ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS

SOPHY RIDGE: There was some unexpected praise for Transport Secretary Chris Grayling this week after the government took over the running of the East Coast rail line, the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said ‘Good to see Grayling implementing the first stage of Labour’s manifesto promise to renationalise the railways. I think I’m right in saying he has now nationalised more railways than any Labour minister in six decades.’ So I wonder whether the Shadow Transport Secretary, Andy McDonald, will continue that love in, he’s in Middlesbrough now, hello to you.

ANDY McDONALD: Hello.

SR: Before I get on to the railways, I did just want to touch on the big story in town today, the Royal Wedding, because I’ve had a little look and I can’t see any message of congratulations from Jeremy Corbyn. Correct me if I’m wrong but would it have pained him to send a little tweet wishing the happy couple all the best?

ANDY McDONALD: I think he has wished them all the best. It looked like a terrific event yesterday, they looked full of joy and I’m sure they have got the entire nation’s best wishes.

SR: So he didn’t say anything yesterday or this weekend though, I’m right in saying that aren’t I?

ANDY McDONALD: I don't know, I haven’t checked people’s Twitter feeds, I don’t assiduously examine them but if that’s what you’re saying, that’s the position but I think everybody would want to send them our very best wishes, what a wonderful day that was.

SR: Okay, so let’s move on to railways that you came on the show to talk about and it’s no surprise you wanted to be here today because of course this week the East Coast rail line is coming back into public ownership, the government announced. You must be delighted with that.

ANDY McDONALD: Well it’s coming back into public control. I think we’ve got to examine this carefully because the public sector operator of last resort has been privatised so it’s EY, Arup, SNC Lavalin – private companies that will be taking over the operation of the East Coast Mainline, so it’s public ownership but not as we know it but it’s a step in the right direction. Of course it’s only a temporary measure, that’s the sadness, because Chris grayling has every intention of parcelling it up and putting it into a new partnership and lo and behold, it may be Stagecoach Virgin who are going to be that other partner in the new East Coast Partnership and I think most people would find that totally and utterly unacceptable.

SR: Why would people find that unacceptable though because let’s just have a look at some of the facts shall we? Virgin Trains invested more in East Coast Rail Line in two years than was invested in over five years of public ownership before that and it returned more than 30% a year to taxpayers than was done before, these are stats from the Rail Delivery Group. Customer satisfaction currently 92%, what’s wrong with it?

ANDY McDONALD: Well customer satisfaction, that’s delivered by people who work on the railways so they’ve got to be applauded for the wonderful work that they do. Let’s get it right, there’s no investment by private companies, they arrange finance and investment for funding.

SR: But I just said that Virgin Trains invested more in two years than five years previously …

ANDY McDONALD: Hang on, hang on. They’ve not invested a penny, they have sourced funding for those programmes, it’s taxpayers and passengers who pay for that investment so they’re in the business of extracting value, extracting profit and paying that to shareholders and often, more than not, it finds its way to state owned controlled railways on continental Europe to subsidise their operations. This is ridiculous, we’re the only country in the world that can’t run our own railways, it’s about time we changed it.

SR: Can explain something that’s slightly confusing me about the whole nationalisation debate? So train tracks are already under state control because Network Rail runs the infrastructure and there are already problems with train tracks, this is part of the issue of course, the infrastructure as well. So nationalisation isn’t a magic bullet is it, just bringing everything back under state control isn’t just going to sort out all the issues on the railways.

ANDY McDONALD: No, that’s perfectly true and there are some inefficiencies within Network Rail that have to be addressed. If we look at the Control Period, Control Period Five that we’re just coming to the end of, lots of errors were made so there is an awful lot of work to be done but if you bring the track and train together you will take out of the system the ridiculously wasteful process of franchising itself, that has to be paid for. You also take out this over-complication, too many players in the field adding cost into the system and then of course, the big issue of dividends for not leaving the system, that money staying within. So it does work and if we look across the Channel to Deutsche Bahn, you’ll see that that works incredibly well but that’s why they’re here of course, so they can run our railways to subsidise their own back in Germany. So we want to bring the track and train together and get back the efficiency and that cost saving as an inherent part of the system.

