Railways Bill
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 7 Jul 2026 · 45 speeches · Official Report
Second Reading
Moved by
That the Bill be now read a second time. Scottish and Welsh legislative consent sought .
My Lords, it is a pleasure to present the Railways Bill for Second Reading today. Before turning to the substance of the Bill, I would like to acknowledge that today marks the 21st anniversary of the 2005 attacks on London's transport network. As a former commissioner of Transport for London, my thoughts are with those who were, and continue to be, affected by that day. I also pay tribute to the extraordinary courage and resilience of Londoners, including those in emergency services, transport staff and members of the public who responded in the face of events which were completely shocking. This Bill has been a long time coming and it is my absolute privilege to speak to it today. I look forward to the debates to come on the detail but, for now, I will speak to the Bill in general terms. The need for reform of our railways is clear. Parliament, including noble Lords in this Chamber, regularly draws attention to service shortfalls, poor and inconsistent customer service and very substantial costs for the taxpayer-all realities that I and this Government accept and which stem from the fragmented system that has been in place for decades which leaves no one but the Secretary of State ultimately responsible. No one takes responsibility when things go wrong. Indeed, it was the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, who first commissioned the independent review by Keith Williams that would lead to the recommendation to create GBR-Great British Railways -after the timetable fiasco in 2018....
My Lords, first, I declare my interest as a member of the GWR stakeholder advisory board, ably and knowledgeably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. I add my voice to the Minister’s remarks on the 21st anniversary of those terrible attacks on our transport system. I also reference the fact that this is the debate in which the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, will be making his valedictory speech. He and I have not overlapped for long in this Chamber and did not overlap in government, but I know that he brought to this House his experience as a distinguished public servant, and he will be missed. When I became a Member of Parliament, I did not expect to spend so much time dealing with trains. I did so not just as shadow Secretary of State for Transport for a period, but also because a lot of my constituents were commuters and the train service mattered to them. But I had the advantage of dealing with those issues in an era of privatisation. I remember British Rail. I always used to say that British Rail was run for the interests of those who enjoyed playing trains, rather than the interests of passengers. Privatisation changed that because, for the companies, the service to passengers mattered. As a local Member of Parliament, I was able to work with the train operating companies-first, Thames Trains then GWR-to ensure that services were improved, timetables were changed and new trains were put on in the interests of local people. That ability is going to...
It will perhaps not surprise the last speaker that I find her remarks so far from the truth about what is really happening on our railway. Before and since the Bill was published, I have been approached by a number of lobbyists and companies seeking to inhibit Great British Railways organising a railway which works for the majority of users. The aim is for a railway that operates express services to and from the capital; fast inter-regional services; local services planned together with regional mayors; better connections; an ambitious freight growth target; and some elbow room in the timetable to cater for the occasional aberrations, together with some engineering work. All this can be achieved and still leave room for open-access operators which are able to pay a fair price for access, and that abstraction of revenue from other operators must be compensated for. Paths in any timetable, particularly on our congested network, are a scarce commodity, and running short trains on busy routes gives rise to opportunity costs, which means, for example, that running two short trains coupled together over the busiest sections may commend itself. I hope the Minister will underline the fact that this does not give the regulator power to determine the basic structure of the railway, as that was what nearly caused the crisis in compiling the 2025 timetable, to which he has referred, and was resolved only by executive action, leaving many loose ends behind it. The regulator may hear...
My Lords, I start by drawing the House’s attention to my registered interests. I am chair of the Accessible Transport Policy Commission and a board member of Active Travel England. The Disability Discrimination Act was passed in 1995. It was the bare minimum of what it was possible to get through Parliament at the time. I sat on the National Disability Council, which oversaw the implementation of the DDA. That said that all trains would be step-free by 1 Jan 2020. In 2020 we were told it would be 100 years before I could get on the majority of trains in the UK without the permission or support of a member of staff. I need to live only another 94 years. I look forward to working with the Minister, who has extensive knowledge in this space, but all Governments for the past 30 years have allowed derogations. Basically, they have kicked the can down the road, and a very simple question is: are we as a Parliament going to keep doing that? We should acknowledge the transport gap for disabled people. Some 2.8 million people are locked out of the workforce because of inaccessible transport. Making it accessible could boost the economy by £176 billion. IMechE has said that investment of between £20 billion and £24 billion could generate another £10 billion to £34 billion in revenue. So this is just a political choice. The disability tax-the extra time for planning, lifts not working, et cetera-for me is a personal cost of two to three hours every single week. The Transport Select...
