Railways Bill

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 142 is in my name. I speak with apologies for not having attended Second Reading and with some trepidation, given the level of expertise on railways and rail that is clearly present on all sides in this Grand Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, began his contribution to today’s proceedings with a reference to the 1970s. He will forgive me if I do not go there. That, for me, was a time of flares, floral shirts and an afro. There are many Members here who are familiar with flares and floral shirts, but perhaps not so many with an afro, but that was the 1970s for me and I do not intend to go there. However, I do intend to go to the 1980s, when I was a member of a local authority that had oversight of the Docklands Light Railway, and to the early noughties when, as Chief Secretary in two spending reviews, I took a particular interest in Crossrail.

From both those experiences, in the 1980s and the noughties, I learned that the significance of railways in promoting economic growth is absolutely central. As a result, Great British Railways should not merely operate a railway but should help grow Britain. That has to be at the heart of our consideration of this Bill, and therefore ORR’s regulatory framework should recognise the economic geography of the whole country, as well as the economics of the railway. Hence the importance of regional growth: that should unite us on all sides of this Committee. We may have different views on how we get there, but we all believe that growth is essential for the future of our country. I will not go down the road along which the noble Baroness tempts me, but I can add the words “sustainable growth”. She will not demur from that proposition. I have no problem with the notion of sustainable growth, nor with that notion being on the face of the Bill through this amendment.

The amendment is by no means perfect, but it seeks to elicit from the Government how—with their commendable commitment to growth across the country, and particularly to addressing regional disparities—they will make this Bill fit for purpose. I suggest that we will have to come back to the issue of sustainable growth during our consideration of the Bill. As it stands, it does not make the point that railways have a vital role in the country’s future going forward. I take as an example the situation which exists today in relation to HS1 and Kent, and that county’s regeneration. The noble Lord, Lord Young, is sadly not in his place, but he made a very important contribution to our earlier deliberations. When he was Secretary of State—and, indeed, when I was in the other place—he made the following point about the railways, and the Channel Tunnel rail link in particular:

“The benefits of the deal for the nation are wide-ranging and substantial.”

He went on to say:

“The railway will be a great boost to economic development and regeneration.”—[Official Report, Commons, 29/2/1996; col. 999.]

So, indeed, it has proved in relation to Kent.

But, sadly, the decision made in March 2020 to close access to the channel rail link for Ashford and Ebbsfleet had a devastating effect on the region and a negative effect on its growth. That point has been very well made in the work, which I commend, of the local Members of Parliament in the other place: Helena Dollimore for Hastings and Rye, Tony Vaughan for Folkestone and Hythe, Sojan Joseph for Ashford, and others in the region. They worked with the Good Growth Foundation to demonstrate what the impact of the lack of access through Ashford has meant for the region: £80 million of infrastructure investment rendered useless and business across the region losing footfall and trade, perpetuating some of the deep inequalities that exist in Kent and East Sussex. After all, they contain some of the most deprived communities in the UK, with child poverty and unemployment concentrated particularly along the coastal towns, which I happen to know well. All that is impacted by a decision made by a rail operator in relation to one specific station.

My point, at this stage of our consideration of the Bill—I am hugely grateful to the Minister for his interest in this subject over the years—is that we must amend the Bill as it stands with a regional growth duty requiring the issue to form part of the regulatory decision-making process, rather than being treated as somehow external to it. The Commons Library reported on this just in August this year, in relation to the four potential competitors for Eurostar that have aspirations to operate international passenger services through the Channel Tunnel. The ORR has already approved track access agreements between Virgin Trains and HS1 Ltd, following its earlier Temple Mills decision, of which I know the Minister is well aware.

The Minister will be equally well aware that the Government have supported an industry working group to look at the remobilisation of the Kent HS1 stations for potential new international entrants. If we do not amend the statutory framework now, and if the ORR were considering competing access applications from one operator proposing a London-Paris service running non-stop through Kent and another proposing to call at Ashford, the Ashford stop could appear disadvantageous under a narrow railway economic analysis: a few minutes additional journey time, station operating costs, border security arrangements and possibly reduced London-Paris capacity.

If that were the only consideration, the ORR would be driven in one particular direction, but a regional sustainable growth duty would require the ORR to consider the other side of the ledger: inward investment attracted by European connectivity, tourism expenditure, labour market accessibility, business productivity and the agglomeration effects. There would be development around Ashford, connectivity for Kent, East Sussex and the wider south-east, utilisation of existing infrastructure —a model transfer for car, air and international rail travel.

If that is true—and it is true in relation to Ashford and Kent—think about the rest of the country. Think about those parts of the north-east, the Midlands and the wider north of our country. Without a specific duty to take note of the issue of growth, they will be denied the benefits that a railway system can provide for the whole country. On that basis, I commend the amendment to the Minister and hope that his reply will give us some hope that these issues will be addressed in the Bill.

Cyclists: Safety

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The £626 million investment over four years in active travel infrastructure is designed to do precisely that. The noble Baroness is completely right; we want people to walk and cycle, and we want kids to do that as a matter of habit. That is why the Government are investing so much money. Before Christmas, we consulted on the third cycling and walking strategy. I anticipate that that too will have something to say in the direction that she wants us to go in.

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister please tell us what action the Government are going to take to make cyclists more aware of their responsibilities towards pedestrians? All too often, cyclists show a complete disregard for the Highway Code and the safety of pedestrians.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

Northern Powerhouse Rail

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I worked at No. 10 as Tony Blair’s strategy adviser in 2005 when an in principle go-ahead was given to an ambitious high-speed rail network for the whole country. Twenty-odd years later, we do not even have one small part of that plan in place. In the same period, since 2008 China has built 48,000 kilometres of high-speed rail.

