Mr A Maginness (Chairperson)
Mr McFarland (Deputy Chairperson)
Mr R Hutchinson
Mr Hay
Mr Hussey
Mr McNamee
Mr M Robinson
Mr Savage

Mr P Rayner ) Consultant

I welcome Mr Peter Rayner, who provided Transport 2000 with his views on the Railway Safety Bill consultation paper, as Transport 2000 does not have sufficient expertise on railway safety. Mr Rayner is not a member of Transport 2000; however, it was agreed to call him as a witness to give his comments and share his expertise. His curriculum vitae is included in your papers.

Mr Rayner has just got off a plane. We look forward to listening to what he has to say. Mr Rayner, you have already advised Transport 2000, and we have received their documentation, and we also have the letter you sent to our Assistant Committee Clerk. Perhaps you would like to make some opening comments, after which we can ask questions.

I am sorry I was late - I was delayed at Heathrow. In my second letter to the Committee staff, I stated that I would not need to add to what I had said to the Railway Development Society. However, when I read Mr McKenna's opposing opinion, I thought it would be helpful to the Committee to pick up on Mr McKenna's views and put my thoughts against them.

I worked for British Railways, and I know it very well. It was fragmented by hasty legislation at the end of the then Government's life, and a system was introduced that relied heavily on safety cases. In that situation one was obliged to obey the rules that were laid down and to ensure that a good system was in place. Once the responsibility for the safety case was yours, there was always a danger, as has happened in Britain, that people would not carry out what they promised to do in the safety case. This is the way that British Railways was privatised - and that is not an anti-privatisation remark. Had it been done in a geographically logical way, with a vertical chain of command and retention of the fat controller - in a 'Thomas the Tank Engine' sense - it would have been perfectly safe. However, the Government relied on safety case arrangements and fragmented the system. The vertical chain of command was replaced with approximately 1,000 legal contracts. With respect to the lawyers in this room, the only people who really benefited from the privatisation of British Railways were the lawyers, because we have had a succession of litigation following accidents.

After reading the initial Bill, I was worried that Northern Ireland was moving towards safety case regulations, purely because that system existed in Britain. However, it only exists there because we have made such a muddle of our railway system. It does not exist anywhere else in Europe. So you really are finding a remedy for something that is not flawed, unless you suddenly do to Northern Ireland Railways (NIR) what has been done to British Railways - put your maintenance into contractors' hands, who then get subcontractors and sub-subcontractors, and the result is this business of a joint inquiry. When I spoke about the Paddington accident, 10 QCs cross-examined those who gave professional evidence, and that went on for nearly six months.

Northern Ireland has a small railway system, which I know quite well - I worked here a long time ago, but I was here for some time - and my real point to Dr Fawcett was that if it is not absolutely necessary, do not change it. If it is necessary, do not introduce a fragmented system that relies on lawyers each time there is any difference of opinion. I have also said in my letter to you that I do not agree fully with Mr McKenna's view.

Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ) is not introducing this system - yet there is a border crossing much the same as the Eurostar, which goes from Waterloo to Brussels and Paris. The Eurostar travels between two EU member states four or five times a day -so does the Enterprise. Therefore, I do not accept Mr McKenna's point that this is necessary to be in tune with European law. I believe that theory to be wrong. CIÉ will not do it, and neither will anybody else in Europe, because they do not have to.

I want to clarify what you are saying. We can clearly see the fragmentation of the railway system in Great Britain. The one good thing here is that, although our system is very small, it is not fragmented. We have a unitary transportation company in public ownership, which is an advantage. Given those advantages, how would you approach legislative change to bring about railway safety?

Provided you have organisations in place, you can bring in the instructions. One good thing about privatisation - which has come about through accidents - is that it has forced people to adopt proper group standards, which people have to work to. There were group standards in the old railway system, but they were there merely because most of its employees were time-servers. Even when I worked for NIR, most workers were time-servers. Railway people tend to work a lifetime. Therefore, some of the things that are now written in tablets of stone were often unnecessary.

If there is a need to change there should be carefully written group standards, as one organisation does not necessarily need safety cases between each department. For example, safety cases are there because Balfour Beattie Construction Ltd may wish to negotiate with Railtrack. I shall take the Paddington accident as an example. Railtrack owned the infrastructure; the signalling was maintained by another company; one train was owned by another company; the stock was owned by a third company. At the time of the accident, there was no vertical chain of command. Each company had group standards, but they all then retrenched behind lawyers, and Railtrack often retrenched behind its share price. It became a muddle, and is not necessary unless there is fragmentation.