Baroness Alexander of Cleveden
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, I am going to start with a personal anecdote, but it will not be either as moving or as consequential as the ones we have heard from her today. I pay tribute to her campaigning work on this issue; I am sure that sentiment is shared by other Members of the House. On a Friday, when I get to Euston and am heading north, I yearn for the toilets to work, effective wifi and a quiet coach. By the time I get back to London on a Monday, as a commuter, I am looking at “Am I going to get a seat? Is it reliable? Is the price fair?” Of course, a top-class railway that is spending £22 billion annually-with more than half of that taxpayer subsidy-arguably can and should provide all these things and more, and I have not even mentioned the other neglected priorities of electrification, extreme weather resilience, modal shift, new services, safety, speed, fresh sandwiches and so on. All these competing ambitions make a wider point in that they concern the choice of priorities, yet the essence of the claim in the Bill is that the delivery of future policy priorities can follow only from getting the basic underlying structure right. The Bill is a fresh start. It legislates for an outcome that the Conservatives recognised the case for but did not act on: the need to end the fragmentation and to bring track and train together. The noble Baroness, Lady May, graciously hinted at the value of bringing track and train together. I share her...
I agree with the Minister’s three main aims for railway improvement. He is right that punctuality is insufficient. Last year, under 85% of trains arrived within three minutes of timetable and over 4% of services were cancelled altogether. He is right that we need to improve the quality of the passenger experience. That will require innovation, new services geared to people’s lives and their travel demands, and delivering them a travel offer at an affordable price, an acceptable fare. The railway is too detached and is running far too many nearly empty trains around to fill a timetable. This is interspersed with, at popular times, too few popular trains, with 169,000 people standing in very cramped and unsafe conditions on a typical day. A lot of work needs to go into getting into the modern world and understanding travel patterns. Above all, the Minister is right that there needs to be a revolution in value for money. We are paying far too much as taxpayers, in some cases far too much as fare payers, and in other cases travelling on heavily subsidised fares, in relation to the amount of work that the railway is able to do. Last year, taxpayers had to put in £21.6 billion to this railway system, and fare payers were persuaded to put in only £11.5 billion. So limited was the offer that was made available on this vast network that taxpayers were paying twice as much as fare payers-general taxpayers twice as much as the more limited number of people who were actually using the...
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing this Bill. I start by acknowledging his deep knowledge of our railways. Few in either House are better placed to steward legislation of this kind. I hope that expertise will make him receptive to the constructive scrutiny that these Benches intend to offer. It is an honour to speak in the same debate as the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead. I am sure she will not remember but, nearly 20 years ago, after speaking at an event to encourage more women to stand for elected office, she discovered that her train home from Temple Meads had been cancelled, so I had the pleasure of giving her a lift to Bristol Parkway that evening. She was kind and generous enough not to remark on the pile of leaflets on the back seat of my car, which let us just say were not entirely complimentary about the Conservative Party. This Bill will be judged not by the structures it creates but by the difference it makes to passengers. For most people, railway reform is not about the machinery of government; it is about whether the train arrives when it should, whether disruption is explained clearly, and whether, when the service fails, passengers are treated fairly and swiftly, without having to fight for what they are owed. That should be our starting point. Great British Railways is being created because fragmented accountability has failed passengers. If it is to command public confidence, GBR must do more than bring track and train...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, who made some very apposite points about passenger rights. I declare an interest as a member of the UK and Ireland leadership team of AtkinsRéalis and as an adviser to Hutchison Ports. For me, this is somewhat of an endpoint, since, as the Minister rightly said, I started the process back in 2018 through the Williams review, which was intended to address the issue we will all touch upon tonight. I never believed that separating track and train was the right thing to do. It was right, in my view, to move away from a state-run monolith, and it distresses me enormously that we have ended up going back to a state-run monolith, but it was absolutely not right in the end to fragment the railways as much as happened. The reality is that, in the two decades post privatisation, the railway turned around. Under British Rail, it declined: lines were closed and passenger numbers fell. Under the privatised railway, passenger numbers grew, the number of trains expanded and we ended up carrying more passengers on the railway network today than travelled in Victorian times, when the railway was twice as big as it is now. Therein lies the problem. I do not believe that this Bill, and the route that the Government are taking, will get to the position that they want to get to. We all want to get to a position where the railway works well, delivers for passengers and delivers for freight. The problem is that this is not just about who...
My Lords, I am most grateful for the opportunity to say a few valedictory words before I retire as an active Peer, and I am honoured to follow some very penetrating speeches from all sides of the House. The date I have chosen to retire from active service in the House is 6 September. I chose it because it is the 60th anniversary of my joining the Civil Service as an assistant principal in the Board of Trade, at a salary of £900 a year. I spent a lot of my early years in this House. I was private secretary to two Peers, and I spent much of the Swinging Sixties in the official Box. It has been a great pleasure to have been a Member as well, for the last 23 years, and a great privilege. My Cross-Bench colleagues are an impressive group, rich in talent, and I thank them warmly for their comradeship, particularly of course my former colleagues from the Civil Service and the Diplomatic Service. I have also much enjoyed seeing my former ministerial bosses sitting quietly glittering on their Benches on both sides of the House. I occasionally see a complete Bench of people who I have worked for, and I call it a “full house”. I feel lucky in the Ministers I have served and I thank them most warmly. I can see several here today. The world of government, over the 60 years that I have been a member of the Civil Service and of this House, has changed profoundly. That is not a complaint. The world keeps changing and Governments have to keep up with it. The Civil Service that I left in 2002...