I am a Liverpool supporter, so I regularly go—

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

You have lost us there.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

It has been a difficult weekend. I regularly visit the north-west of England, as I did at the weekend. I am involved in an east of Pennines business, so I am very familiar with the 19th-century infrastructure of the whole of the north of England. Are we remotely ambitious enough with our rail infrastructure?

Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Disabled Persons) Bill

Lord Boateng Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 1st April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

My Lords, I am speaking in the gap, and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, on this Bill. Its proponents and supporters were fortunate indeed to have steering it through Parliament such a past master in the art of securing legislative support for any measure. I do not rise as a result of the practice of his arts but as a result of a chance encounter that I had at the beginning of this week, at the memorial service for His Royal Highness, the late Duke of Edinburgh, who was a patron of Disabled Motoring UK. No one put a greater emphasis on the environment and—another of his great causes—including the marginalised in society, so that they might realise their potential and contribute fully to it.

It is to such an issue, related to this Bill but not arising directly from it, that I draw the House’s attention. A real problem has arisen for disabled drivers, in accessing electric vehicle charging, and in design and infrastructure inadequacies of that charging which make it particularly difficult for disabled people to contribute as they would wish to in tackling climate change. Research in this area reveals that today, only 61% of disabled people would consider buying an electric vehicle unless charging was made more accessible. Many disabled people find that their experience of the existing infrastructure is such that there is difficulty in terms of lifting the charging cable from the boot and then having to close it, and manoeuvring the cable to the charging point, with 66% of respondents to a survey conducted by the Research Institute for Disabled Consumers finding that the space or trip hazards and barriers around the car and the charger were making it either difficult or very difficult for disabled people to navigate access to the charger.

All this arises from a lack of consultation with disabled people in the course of the design of this infrastructure. Indeed, it was at the beginning of 2022 that the first fully accessible electric charging point in the UK was unveiled, representing just 0.003% of charging locations in the UK designed to be accessible to disabled drivers. In the same year, the institute undertook research into electric cars on behalf of a disabled organisation and found that the charging infrastructure as a whole showed a clear lack of consideration of disabled motorists as users or potential users of electric vehicles.

Can the Minister take back to her department the importance of this issue? Can she meet with me and other representatives of Disabled Motoring UK so that we can further explore this issue? Access to transportation and to the means to participate in the full range of activities that disabled people are entitled to engage in within our communities is essential. On that basis, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, for all that he has done to bring that about, and wholeheartedly support this measure.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely. I invite the noble Baroness to speak.

Extraordinary Funding and Financing Agreement for Transport for London

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Lord that, once we know what the new normal is, we need to think boldly and creatively about the long term. However, everyone accepts that we have no idea what the new normal will be at the moment, because we are still in the pandemic. We have just gone into another wave, which is having a further negative impact on traffic levels.

It is utterly ludicrous for the Government to be forcing TfL into short-term, acrimonious funding agreements, as they have been doing every three or six months, when everyone knows that the problem is the pandemic. It is rather like denying a heart replacement patient blood on the grounds that they do not have a long-term plan for improving their fitness. Until they have survived the operation—got through the pandemic, in this case—we cannot look at these longer-term issues.

My noble friend’s strictures at the beginning were well made. Unless the Government want to kill the national economy, which I do not think they do, they simply will agree to roll on the funding; there will be an agreement tomorrow and it will be similar to the one that went before. This is wasting a huge amount of time and energy among the senior management of TfL and in the Department for Transport, where I know officials are at their wits’ end, having to go through this charade of negotiations, knowing that the status quo will be the status quo ante until we get to the end of the pandemic.

When we get to the end and know what the new normal is, some very hard questions will of course need to be asked. But we need to know what the new normal is in terms of traffic levels, and these are very hard to predict; I have seen a whole range of potential traffic levels. The report done for the mayor, the TfL independent review of a year ago, suggested we might get to about 80% of traffic levels. I have looked at the sourcing for those estimates and, to be frank, this is fingers in the air stuff—the Minister will probably agree with that. We simply do not know what the new normal will be.

It was very striking that, when so much encouragement was given to people to come back to the office and resume normal activity after the second lockdown, traffic levels were restored remarkably quickly. The idea that there is somehow going to be a systemic loss of traffic may be far too gloomy a prediction.

When we do know what the new normal is, we obviously need to address this. I will highlight very briefly four issues that we should address. The first has to be bus priority. If buses in London went, on average, 1 mph faster than they do at the moment, it would save TfL nearly £200 million a year in the running costs of the bus network, with fewer buses, much more efficient operations and so on. It should not be beyond the wit of good transport managers in TfL to ensure improved bus priority to get buses moving faster. There has been a significant reduction in average bus speeds in London over the last 10 years, because of a failure to join up policy properly when we are all in favour of faster buses in principle—

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

Cycle lanes are the problem.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My noble friend says that priority cycle lanes are a problem; we can debate that issue, but there needs to be much better joining up and we should encourage the mayor to look at that as a key priority.

The second issue has to be the future of congestion charging and road pricing in London. At the moment, we have a hybrid system of a low emission zone and a small congestion zone for which prices have gone up a lot. We need to join up and look at the longer-term role of congestion charging.

I will mention two other points and will be very brief, because my time is nearly up. We need to look at reform of council tax arrangements as part of future arrangements. There is a very strong argument for an additional council tax band, given what has happened to property values in the capital over the last 30 years, and that could help to fund Transport for London.

Finally, when Crossrail and the Elizabeth line open, I hope, next year—we are looking forward to it—a big issue will be the interaction between the transformational additional capacity of Crossrail, with its 10% of additional transport capacity in London, and new housing, which will also produce new council tax revenue. So, there are four big things that should be looked at, but not this short-term, ludicrous funding crisis that we have been going through during the pandemic.