If you change, you will need correctly documented safety group standards, which existed previously. The rule book here is similar to the rule book in Britain but is now encapsulated in a group standard. However, it is still the rule book. Provided those standards are put in, I would merely alter the documentation. Mr McKenna quite correctly refers to Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate (HMRI), which is part of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). They are the means by which your safety can be monitored. In Britain safety failed after privatisation because people were not doing the job properly, so HMRI had to start issuing instructions. That is rather like the referee kicking the ball - once he does that he is no longer the referee. HMRI got into trouble over Paddington because it had issued instructions - it had become involved in the game rather than standing off. I have doubts about the resourcing of HMRI, but if it were properly resourced, there is no reason why HMRI could not monitor the way in which the railwaymen run the railway here. I shall choose my words carefully, but when I came to Northern Ireland in 1981 the railway inspectors were Lt Col Townsend-Rose, Major Olver and others, and the inspectorate was "army-organised". It was decided that that was inappropriate, and I came here to monitor as a railway officer rather than as a military officer. Essentially, I was not here as part of HMRI, but in that role.

Provided an inspectorate can monitor it, and your rules are right, what I found worrying about your legislation was that you believed it necessary to introduce the safety case to cover the cracks of fragmentation. If you are careful you will not fragment, and a safety case will not be necessary. If I may quote from my letter to the Committee:

"Reference to contractors is made in Mr McKenna's 6th paragraph on page 2. This to me seems the one real reason for the NI DRD wanting to adopt a GB safety case regime. Do they want to privatise infrastructure maintenance? Here lies, in my view the nub, for a lot of money can be made by contractors, in property alone. May I suggest consideration is given to what has happened in Great Britain."

There is no doubt that the Hatfield crash was caused by a mismatch between the track owners and the contractors. Mr McKenna implies - and I may have misunderstood him - that you are considering putting your maintenance out to contractors. If you do that, you will need safety cases, and you will be in a situation where that contractor may subcontract and subcontract again.

I understand the difficulties. We have all travelled on the railway in England and have seen the mess it is in. With our system being so small, would we necessarily experience the same difficulties if we went along the road taken by the UK? I do not want to use the wrong word, but with the system being so small are you not being over-alarmist?

I hope not. It is true that the rail system is small - I know it well and have great affection for it. It may be sufficiently local for the contractors. However, there must be clear-cut legal boundaries for work that goes out to contract, otherwise a contractor could put somebody on the track who is not capable of looking after his or her own safety. If that person is knocked over, many things ensue. It is a possible point of view. As the network is small and compact, it may well survive without the shambles there has been in Britain. As I said in my letter to the Committee, there is no point in changing the system - if the bicycle is not broken, it does not need to be fixed. The safety case approach is only used if the work is to be fragmented.

Returning to my original point, if the safety case approach is not used, what other approach do you suggest? We have a fairly centralised management structure, with quite transparent management control and so forth. What alternative is there to the safety case approach? I thought that the safety case approach was simply a model where certain criteria were applied to ensure that train travel was safe.

The safety case approach does not ensure that. It ensures that everything is properly documented when something goes wrong. The problem is that auditing is required. If you and I were operating together, I may decide to operate a safety case between us. Unless a third party actually monitors that we are doing that, the safety case is valueless. The safety case is no better than a good vertical chain of command with sensibly documented rules. Somebody is still needed - whether it is HMRI or somebody else - for auditing purposes.

One of the difficulties that resulted from Paddington - and this comes from CIÉ as well - is that there is a danger, because of the shortage of drivers, that drivers have not gone through exactly the same rigorous apprenticeship that train drivers the world over traditionally went through. The young driver who died at Paddington was not to blame because the signalling was not good, but he was woefully lacking in experience. The safety cases all said that the drivers would be adequately trained. It is easy to write the safety case, but machinery needs to be in place to monitor the way that role is performed. Audit and inspectorate organisations are needed whether safety cases are applied or whether you rely, as I do, on the vertical chain of command.

I want to follow up on that point, and then I will let other members ask questions. Are you saying that irrespective of the safety case, an audit body is required?

Yes.

My understanding is that HMRI carries out auditing under this system. Is that correct?