My Lords, it is a privilege, though one tinged with sadness, to follow the valedictory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, who has just reminded us of the great, gentle wisdom and huge experience that he has brought to your Lordships’ House and which we are set to lose in September when he retires. Our association, our friendship, goes back not just over the seven years that we have overlapped in your Lordships’ House but nearly a quarter of a century, for it was in 2002 that he came to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where I was an undergraduate, as our 27th master, and a hugely popular one at that. Emma prides itself on being the friendliest college in Cambridge; it became friendlier still when the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, was our master. Within weeks of arriving, he seemed to know everybody by first name, a feat that he repeated over the 10 years of his stewardship of the college. He did that at the same time as we managed to top the Tompkins Table, the league table for the best degree results, in five of the 10 years that he was master-not, I should say, helped by my own meagre 2:1. Behind his genuine, friendly exterior is, as we have just heard again, a forensic mind and a wealth of experience. My noble friends Lady Berridge and Lady Blackwood of North Oxford are among those in this House who know what it is like to stand at the Dispatch Box and worry about a probing question coming from their former master. My noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne is among those...
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, on his valedictory speech and wish him a very happy and long retirement. This Bill has had a long gestation period but, if anything, that has made such legislation-or at least parts of it-all the more necessary. As far as Plaid Cymru is concerned, the Bill is very much a parson’s egg. There are parts we welcome, such as those elements which consolidate aspects of the service into public ownership. It is my party’s view that what is an essential public service, and in many cases a monopoly public service, should be in public ownership. There are also parts of the Bill about which we have reservations, such as the failure to involve the Government of Wales in decision-making on key rail issues. This was highlighted by Plaid Cymru MP Ann Davies in the Commons on 9 December. As she said, Wales does not seek a token consultation which delivers nothing, and that is very often what we have had. Wales wants and needs control over rail services in Wales; this was demanded also by Labour Senedd members on a number of occasions. Then there is the strong feeling in Wales, and not just in Plaid Cymru, that the Bill misses an opportunity to put right a long-running sore about the totally cynical manner in which railway services in Wales are funded. The financial settlement between the Treasury and Wales, based on the Barnett formula, which has been tweaked a couple of times, is based on providing Wales with a tranche of cash to...
My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, on his outstanding valedictory speech. Not for the first time in this Chamber, I am left humbled by his 60 years of service, and I am privileged to have listened to his wisdom and humour in his last speech. We will miss the noble Lord. I am also humbled, as I am not an expert in the railways-I am afraid I did not even have a train set-and I was not expecting to speak in this debate, but what has brought me here is not the physical railways but the retail ticketing of our travel. Before I get to that, I should say that I am also not a huge fan of creating a single, large state-owned monopoly, and that I wholeheartedly endorse the remarks of my noble friends Lady May of Maidenhead, Lord Redwood and Lord Grayling. However, I do not know much about that topic; I would like to focus on what I do know about, which is retail ticketing. Retail ticketing might seem small and insignificant if you like playing trains, but, as passengers, our ticketing services are our first contact with our train journey, and, sadly, because of Delay Repay, they are often our last contact. Retail ticketing matters to us as passengers. It shapes our confidence in our railway network and therefore drives or harms demand. It is an area where private sector competition has delivered substantial improvements for passengers over the last decade. I have considerable experience of the value of competition in retail services, and of the...
My Lords, I wish to join in the appreciation for the noble Lord, Lord Wilson. As a former civil servant, I want to say how much his observations rang true for me. As a new Member of this House, I want to say how much I hope to have learned from him in the short time that we have overlapped together. I will speak on a similar issue to the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, although, as someone who spent a considerable period of time working for Citizens Advice, I will take a slightly different approach on the experience people have of things as they appear to consumers. The Bill is welcome because, while, at their best, train journeys are a source of great pleasure, at their worst, they are a source of huge frustration. I spent last week writing parts of this speech on the floor of a carriage with inadequate air conditioning, trying to make myself as small as possible on a train that was scheduled to last 52 minutes and was half an hour late. Too many people have that experience as a rule rather than as the exception. However, I trust in the wide and deep experience of this House to solve those issues, so I do not propose to go into them. Instead, I want to focus on a small part of the Bill, on which I hope I can be both somewhat knowledgeable and constructive. Within the last few months, it has become straightforward for anyone with access to a coding agent and a good idea to produce software that makes that idea happen with a minimum of effort and expertise and certainly much...