SR: So can you guarantee then that fares would come down?

ANDY McDONALD: What we’ve said on fares is number one, what we would substitute the retail price index every year that going up, substitute that with the lower rate of inflation of consumer price index. That will bring about very significant savings for people over the term but the ticketing system itself is a complete mess and there are millions and millions of products …

SR: So can you guarantee that it would go down? It’s quite a clear question, can you guarantee they would go down?

ANDY McDONALD: Look, I’ve explained to you, you’re not talking about freezing or reducing, you’re talking about substituting CPI so that as wages rise people find them much more affordable so it’s much more within their reach than it is now.

SR: So fares would go up but not quite as quickly?

ANDY McDONALD: Wages would go up higher than the rate of increase in train tickets so it becomes much more affordable for people, that’s the principle but we’ve got to look fundamentally at the structure of ticketing because it’s far, far too complex. People turn up to a railway station and just think they are going to be ripped off because there are so many different products, we’ve got to streamline and simplify but my goodness me, it’s not going to be able to be delivered with this system. We’re going to have to look at something completely new to replace this ticketing system because there’s been tinkering with it, adding more and more products to the panoply of complication, time and time and time again. It’s not going to work, we need to reform the ticketing system in our country to make it much more sensible and more affordable. It’s ridiculous that somebody has to pay hundreds and hundreds of pounds to take an urgent, an emergency journey from one city to another, it just doesn’t make sense.

SR: Okay, I’m interested to get your thoughts on another story that’s been around Westminster this week and that’s allegations about the Speaker, John Bercow, who allegedly called Andrea Leadsom ‘a stupid woman’ and who has also been accused of bullying former members of staff, something he denies. Do you think it is time he stepped down?

ANDY McDONALD: Yes, I think he said he will, he’s indicated that there is a fixed term he’s set himself and he will be stepping down so I’m not sure he needs any encouragement from me. I think he’s a good Speaker in that he does protect the interests of Parliament against the Executive and he’s not frightened of standing up to the Executive when they misbehave, as they did this week. They treated everybody with total and utter contempt, including the Speaker, by not producing a very important statement in a timely fashion and even when they got to the floor of the House they still didn’t produce it, so he is absolutely excellent at standing up for Parliament when the Executive wants to ride roughshod over Members of Parliament so I think John Bercow has been an excellent Speaker and I hope he carries on for a little bit longer.

SR: So I can’t help but thinking that if we were talking about someone else, Labour would be jumping up and down to condemn what he apparently said. David Cameron, when he said to a female MP ‘Calm down dear’ Labour wouldn’t stop talking about it but John Bercow says Andrea Leadsom is a stupid woman and you’re saying he’s an excellent Speaker.

ANDY McDONALD: I don't know that he said that, has he admitted that he said this? This is the story.

SR: Well he hasn’t denied it.

ANDY McDONALD: Is there evidence that he said this? I’m not going to be judge and jury on John Bercow if an allegation is made and it hasn’t been proved, I’ll wait for that if you don’t mind. I’m not here to jump to judgement because somebody says he said something, I need to see the evidence and hear it but it is clearly totally inappropriate language for somebody to use if he has and if that is the case he is probably in some difficulty but we’ve got to go through the proper processes and in the first instance let’s have the evidence that it’s actually happened.

SR: Okay, I wonder if you’ll judge somebody else who has been in the news this week, Len McCluskey, the Unite boss, who has called some Labour MPs stale and encouraged members to kick out Corbyn hating MPs. Is that helpful intervention?

ANDY McDONALD: Well Len will speak for himself but it’s always been the case that Labour Members of Parliament are accountable to their constituencies, I am to mine and there’s the provision there for them to express their discontent with me if that was to be the case and I am their servant and that applies to all of us but I’m not so sure it advances arguments very far today, but Len will express himself in his own way, it isn’t something that I want to be saying or associate myself directly with but I think we all have to have regard to getting a Labour government elected and I think everything I want to do and I would encourage others to do is to keep that objective in mind when we are making our interventions and developing policy and commenting thereon, so I think that’s pretty simple and straightforward for everybody to abide by.

SR: Okay, thank you very much for your time, Mr McDonald.