BBC Scotland today, has:
Stonehaven train derailment inquiry told of ‘lives ripped apart’ – A fatal accident inquiry into a train derailment which killed three men in the north east of Scotland has been told lives were “ripped apart” in the crash. The Aberdeen to Glasgow train came off the rails at Carmont in Aberdeenshire on 12 August 2020 after it hit debris washed from a drain following heavy rain. Driver Brett McCullough, 45, conductor Donald Dinnie, 58, and passenger Christopher Stuchbury, 62, died in the crash. Network Rail was later fined £6.7m in court for a series of failings.
There’s something important not there. What is Network Rail and where does political responsibility for it lie? If BBC Scotland does not tell us, then what will folk assume? That it’s a Scottish department working to the Scottish Transport minister? No, it’s the UK Transport Minister in Westminster, Grant Shapps at the time, because, for security reasons, rail infrastructure, like ports and airports, is reserved to the UK Government.
BBC Scotland’s James Cook actually tried to reinforce that misunderstanding by angrily asking the Scottish Transport Secretary what he would do about it.
Here’s the full story:
The Stonehaven rail disaster is the responsibility only of Network Rail responsible only to the [UK] Secretary of State for Transport. The Scottish Government cannot be blamed for it
Throughout the above BBC Scotland report and many before, there is no mention at all of the key fact that responsibility for the rail infrastructure is entirely with Network Rail and that:
Network Rail is responsible to the [UK] Secretary of State for Transport, currently Heidi Alexander (Labour) and at the time of the accdident in 2020, Grant Shapps (Con), as it is an executive non-departmental public body sponsored by the [UK] Department for Transport.
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/network-rail
The reader is left with the impression that this ‘Network Rail’ may well be, in the absence of clarification, the responsibility of the Scottish Government. At the time of the accident, in 2023, BBC Scotland’s James Cook tried the same trick in a attempt to shift blame onto the SNP Government by shouting at Michael Matheson, Scottish Transport Secretary as if he was responsible.
On BBC Scotland’s The Nine in August 2020, 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?
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Matheson must have know what he would have to face in a James Cook interview, after the train crash, the question is, why the fuck wasn’t he prepared
LikeLike
Unfortunately the SNP government has at times been woeful at handling such clear cut situations where it is the UK government through reserved matters who bear responsibility and should indeed be held to account.
LikeLike
Of course, we don’t know whether Michael M said anything, it could have been edited out for all we know. We’ve just had evidence that the BBC cut out statements about the Glasgow hospital scandal, now Labour figures are implicated the story has disappeared.
The Holyrood parliament coverage is really the only way we get to hear exactly what is said and the SNP responses are certainly more robust. Just don’t expects to watch them on conventional TV!
LikeLike
Given his own track record of misinformation , perhaps James Cook didn’t even know that Network Rail was a UK Government responsibility ?
Perhaps he never saw the email !
LikeLike