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton. He was the Permanent Secretary of the Home Office when I was the Minister of State there for four years. He was an excellent civil servant, diligently and neutrally delivering our policies. He was also kind and helpful to me personally. I have always remembered that and will not forget it. I can tell the House that, under his leadership, and under my noble friend Lord Howard and I, the Home Office was fit for purpose then. I wish him well in the future. Before younger Members of your Lordships’ House wax lyrical about the brilliant opportunities of a new British Rail, or older Members look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles, let me tell the House what the Government-owned British Rail was really like. I travelled on British Rail trains 60 to 70 times a year, from Penrith to Euston, from 1983 when I was elected, and they were the absolute pits. Never mind the jokes about British Rail sandwiches-which were true-they were symptomatic of a nationalised state-run monopoly: “This is the food. It may be rubbish, but so what? You’ve not got any choice”. The trains were clapped out and the organisation was corrupt-not financially corrupt, except that the communist train drivers’ unions got whatever they wanted, but politically corrupt. I recall many occasions when the train made additional stops because the Minister’s office phoned the department and the train made an unscheduled stop to pick up or drop off a...
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Blencathra. I can remember British Rail, but I do not think any of us want to go back to British Rail, we want to go to something altogether better. We need the railways to succeed. We can see that when people feel that they have a reliable, punctual and enjoyable railway available to them, they will use it. Look at the rail passenger journeys on the Elizabeth line, which is seeing something like a million passengers a day. Where we create a railway that people can rely on and use, we can succeed. We need that to happen. On our Benches, on this side of the House, we have already arrived in these fascinating speeches at something of a consensus view, which is that we ought to have recreated the vertically integrated regional companies, but we did not. John Major may have been in favour of it, but he was Prime Minister when that was not what was put into the Railways Act 1993. It should have happened. If I remember correctly, before the 1992 manifesto, we were arguing for exactly that and the manifesto more or less reflected that, but it did not happen. That did not mean that privatisation did not succeed. My noble friend Lord Grayling was absolutely right. Passenger numbers doubled. Investment in infrastructure went up by three or four times. Train miles increased by 30%. So there was a dramatic increase, but what was that essentially about? It is what my noble friend Lord Redwood was saying: privatisation led to...
My Lords, it is good to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, even if I think that processes have been somewhat neglected in the privatisation of recent years, often to the detriment of passengers. I want to echo the thanks that have been made to the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, as he leaves this House. His distinguished experience has been of great value to the House over the years and I wish him well. I thank the Minister and his officials for a meeting with disabled Peers prior to this Second Reading. For those of us who were involved in the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act, the paving bill for this one, which was in your Lordships’ house 18 months ago, this is a welcome day. Along with other noble Lords, my focus is to ensure that the strong promises from the Minister and the Labour Government to improve rail services for disabled passengers and others who need assistance become a reality. The Minister knows that we will hold him and his Government to account to ensure that the improvements that I know he wants actually happen. We need to ensure that the warm words spoken here turn into reality for every disabled person’s journey. Clause 3 is vital to ensure that Great British Railways runs passenger services effectively for all passengers. For passengers who require assistance, whether with infrastructure or practical arrangements, far too often the service is not good, creating barriers for those who just want to get on a train to go from A to B....
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has just told a very moving story, and I think everyone who listened to that will agree that that state of affairs is simply not acceptable. I join others in paying tribute to the valedictory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson. He was an excellent Permanent Secretary at the Department of the Environment in the 1990s, when I was Minister of Housing and Planning. He was a source of wise advice, and he kept me out of serious trouble for three or four years. Speaking in this debate is a bit like attending one’s own funeral, because the Bill basically undoes the reforms I oversaw as Secretary of State between 1995 and 1997. It is worth reminding the House what those reforms achieved. As my noble friend Lord Lansley said, passenger numbers doubled; services improved by one-third; an operating deficit under British Rail was turned into an operating surplus; investment in rolling stock, electrification, signalling, and station modernisation improved, as the dead hand of the Treasury was removed from the capital programme; passenger safety improved; industrial relations improved; branch lines were reopened; and passenger fares were capped at RPI minus 1%, a reformed abandoned by the then incoming Labour Government, who kept everything else the same for about four years. It is worth making the point that many of those improvements and reforms, post privatisation, were driven by former employees of British Rail, who welcomed the challenges...
