King’s Speech

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by declaring my railway interests, as I will be speaking a lot about the Railways Bill in my remarks this evening. All these interests are unpaid. They include presidency of the Heritage Railway Association and of the Cotswold Line Promotion Group. I am a member of the Railway Heritage Designation Advisory Board and the National Railway Museum’s advisory board, and I chair the Great Western Railway’s stakeholder board.

I want to commend all those who are making such a success of Railway 200, the 200th anniversary of the opening of the world’s first passenger railway between Stockton and Darlington in 1825. It is rightly being celebrated throughout Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and allows us all to celebrate just how much railways have contributed to a nation’s happiness, health and prosperity. Railway 200’s exhibition train, which is called “Inspiration”, is conducting its nationwide tour and will be doing so until this summer. If noble Lords have not visited yet, I urge them to do so. It is likely to be at a heritage railway close to where they live. Curated in partnership with the National Railway Museum, the exhibition carriages of “Inspiration” are a great celebration of what the railway has done for everyone.

I congratulate my noble friend Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill on the part he has played in making Railway 200 such a success, his commitment to the heritage sector and, most important of all, his determination to ensure that we as country appreciate and stand behind our railways. My noble friend and I were invited to join the celebrations for the 75th anniversary of the Talyllyn Railway this week, but our duties here made it impossible for us to get away to north Wales. I am sure he will want to join me in sending our congratulations to that wonderful little railway.

I have spoken before in your Lordships’ House about the huge contribution that heritage railways make to the regional economy, to tourism and to the preservation of engineering skills. I again thank noble Lords in all parts of the House and the Government for supporting my efforts and those of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, to make it legal, through an amendment to the Employment Rights Act, for young people to work and volunteer on heritage railways. I am told that that is already making a great difference. It is a small change but an important one.

The value of a national rail system cannot be exaggerated. They have long played a vital part in shaping regional economies and communities, bringing a sense of community cohesion as they transport people from A to B. They enable people to get to work, school and university, to see friends and family, to go shopping and to go on holiday. There is so much more that they could be doing, particularly in improving the environment, by attracting much more heavy freight off the roads and on to the railway. I know my noble friend the Minister has already received representations from the rail freight sector and been given practical examples of what could usefully be done. I appreciate that the debate on the gracious Speech is not the right place for discussing detailed amendments to the Railways Bill, but I hope the Minister will be able to give an assurance that he and his officials are studying carefully the freight industry’s representations on matters such as access arrangements for non-Great British Railways operators and the freight growth target set for Great British Railways.

I will finish on a positive note. On Monday, direct services between Bristol and Oxford, calling at Bath, Chippenham and Swindon, were introduced by GWR and launched by the Secretary of State. The service runs every two hours and was made possible only because of the capacity improvements that Network Rail has made at Oxford station. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that this is exactly the type of thing we should be seeing train operating companies and GBR doing in future? They are responding to market demand, looking at new routes and growing revenue to help reduce taxpayer subsidy. It is also important to demonstrate that the rail network is not totally London-centric, and the success of this service will enable new housing opportunities and new job opportunities. It is connecting incredibly popular tourist destinations in Oxford and Bath, and will have superb connections to East West Rail when that opens for passenger service. I am sure that there are many other examples of where we can grow the railway in future, and I look forward to my noble friend’s speech.

Rail Freight

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

There is no use upgrading Haughley junction without upgrading Ely. Previous Governments have not found the money to do that and, regrettably, in the financial circumstances that this Government find themselves, we have not so far found it either. But I have had some useful discussions with local Members of Parliament and the combined authority mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough about what we can do both to improve the business case for Haughley and Ely junctions and to reduce the cost. One of the crippling costs of that upgrade is the number of level crossings needed because East Anglia is very flat; there may be some things that local highway authorities can do which would make that project easier to do and give it a better business case in the future.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the secrets of growing rail freight is to increase the versatility of freight locomotives? In that context, will he welcome the development of tri-mode freight locomotives—electric, battery or diesel—so that they are able to run anywhere in the country?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My noble friend clearly knows a lot about it—probably more than I do—but I was at the launch of the Class 99 locomotives last autumn, which I think are the ones he is referring to. There are 30 being leased and operated through GB Railfreight, and he is right that they will be versatile to run anywhere. In fact, that may solve the issue at London Gateway port that the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, referred to, because if there were battery-electric locomotives then we would not need fixed electrification. It is right that the rail freight fleet needs to be updated. That investment is very welcome, and I expect it to be followed by investment by the other freight operators which believe that there is a long-term future in freight on the railway.