The inspectorate is one stage away from the auditor. We used to audit in-house at British Rail, but that cannot be sustained in today's society. Auditing must be independent. Railtrack Rail Safety, an auditing body that was part of Railtrack, has been brought back. However, HMRI stands above that. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 now places enormous responsibilities on employers, which the Health and Safety Executive implements.

Under the system proposed in the Bill, who would carry out the auditing?

That was my initial question to Dr Fawcett. It does not mention that in the Bill.

Are you worried that there does not appear to be an independent body for auditing safety?

If there is an independent body, it is not mentioned.

That is useful to know. We can ask the departmental officials about that aspect of the Bill.

I believe that the Committee will want to know who will award the safety certificates, but it does not state who will perform those roles. The roles spoken about are admirable, but it does not state anywhere who will perform them. That brings me back to the point about whether the roles have to be performed in the first place, because you do not need to break up the network.

With your experience of Northern Ireland Railways, presumably the maintenance work is currently carried out in-house. As this is a small railway network, and given the way that maintenance is going generally, part of the logic is that it will be an expensive luxury to have a fully trained, fully operational team of people sitting about when we get our railway system improved. If the network is bad, there will be a lot of maintenance, but if we have all our lines relaid, which is the plan, that level of activity may be questionable. This is looking ahead to a time when it may be cheaper to contract-out rail maintenance rather than keeping an in-house team, which seems to be the Department's reason for keeping that option open - presumably not tomorrow, but sometime in the future.

That may be the case. There is not much doubt that the Treasury certainly welcomes the privatisation of maintenance or the whole job, as there are always savings to be made by hiving it off. In theory, the Treasury saved money when maintenance was given out to large organisations such as Balfour Beattie and others- reputable engineering firms. Many things went with that including properties. I do not know the position in Belfast, but you will probably not be short of people wanting to be contractors for the same reason that money can be made from it. I do not know whether that saves the state money, but the Treasury - and I keep coming back to British Rail because it is the same Government and the same thing happened - undoubtedly saved a lot of money to start with. It now costs the taxpayer much more, because more subsidies go into the railway now than when it was nationalised. I shrink from making a political statement because I do not belong to a political party, but there is no doubt that it appeals to the Treasury to privatise and to hive things off. However, I would say that you only have to start killing people in minimal amounts and your savings have gone.

If the network is sufficiently small, and well monitored, you may get away with having a contractor whom you have your finger on. The Bill does not tell you how you will get your finger on the contractor - you must find that out - but you need an audit mechanism and a strong and efficient HMRI. One of the problems in the Paddington accident was that HMRI was inefficient - it had not inspected the signalling. I do not know how you will get HMRI to Northern Ireland when it cannot even inspect the signalling in England.

In England the track was sold off to Railtrack; it subcontracted the maintenance, which was then subcontracted again and again. If we were to keep the ownership of our system, and decided to use contracted maintenance for a particular length of rail, for example the Belfast to Bangor line presumably, as part of a contract - without legislation - we could write in safeguards or agreements for that particular job, for the length of the contract.

It is a safety case.

That is so. However, it does not need to be law. It could be part of the contract that is organised with the contractor. The deal would be that we want the contractor to carry out maintenance for five years on a rail line. We would write in the standards and rules of the game as part of the contract for that period, rather than putting a catch-all into legislation. However, if you wanted a mass maintenance, or wanted to sell the track off, you would have to have rail safety cases. Can you have a rail safety case for individual contracts, rather than having to have it in legislation?

I have never thought of it like that, and I probably will not give you an adequate answer because it is not something that I have applied myself to. If you retain the ownership of the infrastructure, one legal part is taken out because you own it, and it would be simpler. One of the problems that Railtrack faced was that it only owned a part, and that is a difficulty you could draw into this. You can be the owner of the infrastructure and hive off your maintenance to someone else after you have set out what you want him to do. You can do that, but unfortunately this is not what Railtrack did. Would you still retain the right to in-house engineering expertise to make sure that the contractor was doing it properly? In Hatfield the contractor was given a portion of line and told to maintain it to the specified standards. However, Railtrack did not retain in-house engineering skills. Therefore, when the Hatfield rail accident happened, we had 20 mph speed restrictions placed on the entire railway network, which were, for the most part, unnecessary. It was not because the railway was unsafe, it was because they did not know, and they did not have records. Therefore, as owner of the infrastructure, you have to be sure that you are not violating your ownership by not having records of what the contractor was doing.