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, on his valedictory speech. It was great fun. I do not think that we have ever met, but there is plenty of time before September, so perhaps we can get that in our diaries. I do not say this often, but I welcome the Bill. The Green Party has long argued that our railways should be run as a public service and not for private profit. After decades of failed fragmentation, spiralling costs and confusing accountability, bringing the railway back under public leadership is important and overdue. The Bill is, therefore, a step in the right direction. If we are creating Great British Railways, we must create a railway that is genuinely great: one that is affordable, accessible, integrated and capable of helping us meet the defining challenge of our age, which is the climate and nature crisis. At present, the Bill does not achieve that. It lacks ambition. For example, Great British Railways will have numerous duties, so why does the Bill not contain a clear duty to increase passenger numbers? I welcome the target for shifting freight from lorries on to trains, but why is there no equivalent ambition to encourage more people out of their cars and on to trains? To do that, we must make train travel cheap and easy. For millions of people, the biggest barrier to travelling by rail is not whether a train exists but whether they can afford the ticket. Affordable fares are perhaps the single most effective tool available to...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I agree with a huge amount of what she said, and I welcome her support for the Bill. As he is still in the Chamber, I want to pay my own tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, whom I first had the pleasure of meeting around 40 years ago when he was a senior civil servant and I was a desperate lobbyist for a particular interest that was affected by his department, the Home Office. He will be missed; that was a wonderful valedictory speech. I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill for the way in which he introduced this debate. I endorse the compliments paid to him from the Benches opposite. He is an extraordinarily successful and popular Transport Minister in your Lordships’ House, and I hope that it will not blight his career if I say that I hope he will remain where he is when Mr Burnham forms his new Government in a couple of weeks’ time. I have a number of railway interests to declare. The noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, referred to one of them: I chair the Great Western Rail advisory board. The noble Baroness is a most diligent and valued member of that board and I am delighted that she is on it. I am also the president of the Cotswold Line Promotion Group and the Heritage Railway Association. That was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay; I am sure that we will come to the issue of heritage railways, which he raised, in...
My Lords, passengers should be the focal point of this Bill. Their needs and experiences should guide the developments and improvements to be implemented. The needs of passengers are clear: the ability to access stations, platforms and trains; lifts that work; comfortable conditions in which to travel; a regard for personal safety; and trains that arrive and depart on time. National Rail and the operating companies try to meet those needs, with varying degrees of success. For example, mobility assistance at Euston, run by National Rail and the train operating companies, helps at least 1,600 people a week to board their trains. The service is run efficiently by a dedicated team who are helpful, professional and, above all, respectful and kind. This is reflected in the performance of staff at the various stations along the route. However, the Office of Rail and Road’s research report published this month shows that 10% of those who had booked a service had not been met at all. For those who have been abandoned on their trains late at night, the experience must be terrifying. The suspicion is that the system of notifying the arrival station of the passenger’s arrival time has broken down. Can the Minister foresee any way in which this system could be improved under GBR? I add here how pleased I was with the Minister’s emphasis on accessibility in his opening speech. The Avanti West Coast service between London Euston and north Wales has seen much improvement since the days of...
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness who resides on the other side of the Welsh border from me. I still live very close to it, in the constituency that I had the pleasure to represent for nearly 20 years. I mention that because I share the Minister’s sentiments about the work of those who helped all those affected by the terrorist attack on 7/7. It is particularly memorable for me, because it took place relatively shortly after the 2005 general election, when I first joined the House of Commons. It was my first experience of how, as a parliamentarian, you end up dealing with the impact of a terrorist incident. I remember it very clearly, and the impact on the transport system. I remember-it was a very small price to pay-walking all the way from here to Paddington and seeing the enormous numbers of people whose lives had been disrupted that day, sometimes permanently, by that terrorist attack. So I am pleased by what the Minister said. I strongly support what my noble friend Lord Grayling said about the Minister’s capabilities in this particular area. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, added a cross-party aspect to that, because I was fearing that, if only a Conservative colleague had said nice things about the Minister, we might perhaps have been doing him a disservice. But I can add my support to what the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, said, and also note that it was supported from the other side of the House, which I hope...
It is instructive to follow the noble Lord, Lord Harper, with his detailed knowledge of the subject, but I have rather more enthusiasm than he does for the Bill. I think this magnificent Bill is what the country has been waiting for. It is one of the key measures from this Government to restore public services to decent standards and sensible structures. The benefits of this comprehensive and simplified system have been well set out by my noble friends and some other speakers, so I will focus briefly on only four aspects. I am particularly reassured by the Bill’s contribution to reaching net-zero carbon and its general impact on the economy, especially with regard to freight transport. Can my noble friend the Minister say a bit more about the impact that the very welcome targets for rail freight will have on the economy and what the plans for further electrification are? I hope he agrees with me that a rolling programme for electrification would be the cheapest way to achieve the maximum contribution to net zero. The role of the Passengers’ Council is also very constructive. One of the defects of the pioneering British Rail of earlier times was the lack of a strong route to accountability, and I see this as a strength of the new structure. Much will depend on who is on the council. I can see that disability representation is guaranteed on the actual board of GBR, but can my noble friend say what categories will play a guaranteed part on the council? I make a plea in my own...