Northern Powerhouse Rail

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Let us not assume that the cap will be busted, because the progress on the trans-Pennine route upgrade demonstrates pretty satisfactorily that, planned properly, you can make substantial railway enhancements without limitless additions to the budget. We will come back to this House and the other House in short order about the costs and timescale of HS2, but there are some really substantial lessons to be learned from starting a project with no specification and giving contractors, in essence, a licence to print money. There is no way that this Government are prepared to do that with anything that has been announced in the past few days. One of the consequences of that is to allow ourselves time to plan what needs to be done properly, to cost it properly and to contract for it properly. I do not think that we can tolerate assuming that caps will be busted, because we have a terrible example of it at the moment, and we should leave that example in isolation and deliver projects properly, having planned them first.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank every noble Lord who has spoken in this exchange and warmly welcome the Statement that was made last week in the other place. I congratulate the Minister on getting his head around the facts and being able to explain what is happening with such clarity—for example, to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle on her remarkably technical but important question about the Leamside line. Did the Minister see the press coverage at the weekend on the completion of the Chiltern tunnel for High Speed 2, and does he agree that it is time that we started to celebrate such engineering feats? When it is built, the railway is going to have some marvellous engineering—not just tunnels but viaducts as well—which I think will make our railway the envy of the world.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I agree with my noble friend. There are some remarkable structures, either in the ground or coming out of the ground, for HS2, but he would have to agree with me that you have to be tinged with sadness to stand here and not know how much they have cost so far. That is a shocking weakness, which we will come back to and no doubt debate at some stage. My noble friend is right that British engineering can produce some extraordinary feats, and the tunnel that was in the newspapers at the weekend and the viaduct across the Colne Valley are very elegant structures.

Incidentally, if noble Lords who take a train journey between Manchester and Leeds would like to give me prior notice, I can arrange for them to travel in the cab with the driver, and they can see the extraordinary amount of work that is being done on an operating railway, which is neither trivial nor simple, and get some understanding about what is going on there. My noble friend Lord Faulkner is right to highlight these great structures on HS2, but, equally, what has been going on between Leeds and Manchester and out to York is extraordinary, and it has been done with relatively little disruption to the train service. If any noble Lords—within reason—would like to see it at some time, I will arrange for them to be able to do that.

Channel Tunnel: International Rail Strategy

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they are supporting the Campaign for Better Transport’s proposals to create an international rail strategy to increase the usage of the Channel Tunnel from the existing 50 per cent for passengers and 10 per cent for freight.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, we welcome the recent report. This Government support a thriving international rail passenger services market, given the benefits of greater choice, new services and lower fares, as well as the opportunity of serving Ashford, Ebbsfleet and Stratford with international trains. We are also keen to see the growth of international rail freight, which supports the Government’s growth mission; we are working hard to increase freight flows through the tunnel.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that encouraging Answer, but he will know that in 2010 Deutsche Bahn brought one of its ICE trains through the Channel Tunnel to St Pancras with a view to starting through services to Germany from 2012. Other companies have indicated a similar interest, but nothing at all has happened. Does my noble friend agree not only that it is important to increase the use of stations that are now out of use, such as Ebbsfleet and Ashford, but that the tunnel access charges need to be reduced if these services are to be competitive? On freight, is he aware that the amount of freight currently going through the Channel Tunnel by rail is less than went on the train ferries operated by British Rail more than 30 years ago?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. I think I was there when the Deutsche Bahn train was at St Pancras in 2010; sadly, as my noble friend says, that did not materialise. There is currently a real opportunity for more passenger traffic to more destinations, and this Government are determined to seize it. For example, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State recently signed a memorandum of understanding with her Swiss counterpart to explore the setting up of a direct connection with Switzerland.

