Johnson signals he will not give in to RMT rail demands, telling cabinet they must ‘stay the course’ and push through reforms
Boris Johnson opened cabinet this morning with a message saying reform in the rail industry was essential. In the past we normally only found out what the PM said at cabinet when No 10 (or other ministers) briefed it out, but for the last few weeks Johnson has been using cabinet as a photo opportunity and he has invited in a camera crew to record his opening spiel. Here are some of the points he made this morning, from what was broadcast by Sky News.
- Johnson claimed the government was making bigger investments in railways than any previous government. The integrated rail plan alone was worth £96bn, he said. It was “truly transformational”, he claimed.
- But he claimed that investment would not be possible without reform. He said:
But if we’re going to do these colossal investments, as we are and as we must, we’ve got to have reform … It cannot be right that some ticket offices, I think, are selling roughly one ticket per hour. We need to get those staff out from behind the plate glass onto the platforms interacting with passengers, with customers, in the way that they want to do.
And we need the union barons to sit down with Network Rail and the train companies and get on with it.
- He said the country had to get ready to “stay the course” because reforms were essential. They would cut costs, he argued.
And I say this to the country as a whole, we need to get ready to stay the course. Because these reforms, these improvements in the way we run our railways, are in the interest of the travelling public. They will help to cut costs of fare payers up and down the country.
‘Stay the course’ sounded like a Thatcherite declaration that he was not going to give in to the union demands at any point. But whether the government retains the appetite for a no-compromise approach if disruption continues over the summer may be another matter.
- Johnson said that if the modernisation programme did not go ahead, ticket prices would get more expensive. He told cabinet this morning:
If we don’t do this, these great companies, this great industry, will face further financial pressure, it will go bust and the result will be they have to hike up the cost of tickets still further.
And he was a bit more blunt on this point in a quote released by No 10 overnight in the press notice previewing what he would be saying. This quoted Johnson as saying:
I want to be clear – we are not loading higher fares on passengers to carry on paying for working practices that date back in some cases to the 19th century.
This line is interesting because until now the government has attacked the strike largely on the grounds that it will cause intense inconvenience to commuters. But this argument links the strike, and rail reform, to the government’s longterm plan to help people with the cost of living.
The Labour MP Kate Osborne, who is parliamentary private secretary to the shadow Northern Ireland secretary Peter Kyle, has joined an RMT picket line, in defiance of the orders from Keir Starmer’s office. (See 9.31am.) Asked if she would face disciplinary action, Pat…