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. I associate myself with the chorus of praise for my noble friend Lord Wilson of Dinton. It was fascinating to hear his memories and his opinions. I am one of the rank of non-experts here. I am a train user-a frequent user of London Overground and the very wonderful Elizabeth line. One of my favourite activities is watching the world go by from a train, particularly if I am lucky enough to get a seat with a table. I have travelled some of the loveliest routes in the UK: Exeter to Newton Abbot; Shrewsbury to Barmouth; Gloucester to Paddington via Stroud; and Oxford to Great Malvern-I commend the work of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, on that one. I have even done the sleeper from Glasgow to London. Whereas the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, sees dystopia out of his window, I am back in the world of PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, and Flanders and Swann. Flying is a chore; a train journey, when it works, can be a pleasure. But I am old enough to remember British Rail ending unloving and unloved. This is why I welcome the Bill, because it is so important. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix public transport infrastructure in this country. The Bill has a lot of talk, in the duties, about railway infrastructure, but it lacks detail. Will new or reopened branch lines be planned to get people on the railways earlier in the journey? If we learned one thing from Beeching, it is that people...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and hear his comments about, in particular, training on the railways, which, incidentally, has been, I think, modernised dramatically by HS2. But that is a separate issue. I shall say a few words today questioning the point of this Bill. That may seem a bit dramatic, but I have been working on the railways for nearly 50 years, since I was building the Channel Tunnel, and I have noticed that the railway has effectively been controlled by the Government for at least 20 years, as many noble Lords have said, on timetabling, charges, ticketing, investment in the track and the rolling stock for many trains. They may have said that it is in the private sector, but in fact it is controlled behind the scenes in many instances, so I wonder whether we should be talking about ownership or control. We have control at the moment, and listening to many noble Lords speaking this evening, it occurred to me that most of the changes that they quite rightly recommend could be done without primary legislation. I spent several decades, if not more, working in the rail freight industry, in the European industry more lately and in ALLRAIL, which is an association of companies across Europe which believe in open access and competition in passenger services. I suppose I can claim some small input into the European Commission bringing liberalisation to the continent after it was seen by me in those days, and I still think it is, as an...
My Lords, before turning to the substance of the Bill, I wish to begin by paying tribute to those who lost their lives on 7/7 21 years ago. Our thoughts and prayers are still with those families that were affected-and similarly with those who lost their lives or were injured in the more recent train accident on the East Midlands Railway line near Bedford. It is a line that I regularly use to come here every week and go home. In particular I pay tribute to the emergency services and the railway staff who responded in a very professional manner. An incident such as the recent Bedford train crash is a solemn reminder that safety must always remain the first duty of our railway. I declare an interest in that my eldest son works for one of the railway companies in the north of England. This Bill presents an opportunity to reshape Britain’s railways for a new generation. It is therefore right that we approach it not through the lens of ideology but through the experience of millions of passengers who rely on the railways every day. Much of the political debate surrounding this legislation will inevitably focus on the question of ownership and structure. Others will argue over the merits of nationalisation versus privatisation. From these Benches, we take a different view. We are not interested in fighting yesterday’s arguments. The real test is whether the railway delivers a service that is affordable, reliable, accessible and worthy of public confidence. Passengers must be at the...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this Second Reading debate. In doing so, I declare my technology interests as an adviser variously to the Crown Estate and to Simmons & Simmons LLP. Like other noble Lords, my thoughts are with all those who were affected on 7/7. I remember that day so clearly. It was less than 24 hours after we had won the right to stage the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In that 24-hour period we saw the best of humanity in the bid, we saw the worst of humanity in those terrorist atrocities, and, instantaneously, we saw the best of humanity in all the first responders and members of the public, who ran towards danger to help all those affected on the transport network and beyond. I congratulate the Minister on the way in which he introduced this Second Reading debate. I would introduce a slight note of discord into our Second Reading proceedings, in that I hope the Minister does not keep his job when the new Prime Minister comes in, because his experience, expertise and enthusiasm for transport need to be recognised. I hope he can come back to your Lordships’ House as Secretary of State for Transport-I know he shares that political ambition. I was delighted to listen to the valedictory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton. I had the good fortune to work with him many years ago when he was doing excellent work on inclusion and accessibility as Cabinet Secretary. It was an honour and a pleasure to work with him, though, having heard...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, who made a typically thoughtful contribution to the debate. I fully associate myself with his remarks on the anniversary of 7/7, which was a time when I was working in government and certainly will never forget. I also associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, on the recent rail crash near Bedford. Like him, I use that line regularly to travel home. Our thoughts are with all of those who are affected by it and our thanks go out to the emergency services who responded so heroically. It is a source of real pleasure to be able to speak in this debate on the Railways Bill, which delivers a crucial manifesto commitment for the Government. There can be no doubt that taking back control of our railways and ending one of the most disastrous Conservative privatisations of the 1980s and 1990s was one of our most popular policies at the last election -I would argue for good reason. We know that that privatisation was flawed from day one because of the split between track and train. The Bill will bring the management of those back together to improve performance, with Great British Railways managing day-to-day operations and taking long-term decisions in the public interest. This means that we will have a more reliable and accessible railway, with better value journeys. On that word “accessible”, I want to mention the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson....
