Is the cost of Grayling too high?
3 min read
Shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald writes for PoliticsHome, saying Chris Grayling uses "a web of untruths and falsehoods" to explain away decisions he has made that are "damaging to capital, business and industry."
Earlier this week it emerged that when Michael Gove was Justice Secretary he kept a cost of Grayling tally. Each time he reversed one of his predecessor’s failed policies he would colour in the running total with his pen. Perhaps I should be stocking up on highlighter pens for the time when Chris Grayling will be my predecessor as Secretary of State for Transport.
I’ll almost certainly find that the cost of Grayling tally in the realm of transport has been unbearably and unendurably high, both economically and environmentally. We had his well-documented multi-billion-pound bailout of Virgin/Stagecoach on the East Coast last year. The latest calamity to strike is a new report from the National Audit Office which told us that the Transport Secretary deceitfully kept large scale cuts to rail upgrades hidden until after the 2017 election and justified them on the basis of technology which does not exist.
Yesterday the NAO revealed that the Prime Minister and HM Treasury decided to cancel the Midland Main Line and Oxenholme to Windemere electrification projects in March 2017 but did not announce their decision until July. It’s not the first time the Conservatives have played politics with vital rail projects. In 2015 they announced big plans for rail investment only to cancel them weeks after the election.
Chris Grayling has repeatedly told the House of Commons and the Transport Select Committee that the upgrades to rail lines weren’t necessary because new dual purpose diesel/electric trains could do the job. I told him that his claims were untrue on numerous occasions across the dispatch box. He dismissed me and many other MPs. We have now learned that his own officials told him that trains with the required speed and acceleration did not exist. Yet the Secretary of State repeated these false claims to Parliament. Again and again.
Why couldn’t he just be honest and say there was a hole in the budget due to cost overruns and delays? The truth is that the cuts to investment would save around £337 million over 5 years. This was a much lower saving than originally identified. This short-term cost cutting - £337 million is peanuts in rail terms – will result in long lasting economic and environmental damage.
Not for the first time the Transport Secretary has spun a web of untruths and falsehoods to explain his decision rather than admit the truth. Elsewhere his resolute defence of rail franchising as that system crumbles is akin to the proverbial fiddling while Rome goes up in flames.
A few days ago, Chris Grayling made a speech in which he extolled the virtues of capitalism and profit as the great driving force of the British economy. He should reflect that his cuts to rail investment have been disastrous for the regional economies in Wales, the South West and the Midlands not to mention the thousands of workers in the rail supply chain. How can he call himself a capitalist when his decision are so damaging to capital, business and industry?
The transport tally is sky high and heading towards outer space. I say the cost of Chris Grayling is now too much.
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