If we contract out to a contractor, we need to have some form of inspection. However, it would not necessarily have to be in-house, as long there was an independent contract with an inspector to check what the contractor is doing. I appreciate that this is all hypothetical. However, it helps us to understand the rules of the game and what the possibilities are, and to understand why the Department has constructed the legislation in this way.

If it is properly documented, with sufficient detail and in-house expertise, there is no reason that you cannot do it in the way you suggest. My view is that you are going down a road that you need not go down if you are not fragmenting your railway. These contracts exist nowhere else in Europe. The Republic of Ireland, France and Germany do not have them, and they are supposed to be part of EU legislation. There is a little misunderstanding on what we are obliged to do under European law, on which I am not an expert. However, I tentatively disagree with Mr McKenna's remarks, and I think that that ought to be checked.

Germany has split up its system more than you propose to do, and it has a larger system, with inter-regional and intercity trains, and the U-Bahn subway. They have different parts, but they do not have anything like this safety case because Deutsche Bundesbahn still retains the vertical chain of command. The fat controller from 'Thomas the Tank Engine' is the best example: he is not always right, but he is always the fat controller. I do not wish to be frivolous, Mr Chairperson, but it is a description that we can all understand.

What you have said has been useful and has given the Committee food for thought about policing whatever safety regulations will be introduced now and in the future. You mentioned Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate and some type of independent audit. What would be the Department's role in that?

I do not know, and it is something I questioned in the original document. Who would the Department for Regional Development approach for expertise? The Department could take on the role; however, it would be most unlike the Civil Service to take on that type of responsibility - and I do not mean that as a criticism. An independent audit could be undertaken, and there are firms in Great Britain - and there may well be firms here - with sufficient expertise to carry out such an audit.

I do not know what the Department's role will be. I was a little tongue-in-cheek originally, and in my follow-up, because I do not think they have thought through the "how" in this. There has always been a tendency to slavishly follow the mainland example. When I was in Northern Ireland in 1981 there was talk about restructuring Northern Ireland Railways, based on what was then called "sector management". We had difficulty in preventing people doing something merely because it had been done on the mainland. That is not necessarily right - in fact, in this case it is manifestly wrong.

The Committee needs to tease out what is best for Northern Ireland, what works, and ultimately what role the Department for Regional Development should play.

If the Department is brave and honourable, it should have sufficient expertise to set standards and play a role. One problem we faced in England was that the mandarins in the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions are the same people who are now taking everything to bits and starting over again. They are supposed to be non-political. The Civil Service has a lot to answer for in these reorganisations, and it must take some responsibility. I do not know how it could be achieved in the Bill, as I am not a legislative expert - I am a simple railwayman and I have worked for the railway all my life.

Is it correct to say that you do not have a problem with contracting out provided it is properly policed?

I do not have an ideological objection to state or private ownership.

Given the critical mass of our system, contracting out may be a necessity. The Royal College of Surgeons, for example, would say that there has to be a minimum number of operations to retain expertise. With a small railway system such as ours it is very hard to have the rollover of casework needed for a contractor to retain expertise. Contracting out can be a logical and safe option, provided the policing of the system is correct.

I agree, provided the policing of the system is impartial and some of the loose ends in the initial legislation are tied up. The Bill does not specify who will set the standards; it is imprecise. If we go down the road of private maintenance, rigorous standards must be set and the system must be policed to ensure that the owner of the infrastructure is held responsible. Accidents will happen, so a system must be put in place. If it is done properly, nothing will go wrong.

Mr Hay tried to tease out the departmental position. In your response, you said that railwaymen understand railways and departmental officials do not.

That is true.

I can understand the logic of the statement. Those who work with the system understand it. Strabane was a railwayman's town, where sons would follow their fathers into the trade, but that does not happen so much now.

My criticism of legislators was tongue-in-cheek because I am not a legislator. They may have ways of including certain things in the Act that I do not know about.

In your response, do you agree with Mr McKenna about the lack of expertise in HMRI?

There are not enough resources in HMRI.

So, do you agree with Mr McKenna?

Yes, but he says that he will provide HMRI with adequate resources. However, even Mrs Dunwoody, for whom I have the greatest respect, rebuked HMRI for its lack of resources. Civil servants who appeared before Mrs Dunwoody's committee received fairly short shrift for that reason. HMRI has become muddled, and the old-fashioned inspectorate has been destroyed. It was removed from the Department's remit and became the responsibility of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). I suspect that that was done to reduce ministerial responsibility for railways. The expertise became diluted because there were fewer railwaymen and more HSE safety inspectors involved. I agree with Mr McKenna if he is saying that there are not enough HMRI staff and a lack of knowledge in the Department, and that must be put right if the situation is to change.

