Who’s the model new Secretary for Transport Louise Haigh?

Maritime Insurance coverage insurance policies

Although Haigh’s foremost focus is reforming the nation’s railways, Labour’s protection ensures in its manifesto moreover give consideration to port infrastructure and facilities, and inexperienced hydrogen. 

In distinction to completely different occasions, Labour’s manifesto put a decide on its deliberate funding in ports and supply chain infrastructure. It ensures to spend £1.8bn ($2.2bn) over the five-year parliament. 

The celebration moreover pledge “£500m ($632m) to assist the manufacturing of inexperienced hydrogen.”

Every of these insurance coverage insurance policies might be funded by means of the “Nationwide Wealth Fund” the celebration says it ought to create. 

“Labour’s Nationwide Wealth Fund will instantly spend cash on ports, hydrogen and industrial clusters in every nook of the nation,” the manifesto says. “We are going to even secure the best way ahead for Britain’s automotive and metallic industries.” 

Criticisms of Conservative insurance coverage insurance policies

Haigh was a staunch critic of the Constructed-in Rail Plan launched on 18 November 2021, 11 days sooner than her appointment as Shadow Secretary for Transport: 

“When he was elected Prime Minister, Boris Johnson talked about he wanted Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) to do for the North what Crossrail did for London. That’s one different in an prolonged line of broken ensures by this Prime Minister to the oldsters of the North,” she talked about in an announcement on the time.

“Improvement and jobs are being held once more proper right here because of we aren’t correctly linked with completely different cities. It’s very ridiculous that the fourth-largest metropolis throughout the UK would not have a direct connection to an airport. The Prime Minister is forcing us to proceed to rely upon creaking Victorian infrastructure.”

Equally, Haigh was unsurprisingly vocal about ex-PM Rishi Sunak’s switch to cancel NPR in November 2022, saying: “Rishi Sunak knowledgeable voters he would ship NPR in full – sooner than abandoning it on the primary different. A misplaced decade of broken Tory [Conservative Party] ensures has left the north with second-rate infrastructure, and rail suppliers in catastrophe, holding the financial system once more.”

Rumours that Sunak was planning to cancel the Birmingham-Manchester leg drew her ire in Parliament, the place she talked about: “What started out as a recent infrastructure plan left by the ultimate Labour authorities linking our largest northern cities after 13 years of Tory incompetence, waste and broken ensures could have was a humiliating Conservative failure. An unbelievable rail betrayal.”

When the plan to cancel the northern leg of  HS2 was confirmed, Haigh described it as “an absolute farce”. No matter her celebration chief publicly stating it was not potential to reverse the cancellation, The Telegraph reported that Haigh was nonetheless hopeful of resurrecting the connection from Birmingham to Crewe.

Bringing follow companies into public possession

Haigh launched Labour’s plans for Rail in April 2024, which have been broadly mirrored throughout the Event Manifesto. One in every of many important insurance coverage insurance policies is to ship Apply Working Firms (TOCs) once more into public possession, a protection Haigh first launched on the Labour Event Conference in 2022 and has been vocal about since. 

When Avanti West Coast was granted a contract extension, Haigh talked about in an announcement: “Avanti has really broken information over the past six months for delays and cancellations, and the Conservatives’ reply is to reward failure with hundreds and hundreds further in taxpayer cash.”

Conversely, she agreed with the switch to strip Transpennine Categorical of its contract in Might 2023, saying: “The following Labour Authorities will end this sticking plaster politics by bringing our railways once more into public possession as contracts expire, ending the Tories’ failing system, and inserting passengers once more on the coronary coronary heart of our rail group.”

TOCs might be overseen by a model new ‘arms-length’ public physique, Good British Railways (GBR), which Labour say will improve effectivity and cut back costs for the taxpayer, with Haigh telling The New Statesman in April 2024 it is a “consciously new system” and can most likely be “the first time in historic previous” that the railways might be set as a lot as ship for passengers. 

“Over the previous 30 years, they’ve delivered partly on behalf of shareholders and partly on behalf of Group Rail,” she talked about. “British Rail was organize and run by engineers so it’s a once-in-a-lifetime different to actually reform the railways from prime to bottom and guarantee they work for passengers, the financial system and the taxpayer.”

GBR is part of Labour’s dedication to a long-term approach aligned with the central authorities’s 10-year infrastructure plan.

Working with the unions

Haigh, who earlier to her election labored as a Unite ‘retailer steward’ (a spot as a result of the union’s marketing consultant throughout the workplace) all through her career as a Parliamentary staffer, has confirmed amicable relations with commerce unions and demonstrated assist for hanging employees throughout the rail sector, along with a willingness to barter with them – one factor her predecessors refused to do on a lot of occasions.

Decrease than a 12 months after her appointment as Shadow Transport Secretary, Haigh talked about on the 2022 ASLEF Union Make investments In Rail conference: “As a proud commerce unionist, it’s an honour to work with this inconceivable union on establishing a world-class rail group that passengers, employees and most of the people deserve.”

She tweeted individually that staff throughout the rail sector “helped protect the nation working in the middle of the pandemic. They deserve truthful pay and respect.”

Her place is her celebration’s: in Labour’s plan for UK railways launched in April 2024, the celebration talked about it might end the “politicised, adversarial technique to industrial relations pursued by the Conservatives,” pledging to ‘reset’ industrial relations. The plan was launched and signed off by Haigh, and he or she is broadly seen as its author and backer.

The plan moreover outlined that GBR will embody a faithful employees that may be tasked with creating “a further productive relationship” with wail employees and their commerce unions and creating an “built-in industrial relations framework” to type out longer-term factors proactively.

One line throughout the plan that best summarises Labour’s view of economic relations in distinction to the Conservative Authorities is that the railway workforce is taken into account “As an asset to be nurtured pretty than a price to be cut back.”

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