stare down the vested interests standing in the way.
His choice of chancellor is being viewed as a critical test of his radicalism on this agenda. Advocates of an economic reset, including nationalisation, see Ed Miliband as the only plausible candidate who would be prepared to countenance the steps needed – including facing down intense industry lobbying.
Former health secretary Wes Streeting, by contrast, did not mention public ownership or control in his recent speech on “progressive capitalism”, with the bookies’ favourite for No 11 focusing instead on alignment with the EU, planning deregulation and exploiting the North Sea.
Neal Lawson, the director of the progressive thinktank Compass and a vocal supporter, sees the distinction between public control – which could just mean tougher regulation, for example – and full-blooded public ownership, as key.
“Does Andy Burnham think he can go for ‘control,’ when all of the evidence suggests these things are uncontrollable, and can only be managed in the public interest by being owned in some innovative way by the public sector?” he says.
Perhaps the most radical vision of what public ownership could mean was set out in a dense policy paper published recently by Mat Lawrence, director of the Common Wealth thinktank, under the auspices of Burnham campaign vehicle Mainstream.
Lawrence says of Burnham: “He’s grasped that part of people’s desire for change is this hybrid and bureaucratic model we have for essential sectors, with a weak state trying to regulate privatised utilities, which doesn’t really work for anyone, in terms of affordability, investment, sovereignty, or quality of life.”
Common Wealth was set up explicitly to make the case for greater public ownership – though Lawrence and his co-author Alex Williams eschew the word “nationalisation”.
Their central argument in the paper, The Productive State, is that many of the basics of life – including transport, energy and water, but also social care and housing – have become too expensive, because shareholders are forever taking a slice.
That leads to higher inflation, they say – and therefore higher interest rates; and leaves voters frustrated that basic public goals, such as keeping England’s waterways free of faeces, seem forever out of politicians’ reach.
Cat Hobbs, the founder of the We Own It campaign, which has long argued for public ownership of key resources, stresses this latter, democratic aspect of the argument.
“The arguments are fairly straightforward,” she says. “We’re talking about natural monopolies. We don’t have choice as consumers, and so what we’ve argued is that we need accountability as citizens.”
Common Wealth insists its favoured approach has little in common with the postwar model of great, clunking nationalised industries, funded directly by the Treasury and with ministers in command.
Instead, they hark back to an earlier example – the Central Electricity Board, established by Stanley Baldwin’s Conservative government in 1926. The state-owned arm’s-length body built the first national grid, and rationalised electricity generation, helping to drive down bills.
Research by Arthur Downing, of the LSE, has shown that the regional public electricity generators of the time, known as “municipals”, were able to cut prices, because they did not need to pay out profits to shareholders, and could borrow more cheaply than a private operator could.
Somewhat similarly, Common Wealth describes the model it has in mind as “the public corporation, operating with a clear mandate, borrowing against its own revenues, insulated from both Treasury short-termism and shareholder extraction.”
As Burnham prepares to move into No 10, the future of Thames Water is seen as an early test case, with ministers set to decide whether the heavily indebted company should collapse into the state’s special administration regime (SAR) or its bondholders be allowed to take it over.
Thames’s shareholders have already been wiped out, and its creditors have offered to take a hefty discount. SAR can be used to tip a firm that provides a crucial public service, and is at risk of collapse, into a form of temporary insolvency. An independent administrator would then take over negotiations with lenders.
The expected outcome after a company has gone into the SAR is for it to be sold back into the private sector once its finances have been restructured. But advocates of nationalisation argue that ministers could instead mandate that Thames ends up a public corporation.
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Even Lawrence, who believes public sector ownership could and should be much more widespread, is cautious about how rapidly this process could take place – conscious of the risk of alarming private sector investors.
“This is not against markets, or dynamism, or entrepreneurialism; it’s about fixing some of those sectors that are not working to provide the affordable foundations for dynamic businesses to thrive,” he says, arguing that state capacity – the ability for the public sector to run things – has to be built up slowly.
Indeed, in the three years left of a Labour administration, Lawrence reckons Thames might be as far as the government could get, in terms of nationalising existing utilities – though Hobbs, and campaigners at the thinktank Compass, would like to see a much more aggressive use of the SAR.
Even that would be less drastic than the approach favoured in Labour’s 2019 manifesto, which was to take “rail, mail, water and energy” into public hands, by exchanging government bonds for shares. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour insisted the plan would be “fiscally neutral” because the state would acquire assets, though the Institute for Fiscal Studies put the upfront cost at “many tens of billions” and pointed out the taxpayer would also be taking on hefty debts.
