RailReview: Britain has the most liberalised railway market in Europe. It is thoroughly international. Will that change?
“I hope not. Having a liberalised market with competition and choice has delivered a lot of benefits. The British model was criticised throughout Europe in its early years. Now it has largely been embraced. The agenda of liberalisation has been exported by us across Europe.
“How can we continue to evolve in this country, with the flexibility to have different solutions in different markets that suit us within this railway, while sticking to those principles? Whether we are in Europe or not should not change that.
“Europe has been imposing rules on its railways that reflect that they are not as mature as this railway in terms of separation between infrastructure and operations. The danger was that those rules, applied to our situation, could have perverse effects - actually stopping collaboration.
“Where you have separation of infrastructure and operations, you desperately need strong collaboration, strong engagement, strong line of sight from the infrastructure through the operator to the end user. The danger in the context of being in Europe was that a very simple interpretation and application of separation leaves people unable to engage with each other, because in some sense it undermines competition.
“So now perhaps we can adhere less to the black and white rules, but should continue to adhere to the broad intent and purpose of those rules.”
RailReview: The Government may not feel constrained in the future by the need to adhere to EU procurement rules. It may want to promote British jobs, British skills. The problem lies in how that will be read by the likes of Siemens, Hitachi and train operator groups that are not British.
“I am hesitant to speculate what may happen. We do want other companies to come in from overseas and to bring different ideas and perspectives. So I hope this does not inhibit that in any way. What I hear from ministers in our sector is that they are passionate about keeping Britain open for business. The message there is strong and consistent.”
RailReview: What will be the effect of the 20% drop in the value of Sterling?
“Clearly that has a massive impact on costs, particularly on rolling stock. But it is also an opportunity for us to export our expertise. A change as large as that in a short period is a shock, as it is for any industry. We have to make sure that does not lead to the wrong decisions being made for the long term.”
RailReview: Much of what you do is driven by Europe. The Digital Railway is framed by the EU. Do you fight to remain part of that when politically we are separating?
“We have massively influenced the European debate over decades. Why is it that you want a degree of commonality? It is because you can have a strong supply chain able to achieve benefit of scale, supplying our market as well as Europe.
If you talk about the Digital Railway, we have been at the forefront of that. We have bigger challenges and bigger opportunities than some other railways on our ageing network, with huge capacity challenges. The value of it for us is far greater than for other railways. We can gain more from using the Digital Railway to deliver more capacity more quickly. We can then sell that expertise to other railways.”
