Ticket office closures and Sunday working must be price of rail staff pay rise, Grant Shapps indicates

In a speech at a train depot in north London, Mr Shapps insisted the Government does want “a fair deal that includes increasing pay for rail staff”.

Suggested reforms include an end to current voluntary working arrangements on Sundays, as well as a reduction in the number of railway ticket offices.

He said: “Nowadays, just one in eight tickets is sold over the counter, yet we still have roughly the same number of ticket offices as in the days when we all queued up at stations to buy our tickets. The quietest office sold just 17 tickets in three months. That’s one ticket every five and a half days.

“Any sensible plan would move staff away from where they are not needed, like ticket offices, and increase shifts where they are needed, like weekends.”

Mr Shapps said: “The whole point of these reforms is to build a sustainable, growing railway where every rail worker receives a decent annual pay rise. But right now, pay needs to be in step with the wider public sector.

“Let me put it another way. The median wage for rail workers is £44,000 and the median salary for train drivers is £59,000, with a fifth of drivers earning more than £70,000. But the average nurse earns around £31,000. So rail pay rises can only be afforded in the long term alongside reform. That’s only fair as we navigate our way out of the pandemic. Fair for taxpayers and fair for other public servants. We’re not asking railway workers to shoulder all the responsibility. We’re reducing the number of senior managers, and their pay.”

Mr Shapps said the pandemic had left the railway industry in a “critical financial situation”, with passenger numbers 20 per cent down.

“In fact, the railways cost over £20 billion a year to run and, in the year to April 2021, they raised just £4 billion from fares and other revenue,” he said.

“Since the start of the pandemic, the government has committed £16 billion of emergency taxpayer support for rail, £16 billion to keep trains running and ensure that no one at Network Rail or DfT-contracted Train Operating Companies was furloughed – £16 billion is almost as much as our annual police budget for England and Wales, just to support the railway through Covid.

“No rail worker lost their job. Not a single person. The taxpayer could not have done more to support rail workers. Now, as we recover and people start travelling again, the industry needs to grow revenues, attract passengers back and make the reforms necessary to compete.”

Dispute 'being used as political football', claims union leader

The Government is doing “everything it can to make sure this isn’t resolved”, a senior union leader has claimed.

RMT Assistant General Secretary Eddie Dempsey told Good Morning Britain: “It is clear that Government is using this dispute as a political football.

“They should be assisting the process and help us reach a settlement so we can call this action off.

“It seems to me the Government is determined to pour petrol on the fire and do everything it can to make sure this isn’t resolved. I think they relish the prospect of a dispute.”

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