The shadow Secretary of State is making a case from her ideological point of view, although she denies it. Running through her speech is a deep suspicion of the public sector. Suddenly she is
suspicious about the quality of service for passengers. Suddenly she is suspicious about the quality of service provided, and the amount of money being spent on it. If only those suspicions and that scrutiny had been applied by the shadow Secretary of State and her colleagues while they were in government to the disastrous privatised railway service. Is she really trying to convince this House that privatisation of the railways was in any way a success? It seems to me that she is trying to stand as a barrier to public opinion and the Bill’s progress, because the majority of people in this country support public ownership of the railways and the Labour Government were elected with that as a clear manifesto pledge.