That same approach – bonds for shares – is the one laid out in the Productive State paper.
Fresh borrowing to fund such a process could be accommodated under the current fiscal rules, if the state acquires a financial asset in return. But that would not apply to the firms’ physical assets, creating potential accounting headaches, unless the rules were rewritten again.
It could also result in lengthy legal battles over what constituted fair value to investors.
The government’s relatively straitened fiscal position, with the debt-to-GDP ratio tripling in the past 20 years to 96% and a debt interest bill of £137bn due this year, also raises questions about the potential cost of additional borrowing.
For these and other reasons, Lawrence suggests Burnham should focus for the moment on quick(ish) wins that lean towards public “control” as well “ownership”.
All metro mayors could be encouraged to use franchising powers to create Bee Network-style integrated transport networks, while the government’s Great British Railways could take more action to coordinate routes and fares across the train operators Labour is returning to state ownership.
Meanwhile, a string of development corporations, with borrowing powers, could be set up to kickstart housebuilding, rather than hoping that planning deregulation alone will fuel a construction renaissance.
Rachel Reeves has already announced the creation of a development corporation for Greater Cambridge.
Lawrence suggests Labour could then go into the next general election advocating a more thoroughgoing nationalisation agenda, that could include taking the energy transmission companies into state ownership.
Another often-cited vehicle for change is Great British Energy: advocates of nationalisation argue this state-owned vehicle has been set up too timidly, and could enter the energy generation business, if it was scaled up and given a more expansive remit.
Burnham’s campaign rhetoric about an expanded role for the state could encompass a wide range of possibilities. With his top team set to be announced shortly, the MP for Makerfield’s every word will be watched intently, to determine whether he is ready, as the title of Miliband’s relentlessly upbeat book put it a few years ago, to “go big”.
What a joy to read John Harris’s piece on the cultural changes taking place in rural areas (Walking the Peak District, I discovered a wonderful rejection of the right’s monotone vision of England, 23 August. My husband and I have walked many miles in the Peak District and we would comment on the monocultural nature of other walkers. As a headteacher, I also took groups of children to stay in Hartington Hall, where Harris stayed with his own children, and other school groups also appeared to be monocultural. We knew nothing about Black Girls Hike or Steppers UK that Harris mentions, but hope that these movements will support positive change.
Nina Young
Collingham, Nottinghamshire
John Harris rightly highlights the cost of gastropubs and boutique Airbnbs replacing budget alternatives as an issue, but overlooked another. The replacement of basic (cheap) campsites with (expensive) glamping yurts and fully serviced campervan pitches is threatening dirt-cheap summer holidays spent backpacking around the country and learning to appreciate new landscapes and peoples, from which many of us oldies benefited greatly.
Mike Coogan
Abbeystead, Lancashire
John Harris omits one critical issue that impacts participation. Public transport outside cities and towns is often poor. To places like Bellever on Dartmoor, the location of one of his favourite hostels, buses are very limited indeed.
Les Bright
Exeter
Traffic & Transport
‘Without us, no wheel would turn’: the unsung heroes keeping England’s transport moving | Business
Not many people get to park their car here – bang in the middle of Heathrow airport, on the taxiway just a stretch of grass away from where a line of passenger planes is coming in to land.
It’s close enough to see the shimmering air and smoke as nose tyres hit the tarmac. “An A380 will put down as much rubber as a car’s entire tyre,” Jack Quantick-Thorne says. He knows – part of his job is to ensure the runway team scrapes it off and patches things up overnight. And it is all recycled, he adds.
The airfield operations officer is not in the limelight much, but is one of a host of unsung workers keeping transport moving. And some jobs far from the public eye turn out to be not only essential, but surprisingly challenging.
Jack Quantick-Thorne, airfield operations officer, Heathrow
Passengers might only catch a glimpse of Quantick-Thorne from a window seat on landing, if he grabs the paddles to marshal a plane into the exact designated spot at the stand. “People just think you’re that person with the table tennis bats,” he grimaces slightly, as the Guardian requests a demonstration. “That’s like 5% of my job.”
In fact, most planes are now brought to the stand via laser-guided electronic displays. But human marshalling remains a crucial backup. Brandishing the paddles, Quantick-Thorne beckons in a taxiing British Airways arrival, the pilot peering down from the cockpit and steering 50 tonnes of plane straight towards him. The nosewheel travels bang on the guideline, stopping exactly in position for the airbridge to swing in and allow passengers to disembark.