This is a difficult subject, and I want to tease something out for my own understanding. You are saying that a contractor or subcontractor presents their own safety case system for approval by the owner/operator. Following approval, the contractor self-regulates the implementation of the safety case system, which leads to a breakdown in the vertical chain of command. You also said that we do not need the safety case system unless the network is to become fragmented. In the initial presentation of the Bill, mention was made of legislation to allow more public-private partnership (PPP) arrangements for transportation systems in the future. Could a safety case system be satisfactorily adapted, if the Bill identified a mechanism to make provision for an independent audit system, identifying the body responsible for monitoring the implementation of safety cases?

Safety case systems have been proven to work. The safety case regime was introduced following the inquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster, chaired by Lord Cullen. The regime works very well, but it works best for infrastructures that are centrally regulated rather than fragmented. One of the problems with the safety case system on the railways is that railways always move about. There is a safety case, but a driver books on in Belfast, is in Connolly Station at lunchtime, and back in Belfast in the middle of the afternoon, so his safety case is much more elastic. Safety cases tend to work extremely well on oil rigs, for example.

The answer to your question is yes, provided they are properly put in, monitored and documented, and with systems that could report back - statistical systems that would satisfy the politicians that the railways were safer. Anything is possible, but I am not sure that money would be saved. Most things start because people want to save money; they do not start because people want to make the railways better. To some extent the Committee is not conducting this exercise to make the railway better; it is being done because someone said that it must be done, and it will probably eventually be a less expensive way of running the railways. It depends on what lies behind it all. There is no doubt that John Major's Government privatised the railways very quickly at the end of their term. It was done hurriedly, and there were gaps in the legislation. If it can be done in a better way in Northern Ireland, all things are possible.

You state in your letter that the safest and most efficient railway is a geographically logical railway with a vertical chain of command running right through it. That is all very well, but we are living in the real world. What changes should be made to our railway system to bring it into line?

Money must be spent on modernising the equipment. It is a small and important system, with the Enterprise as an important link with Dublin. I do not think that much needs to be done with the structure, but money needs to be put in. There should be enough professionally trained staff to operate it, and an inspectorate above that. There is not much wrong with Northern Ireland Railways - it is not big enough to fragment.

I say "geographically logical" because I believe that John Major thought he was bringing back the old Great Western Railway when he privatised the railways. He said that many times when he was Prime Minister, but he did not bring it back. Instead, he gave the fast trains to one company, the slow trains to another, and the freight to yet another. He gave the track to Railtrack, the signalling to somebody else to maintain, and someone else owned the coaches. Now the Government are talking about putting back geographical logic, and I confess to being part of that debate. There is nothing wrong with a private railway provided it is geographically logical, and we all know who the governor is. Northern Ireland has a system that knows who the governor is because it is a small railway. When I was here Sir Myles Humphreys was chairman of Northern Ireland Railways Co Ltd, and Roy Beattie was the chief executive. It was a very understood vertical chain of command. Do not throw that away unless you have to.

You have thrown light onto areas that have been very dark, and where people did not know what they were talking about. You have helped with that. If the British Government had had their way, they would have closed our system down completely. The Department for Regional Development is 100% behind the railway system and maintaining it.

By way of clarification, if I am correct in interpreting you, you are actually saying that within our structure - our small network of management and drivers - we have an expertise that could maintain a safe and profitable railway network? Are you saying that if it is not broken, do not try to mend it?

That is what I am saying, and the railway here has a depth of expertise. This NIR tie I am wearing was given to me 20 years ago in this city, and I wear it with pride.

Profit was mentioned, and I am unsure whether there is much profit in any area of the railways. A good thing about a state-owned railway is that the profitable parts can help to subsidise the non-profitable ones. If there were conurbation flow into Belfast, the railways would not be profitable because it would essentially be a peak time service. However, if the Enterprise service is made to work profitably, it will turn over money. Therefore, the profit from that service could go towards local services. When railway services were fragmented in Britain, some people made a lot of profit, and others made losses. Therefore, a railway may not make profit quickly, but it is environmentally sensible.

Thank you, Mr Rayner. Your presentation has been helpful and worthwhile. I wish you a safe journey.

20 March 2002 / Menu / 27 March 2002