By Professor John Robertson OBA

In the Herald today

‘Justice needs to be done’: Rail crash lessons learnt stalls – Victims affected by the Stonehaven rail tragedy say ‘heads should have rolled’ for happened what as it emerged more than half of the ‘lessons learnt’ recommendations of action demanded by investigators have still to be implemented, three years later. It has been confirmed that as of the turn of the year of 20 official recommendations for action over the crash made nearly three years ago, just nine have been closed – meaning action has been taken to totally implement them.

Further down, the report tells us that ‘Network Rail manages Scotland’s rail infrastructure but is careful not to tell us who it does that for. The reader might think it’s for the Scottish Government when it is actually for the UK Government. Transport infrastructure – rail track and signals, ports and airports with air traffic control – is, for reasons of national security, reserved to UK government control and consequently it has responsibility for its maintenance. Grant Shapps above, was UK Transport Secretary at the time.

The report mentions concerns that no individual has been held ‘publicly accountable for the horror crash.’

A year later, Network Rail admitted it but Grant Shapps got no mention:

At no time does the Herald link the events to the UK Government and toward the end only tells us that the ‘people of Scotland need to know they can trust their public transport and trust those who manage it.‘ Ask ‘the person in the street’, who was to blame and I feel sure they’re going to think ‘SNP’.

How did BBC Scotland help us to understand this?

On BBC Scotland, in August 2020:

On BBC Scotland’s The Nine, James Cook, repeatedly interrupted the Scottish Transport Secretary, Michael Matheson to say:

Well, exactly! Well, that’s rather the point! Isn’t it. We hear that are these problems. In 2014, a report specifically mentioned this exact area being greatly affected by earthslips. A report last month warned that there had been over six times more flooding events in the year to 2019/20 and earthworks failures nearly trebled. Did you read that report? And if so, what action did your government take on it?

For whatever reason, Matheson did not expose Cook’s misrepresentation of the responsibilities for rail infrastructure and allows him to burst in again with a further implication. Let’s be clear. Rail infrastructure is a reserved matter, presumably in case the UK Government ever feels the need to use it for some strategic purpose which the Scottish Government might object to and try to obstruct.

Full responsibility for the funding, the maintenance, the inspection and the warning to operators of risk, lies with the UK agency Network Rail which in turn is responsible, only, to the UK Minister. The report was a report for that UK minister and though the Scottish Government may or may not have received a copy, it could not have acted upon it.

Why was Cook not aggressively asking Grant Shapps, the UK Minister for Transport, the questions he misleadingly threw at Matheson?

To what extent did Shapps and his Network Rail ‘arms length public body’ neglect maintenance of the Aberdeen line and cause the deaths?

From 2020:

The horrifying train wreck near Stonehaven, Scotland, last week, was the result of the dilapidated condition of Britain’s rail infrastructure. Starved for decades of essential maintenance funding, the railways have been transformed by successive governments into state-subsidised cash cows for private corporations.

Network Rail’s cost-cutting: It carried out a reduction of its maintenance staff by 12 percent between 2009/10 and 2013/14, down by 2,169 to 15,813. Then it set a target of 2019 of further cost-cutting of 20 percent.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/19/ston-a19.html