My Lords, we all say to the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, on his valedictory speech: thank you for lifting our spirits. We will miss you. It is good to follow the noble Lord, Lord Doyle, and all 26 noble Lords who have spoken. Some of them have stolen my words so it is no good me repeating them. In my contribution to the Second Reading of this very important Bill, I begin by recalling an event at York station on 23 April 2017. It involved four generations of trains on the same track-the east coast main line-at the same time, travelling in the same direction, celebrating the past, the future and the present. A total of five trains took part in the historic Four Trains event. The occasion was also a celebration of the east coast main line, where four of the trains travelled side by side. The four trains featured in the line-up included the “Flying Scotsman”, the iconic steam locomotive; the Virgin Trains East Coast Class 43 HST-that is, high speed train; the InterCity 125, nicknamed the 125 because of its top operational speed of 125 mph; and the InterCity 225 Class 91, designed for a maximum speed of 140 mph but, due to British railway signalling regulations, its operational top speed is restricted to 125 mph in regular service. Still, during testing it achieved a record speed of 162 mph-what a pity. Then there was the Hitachi Azuma Class 800, which had yet to come into service but was to do so in 12 months. Its operating speed is 125 mph. On sections equipped with...
My Lords, I must confess I had mixed feelings when I saw that I had been drawn 30th out of 31 contributors to the debate this afternoon, but, in fact, it has been a huge pleasure. It has been an excellent and very well-informed debate, and it is a privilege to take part. I was particularly taken with the valedictory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton. I thank the noble Lord for his service. I can tell, even as a relatively new Member, that he will be missed by the House. It has also been a privilege to take part in a debate which has included contributions from a number of former Secretaries of State for Transport. They made the case for privatisation very well, using hard numbers: increased numbers of passengers, increased projects, improving reliability on the railways, and savings made, whereas, the proponents of this Bill, I fear, are relying largely on nostalgia. The reputation of British Rail, back as it was in the 1970s, appears to have undergone something of a renaissance in recent years. I am pleased that my noble friend Lord Blencathra managed to puncture that particular balloon and remind us all of exactly what it was like. I had the privilege to work for the Royal Mail in the 1980s and the early 1990s. We had a lot of dealings with British Rail. I would come into the office-I was private secretary to the director of operations here in London-and I would be faced every morning with a tray full of telexes; noble Lords will recall telexes, I am sure....
Hear, hear!
Thank you. He was heard in silence, almost. We often hear in such debates-we have not heard it too much today-about how much better the rail services are in other countries. I just want to let the House know that that is not just a debate or an opinion which is voiced by people in the UK. I remember that quite a few years ago, and the Minister will recall this as well, we brought in a man called Bob Kiley from New York to run Transport for London. I was in a hotel in the West End talking to some New Yorkers at the bar, and I said to them, “We’ve got Mr Kiley coming over to run our services”. They said to me, “Well, he’s made a much better job of your Tube than he ever did with our rail services in New York”. I said, “The only problem is that he’s actually not arrived yet”. So it is a truth that, when we travel, we see the best of people’s rail services; when we live there, we do not quite get the sort of service that we would expect. If the Bill is to be successful, I hope that that situation will be corrected.
My Lords, it is a privilege to be the last Back-Bench speaker. We all know that at least it is almost over. I am totally in favour of the Bill. It will create a much better situation and a much better structure than the one we have at the moment. There is a wonderful myth going through this debate that privatisation was a great success. It was not quite said in so many words but somehow, by involving the private sector, things changed massively and those were wonderful days. Of course, what they really were was an opportunity for financial manoeuvring. Privatisation, essentially, was a financial and operational failure. If we go back to when it started, there was a company called Railtrack looking after the track. It started operating in April 1994 and initially had very good results. It borrowed money and the Government gave it various guarantees. It was sort of a proper company, in its legal structure, but it eventually fell apart in 2002. Out of it, we created another company called Network Rail in 2002. I do not think anybody actually got to the bottom of what sort of company that was. It clearly was not a proper plc and we lost sight of worrying about that, for some reason. But we were still in the European Union at that point and part of an organisation which I believe was called Eurostat. On 1 November 2014, Eurostat said, “That’s a nationalised industry. All the money is guaranteed by government; all the subsidies come from government; all the rules and what it is...
