Serpell Report


The Serpell Report was produced by a committee chaired by Sir David Serpell, a retired senior civil servant. It was commissioned by the government of Margaret Thatcher to examine the state and long-term prospects of Great Britain's railway system. There were two main parts to the report. The first part described in detail the state of British Rail's finances in 1982. The second looked at various options for a future rail network, and made comparisons between each option and the continuation of the existing network.

Background

In many ways, 1982 represented the nadir of Britain's railways. That year saw the lowest number of passenger journeys of the second half of the 20th century, the lowest level of passenger-miles, and the lowest level of passenger revenue since 1968. Although these figures were partly the result of the 1982 strike, rail passenger numbers had been in steady decline since 1957.. In 1982 terms, revenues had decreased steadily from £2,300 million in 1970 to £1,800 million in 1982, while costs had risen from £2,500 million to £2,700 million. Consequently, BR's deficit had increased by a factor of 4.5.
Serpell was chosen to chair the review into railway finances. His lengthy experience of the civil service included serving as Under-Secretary at the Treasury from 1954 to 1960, then service in the Ministry of Transport. After serving in other departments, he became Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Transport in 1968 and was thus involved in implementing some of the Beeching cuts. In 1970 he became Permanent Secretary to the new Department of the Environment, which included transport in its remit. In 1974, two years after retiring from the civil service, he joined the British Railways Board. Writing in 2008, after Serpell's death, the former Labour MP Tam Dalyell would note that the experience made Serpell a 'natural' choice to head the review. However, his obituary in The Guardian noted that Serpell was 'was not the first choice as a review chair', with Liberal leader David Steel being considered before him.

Options

For reference, in 1982, journeys totalling 18,300 million passenger-miles were made; the network comprised 10,370 route miles; and BR's passenger deficit was £933 million. The various options for the network considered in Part 2 were as follows:
The report also briefly considered an Option H – a "high investment" option. This looked at the effects of new rolling stock on maintenance costs, and concluded that the return would be far too small.
Otherwise, the report did not seriously examine the effects of improving rail services.

Effects

The report, along with a minority report by Alfred Goldstein, a member of Serpell's committee, was presented to the Secretary of State for Transport on 20 December 1982, but it would be a further month before it was published. However, some aspects of it had already been leaked to the press and had attracted criticism prior to publication. As railway historian David Spaven later wrote, the reaction from the public, press and politicians to the report was 'overwhelmingly adverse'. An editorial in The Guardian in January 1983 described it as 'a really rotten report', while The Glasgow Herald reported that its publication 'attracted almost universal condemnation' causing David Howell, the Secretary of State for Transport, to immediately acknowledge that the Thatcher Government was unlikely to accept any of the 'more extreme options' it outlined. Meanwhile, leader of the opposition Michael Foot called for the report to 'be "strangled" as soon as possible' and the leader of the National Union of Railwaymen also opposed the report which he described as 'a disaster'.
Backbench Conservative MPs were reportedly worried about the political impact of some of the more extreme cuts proposed by the report, especially as a general election was thought likely to be held in the near future. Meanwhile George Younger, then the Scottish Secretary, stated that the Government had no intention of allowing drastic cuts to Scotland's railway services. Mrs Thatcher herself made it known that decisions on the report would not immediately be taken and it was anticipated it would be shelved until after the general election.
Serpell himself suffered heavy criticism and personal attacks. According to his obituary, he was even 'harangued by the guard on his train home to Devon.' He found the personal criticism unfair. In his view, he had merely produced a report to answer a question put by a Minister and it was 'no fault of his that the question was not a sensible one'. Tam Dalyell later claimed that Serpell also regretted that he was asked to look at the issue of railway services solely in terms of economic impact, as this did not allow him to express his opinion that 'railway use was of service to the environment'. Nevertheless, his name became 'synonymous with cuts and closures'.
The report was portrayed by rail supporters as a "second Beeching", was not taken up by the government, and did not result in any network changes. In the words of the railway historian Julian Holland, the report was simply 'quietly forgotten by the Conservative government.' However, for a few years after the report, British Rail did 'quietly pursue the potential for bus substitution on selected routes' and some rationalisation of infrastructure continued. For some years afterwards the Conservative Government was accused by its opponents of implementing the report via stealth. Passenger numbers picked up through the mid and late eighties, reaching a 20-year high in 1988, and have continued to grow since. The report, and the hostile reaction to it, has been described as a 'turning point in the fortunes of the national rail network'.
The report also proved to be costly for Howell, who was dropped from the cabinet by Margaret Thatcher later in the year as a result of the fallout.