My Lords, my department is already working on a long-term rolling stock and infrastructure strategy, which will be the first for over 30 years, both to give certainty to the manufacturing and assembly market and to pursue modern standards of carbon-friendly traction and passenger comfort and accessibility.
My Lords, I welcome the work that is under way. Establishing the right industry partnerships is essential to developing a more efficient and cost-effective British railway model. Can the Minister update the House on the current status of discussions with EUROFIMA and indicate when British operators might be able to leverage its financial support in the procurement of public service rolling stock?
My Lords, EUROFIMA is a long-established, supranational financial institution, established as a joint stock company by an international treaty, the convention, signed by 25 European member states. It is dedicated to financing public passenger railway rolling stock and related infrastructure, as well as the modernisation and renewing of related equipment. As part of developing the rolling stock and infrastructure strategy, my department is exploring a range of financing structures to support investment in partnership with private finance. This includes active engagement with EUROFIMA to assess how its financing mechanisms could support future investment in the UK rolling stock market. If, following due diligence, EUROFIMA is considered an appropriate avenue to go down, then we would aim to accede by the end of 2026.
My Lords, now that the Government own South Western Railway, they have inherited about 4,000 trains that were manufactured four years ago and have not carried any passengers at all. Can my noble friend the Minister tell the House when these trains are likely to enter service?
My noble friend is accurate: 90 trains were procured; some of them were delivered five years ago. At the time that the South Western Railway operation reverted to public ownership, six out of the 90 were in service; as of today, 23 are now in service. The new management is doing what the old one did not, which is to put the new trains in service and have the old ones taken out of service and scrapped. The rest of them will be introduced as fast as the drivers can be trained, which will take a little time because that had not been done either.
My Lords, before the election last year, we published a rolling stock pipeline so that the industry was aware of not just the trains that the Department for Transport wished to procure but the fact that it had Treasury funding, which I hope has been a useful foundation for the work that the Minister is doing on the rolling stock strategy. Given that foundation that was put in place, is he able to add to the Answer he gave the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, and indicate to the House a timeframe of when he wishes to publish that rolling stock strategy for the competitive rolling stock industry that we established over the last decade or so?
The noble Lord’s recollection of what happened in his term of office might be quite good, but the fact is that the industry does not have much regard for what was published at the end of the term of the previous Government and is actively and interestedly waiting for something which relates to a real future, which is related to the age of the rolling stock and future usage. Currently, there are already three live procurements in the market for rolling stock, which will be referred to in the publication of the rolling stock and infrastructure strategy, which I expect to take place next summer.
My Lords, in the north-east we rejoice at the success of the reinstated Northumberland line, linking Ashington to Newcastle, which has seen over 700,000 journeys since the line was reopened last December. However, the route struggles with a lack of carriages, and the company would like to put more trains on. Can I ask the Minister whether the strategy will seek to prioritise regions in our country which have traditionally been underinvested in, so as to fast-forward the economic growth the Government so desire?
If that is an answer, I will sit and listen to it.
The right reverend Prelate is correct that the new line to Ashington is a success. Northern is resolving to put additional rolling stock on those trains now. It is able to do that at certain times of the day. One of the procurements that I referred to is for 464 vehicles for Northern, which will replace a large and elderly fleet of existing diesel trains over the next several years. That will result in enough rolling stock to satisfactorily serve demand on the Ashington line and, indeed, on other routes.
Can my noble friend the Minister tell me how adversely the rolling stock strategy has been affected by the cancellation of the Crewe and Manchester legs of HS2?
The abrupt cancellation of phase 2a of HS2 necessitates thinking through again the rolling stock strategy for the whole of HS2. It is one of a number of really enormous issues that the new chief executive and new chair of the board of HS2 are grappling with, because it is about time that both the Government and the country knew how much had been done for the money that is currently being spent, how long the project will now take to deliver and how much it will cost, and we do not know any of those things currently.
My Lords, my apologies for intervening early—old habits die hard. Currently, as the Minister said, there are three rolling stock procurements under way for Southeastern, TransPennine Express and Northern, but how will the Government ensure that there are no further delays to procuring new train fleets? These are essential to replace thousands of old trains—some over 40 years old and, frankly, they are rapidly approaching the end of their operating life, which could lead to a major crisis.
The noble Baroness is right that there are a lot of old vehicles. The average age of vehicles on the national network is 17 years. There are 12,000 vehicles across 14 operators, and it is essential that we plan for the future, if only because several thousand jobs in the manufacturing plant in Derby and the assembly plants at Newton Aycliffe, Goole and Newport, Monmouthshire, all depend on this—as does, as she is right to say, passenger comfort and reliability for rolling stock that has reached the end of its normal life.
My Lords, when the Government nationalised the train operating companies, they said that one of the advantages was that they would no longer be paying fees to the private sector. Have the Government carried out, or do they intend to carry out, an assessment of the value for money to the taxpayer of continuing to finance rolling stock through the use of roscos in the private sector?