Nerve-racking? “No. When you’ve got a really big plane, an A380, you need a second marshal right by the wheel to check it’s stopped in the right place,” he says.
Back in the car, the job continues: “I’m patrolling, I’m looking around, scanning everything – is the refueller doing his job properly, has the aircraft got chocks under its wheels?”
That includes monitoring the road system under Heathrow’s airfields, recognising every vehicle and checking any infringement: drivers here can also clock up points on their licence, if he spots them.
Officers also need to look out for wildlife – particularly birds, a serious danger for jet planes (and vice versa). How does he deal with them? “We’ve got methods of dispersal,” says the airfield operations officer.
These, marvellously, turn out to be speakers on the roof of the van, which play a range of bird sounds: “If I saw a flock of starlings, if I played a starling noise, the starling would think, ‘Oh, maybe there’s a predator nearby,’ and they fly off.”
And, he demonstrates, “I’ve got common gull. Black-headed gull. I’ve got a falcon”.
Are there falcons? “No,” he explains patiently. “So you think about it from a bird’s point of view. If there’s a pigeon over there, best play a falcon so it will fly off.”
If he now knows birds, it’s the planes that drew him here. He was previously at Nats, the air traffic control centre in Swanwick, managing the planes, but never up close. There is more to it than the paddles – but, he confesses, he takes every opportunity to use them, and records each plane that he has marshalled, including every aircraft in BA’s short-haul fleet.
Being a pilot is the dream, he admits, but the prohibitive training costs – £100,000 or more – put it out of reach. For an enthusiast, he reckons the job is the next best thing. Last year he had to tow the Concorde that still stands at the edge of the airfield across for an exhibition: “It was the first time one had moved in years – incredible to see in the rear-view mirror.”
Chris Thackaberry, network traffic controller, Transport for London
The day starts in Victoria Station House overlooking the bus terminus, a grand old building that looks considerably less so inside, where Chris’s desk is surrounded by hundreds of cardboard diversion signs.
About 500 of the capital’s 19,000 bus stops are on his patch in Westminster – home to some of Britain’s most congested streets, where dozens of bus routes cross. Roadworks are the bane of the bus and Thackaberry’s job is to keep them moving – armed with a van, pliers and zip ties.
Sometimes he can plan for roadworks months ahead. But other days are less predictable, when life suddenly blocks a route: “It could be a broken-down vehicle or a burst water main, but I’ve had windows falling out of buildings, I’ve had a collapsed horse on a bridge. I had an upside down Lamborghini in Piccadilly … I don’t know if it was sticking to the 20mph limit.”
His incident response van contains an orderly standing desk area and even a printer to rustle up more signs if needed, as well as spill dry sacks, ready to suck up any diesel or oil leaked over the road.
It also has two cylinders affixed to the wall containing “spit kits” – swabs to pick up any saliva aimed at staff, with clear bags to seal, ready to take the evidence to the police. “It’s just part and parcel of when you’re working in London, for anyone in uniform.”
In a sweltering Trafalgar Square, as he hunts in the midst of four lanes of traffic to hitch his cardboard signs to any available piece of spare street furniture, the complexity of the puzzle becomes clearer.
“There’s so many routes go through here, we’re fighting with ourselves for space.”
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Sarah, railway signaller, York
Gone are most of the signal boxes of old: these days, Britain’s railway is mostly controlled from one of 12 remote centres. From a windowless room in York, trains right down the East Coast mainline are guided on their way.
“In the old days, it was lever pulling,” says Sarah. “Now it’s a click of the mouse instead. Like a computer game scenario, but it’s real track, real trains, real people. We have to manually click, signal to signal, for every train that comes through our patch.”
Signallers have five screens at eye level showing the railway, and five above with timetables and traffic management information.
“When you first start the job, it feels so far removed. There’s no windows, it’s like a black hole in the middle of the building, but you are signalling trains from York all the way into King’s Cross. I remember thinking: ‘How many hundreds of people are on that train we’re signalling?’”
Anything from a circuit failure to a trespasser to a sick passenger on a train can hold up the lines. “Our job initially in any incident is to make the area safe – that’s first and foremost. And then we look for a workaround, to keep trains moving. The days when there are serious incidents are few and far between. But every day there’s something.”