My Lords, this has been a very interesting and wide-ranging debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, for his valedictory speech and thoughtful words, and I wish him well in his retirement. The focus from these Benches is on how we improve train services for passengers and freight. How do we ensure the passenger is at the centre of Great British Railways, and that it operates in a transparent and fair manner? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley: we need the railway to succeed. If we are to see more people using the railway to travel around our country, it needs to become a more attractive offer. That means reliable services, more carriages where needed, comfortable seats, easy storage for luggage and bikes, on-board catering for longer-distance journeys-I have raised this many times with the Minister-good-value fares that are easy to understand, and high speed wifi. We need the railway to be an attractive experience that rivals using the car, which, as we have heard, remains the go-to mode of transport for many people outside our cities. Having heard many noble Lords’ experiences today, I think the account from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, of a 666-minute delay feels like the record. Stations also need to feel safe: they need to be well-lit and staffed where possible. The accessibility of train stations and surrounding areas needs to be improved for those who are mobility impaired. It was very good to hear, in his opening words, the...
My Lords, I start by associating myself with the remarks made by noble Lords, particularly the Minister, concerning the doleful anniversary we are marking today of the attacks on London’s transport 21 years ago. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, on his valedictory speech and his service to your Lordships’ House over so many years as well as his broader public service. I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this wide-ranging debate. I do not propose in this winding-up speech to respond to each of them individually, but it is worth saying that I was very touched, as I think all of us were, by the remarks made by our noble colleagues who have been affected by the very poor service that the railways often give to those who are in wheelchairs or disabled in other ways. I thank the Minister for the way he introduced the Bill. Personally, I would be delighted-I am sure your Lordships’ House will understand my position-if Mr Burnham were to replace the Minister on the Front Bench in speaking for transport, but I entirely understand why that is not a widespread opinion across the House. I will start with a point of agreement. The existing model of privatisation, despite having been profoundly successful and transformative over 20 or 30 years, is not fit for purpose currently, because it depended on very high volumes of passengers. During the pandemic, those volumes collapsed, and they have not recovered since. In current or indeed foreseeable...
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this thorough and thoughtful debate. I would like to start by paying tribute to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson. His distinguished record of service in this place and the Civil Service is a beacon of dedication and commitment to public good. He has brought to our proceedings a deep experience in the heart of government and his contributions are always thoughtful, measured and influential. As always, he is well informed about the railways. Gladstone made provision for the nationalisation of railways in the 1844 Railway Regulation Act. It was not pursued, but it was an early indication that running the railway as one system might be a good idea. I know that the House will join me in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, for everything he has done and wishing him all the best for the future after he retires in September. Turning to the debate at hand, we have heard that everyone across the House can agree that the railways require reform. The current system is clearly no longer working for passengers, operators or taxpayers. Services have been unreliable, customers have been unhappy and the system has provided poor value for money. We have begun taking services into public ownership, but that was never a long-term solution. The Railways Bill is the answer to the issues that have plagued our railways for far too long, providing new leadership, accountability and long-term thinking to the sector and better...
I hate to disagree with the Minister, but he will know that the programme of enhancement set aside for CP6 was carefully discussed with him and the executive of Network Rail and represented a significant plan to do precisely the things that the industry said would make the most difference. The tragedy is that it did not happen, and even now under this Government, it is still not happening.
Recollections are a great thing. I recollect that not one of the of schemes that I was invited to by the predecessor of the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, had a business case attached to it. It was a list of schemes that was just a list of schemes. I think that we can do a lot better than that. A long-term railway strategy that invites the railway to list and make business cases for the right schemes is entirely right. My noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester made the most important point, which is that if you do not have a list of schemes prioritised by business case, you have no chance of getting private sector contributions to railway enhancements which create growth and wealth. That is an important point and something that a long-term railway strategy and the resulting GBR business plan will deal with. On private sector involvement, the first thing to say is that this Government are not fundamentally opposed to it at all. At the end of this process, when this Bill becomes an Act, 60% of the expenditure by GBR, once established, will be spent in the private sector. On the balance sheet implications raised by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, I say that the Railways Bill will not impact the way that the rolling stock leases will be classified by the ONS. I have previously discussed with him the confidence of the rolling stock leasing companies that this will not be the case. The story that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, told about how Network Rail crept back into the...
My Lords-
I will not take any more interventions.
It is a procedural point. There has been a discussion about whether the Bill is going to be committed to the Moses Room or to the Chamber, and there is no Motion before us tonight. Could the Minister reassure us that the discussion now is with a view to having Committee stage in the Chamber?
I am sorry I gave way because I cannot answer that question-it is not for me to answer. A large number of noble Lords talked about the history of the railway, whether good or bad-I meant to say more about this, and I am sorry I did not. It is part of British society and we need to run it properly. I will talk separately to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, about heritage railways. The railway has a glorious past and it could be better in future. The Bill is designed to make it better. It puts forward the tools with which we can shape the railway of the future, and I encourage all noble Lords to support it.
Bill read a second time.