Jamie *, public service vehicle engineer, Manchester
At Jamie’s bus depot, servicing the Bee Network, the first shift starts at 5am and the last ends at 1am, but engineers might stay through the night with a breakdown.
“In the daytime it’s routine: vehicles are inspected by law on a monthly basis,” he says. “But engineers have bus driving licences too, if a bus was to break down, often we’d take another one out to the driver to keep the service running.”
With city buses that stop and start frequently, there is typically more treatment and maintenance. And newer vehicles don’t necessarily mean less work, he says: “They bring a lot of new issues and we’re constantly learning, going back to college on courses to learn the tech.
“Electric buses haven’t made the job easier – but they and the new diesel engines are clean. Working back in the day, it was a hell of a lot dirtier, especially in depots indoors or undercover,” says the vehicle engineer.
He will check each bus’s brakes, emissions tests and inspect the nuts and bolts everywhere from the underside to the driver’s cab. “We see a lot in the press about the conditions in the cab, but we’re cleaning those buses: it’s like a greenhouse, and the heat from the engines also comes into our workshop.
“Even the drivers don’t understand what engineers do – I always say we are the forgotten people. But without us, no wheel would turn.”
Frankie *, baggage handler, Gatwick
The thing people don’t understand, explains Frankie, is that the placement of bags in the hold is not random. “It’s all done on weight distribution. You have to put baggage where you’re told – it is a very specific job, you do not deviate.”
At many airports, larger aircraft such as long-haul planes are loaded with bags already in large crates, lifted into position by machine. But short-haul flights at Gatwick are loaded manually. “An average bag is about 20kg and the average load is 90 bags off, 90 on, for three or four people. If you do eight turns a day, that’s nearly 30 tonnes your team is lifting. You get fitter – it’s like going to the gym, you end up lifting heavier and heavier bags.”
Passengers who fear for their luggage often make the job harder: “The worst thing is shrink-wrapped bags. It’s slippery, harder to hold on to, and less grip for the belt to pull up. And those straps around bags, they can get jammed in the belts and break them.
“People don’t realise how damaging it can be – and pointless. If you’re on a flight where customs do spot checks, they go for the bags that are wrapped. And there is so much CCTV and security. If I get caught opening a bag, I’d lose my job – why would I risk that?”
There are, says Frankie, more women doing the job now: “It’s getting more female-friendly. A lot of people choose this type of job to get into aviation: they want to be pilots or crew eventually, and just want to be around planes any way they can.”
* Names have been changed
Traffic & Transport
Train drivers secure 3.6% pay rise after threat of strikes on busy UK routes | Rail transport
Train drivers have secured a significant pay rise after the threat of strike action was floated on busy routes across the UK, including those on the busy London-Manchester line.
The deal, which was agreed on Saturday between Avanti West Coast and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (Aslef) union, is the first to be approved by Andy Burnham in his premiership.
As well as the London-Manchester line – likely to see increased ministerial traffic after the establishment of the No 10 North office – the company also operates services to other big British cities such as Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool.
Coming after Aslef announced plans in June to ballot members about possible strike action over pay, the deal – first reported by the Sunday Times – will be seen as a victory for the union. It features a 3.6% pay rise for drivers, 0.7% higher than the latest inflation rate, as well as time and a half pay for working Sundays, and £720 if drivers work a fifth day in the week.
Avanti is to be renationalised under the Labour government by spring 2027, with all rail companies due to be under government control by the end of that year. The operator, which is seen as having the worst punctuality rating for any major rail company in the UK based on figures from the Office of Rail and Road, has cut multiple services in the past year, including the 7am train between Manchester and London, which they cut and brought back in the space of a few days after public scrutiny.
The government said it had “prioritised resolving the rail union disputes, improving services for passengers and saving hundreds of millions in lost revenue to ease the burden on taxpayers”.
But Conservative shadow transport secretary Richard Holden said that the government was “totally capitulating to their union paymasters” and that “taxpayers are being asked to stump up millions simply to save Burnham’s blushes.”
An Aslef spokesperson said on Saturday: “Our job is to enhance our members’ terms and conditions and this deal, struck with Avanti West Coast and approved by the DFTO (Department for Transport Operator), has been accepted.”
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “This government has prioritised resolving the rail union disputes, improving services for passengers and saving hundreds of millions in lost revenue to ease the burden on taxpayers.
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“We are pleased to see Avanti West Coast work with Aslef to enable a fair and affordable settlement to keep Britain’s railways moving and prevent disruption for passengers.”
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