On the charging situation, the access charging framework for the Channel Tunnel provides for an incremental reduction in unit charges as traffic levels increase. Eurotunnel also operates a discount scheme for new routes; HS1 is currently consulting on a similar scheme. Those are important for new entrants. The recent review of the control period charges by the Office of Rail and Road reduced them by 10.4% for passenger trains and by 66% for freight trains. The volume of freight needs to increase; it would be good if it were greater than what the old train ferries coped with.

Railway Electrification

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to implement a rolling programme of railway electrification, and if so to what timescale.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and refer to my railway interests as listed in the register.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

Updated plans are currently being developed by Network Rail for where and when electrification is required to deliver a fully decarbonised railway over the next 25 years. Those plans will consider the integration of both track and train through Great British Railways and the significant recent progress in battery technology. All investment decisions will be subject to current and future spending reviews and will be for the first time integrated with rolling stock decisions.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, at the railway industry reception in the House of Commons last week, my noble friend said—I think I am quoting him correctly—that in the context of Railway 200:

“We’ve got … to celebrate all of the history. But we’ve also got a chance to celebrate the future”.


Does he agree that his Answer to me just now is a way of celebrating that future, provided we can embark on a programme of investment in electrification, battery power and new technologies which allows the railway to grow and the freight business and the passenger business to take on new markets with new traffic? Does he further agree that that is the only way that we can meet the net-zero emission targets and make the railway completely carbon free?

Railway 200

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what support they are giving to Railway 200 to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the modern railway.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I refer to my railway interests as listed in the register.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, Railway 200 marks the anniversary in 2025 of the first public passenger railway in the world and will celebrate the railway’s contribution to the nation’s and the world’s development and connectivity. A reformed railway is vital to the Government’s commitments to deliver more growth, jobs and housing. Railway 200 is a celebration not only of the past with heritage railways but of the present and the future, including the UK’s exciting technical and engineering innovations and the career opportunities across Britain that they offer. My department is playing a full role in this.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, that is a great Answer. In 1845, 20 years after the first passenger railway, Benjamin Disraeli wrote:

“The railways will do as much for mankind as the monasteries did”.


He was right about that. Can my noble friend the Minister be a bit more specific about the support that the Department for Transport is giving to Railway 200, particularly the financial contribution? Does he agree that the celebration provides a great opportunity to not only showcase what the early railway pioneers did but to look forward to what the railways can achieve in future?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I have to agree with Disraeli after all these years. The railway is currently, and will remain, publicly supported to a great extent but with significant private sector contributions. As my noble friend would imagine, we are appealing to all the people whose businesses support the railway, to make sure that the public sector contribution is as low as possible at a time of financial stringency. We have not finished that process yet. Meanwhile Network Rail, which is supported by the department, has contributed some support to get the project going. I cannot say exactly what the department’s contribution is. I expect it to be as low as possible, and in due course if my noble friend asks we will be able to tell him. At the moment we are still collecting financial contributions from those people whose businesses support the railway and vice versa. As far as the nature of the celebration goes, quite clearly the benefits are not only a good celebration of history but of the fact that the UK’s railways are leading the world with technological innovation. Those are the things that we will be clearly showcasing alongside, as I said, the career opportunities offered.

HS2

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am not familiar with the details, so I shall write to the noble Baroness and explain the position as we see it.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, a number of questioners have asked about the new route across the north from Manchester to Leeds and Hull, but does my noble friend agree that, following the cancellation of HS2 north, the main capacity problem is between Handsacre and Crewe and on services to Manchester and Liverpool? How many of the properties that were bought by the previous Government have now been sold? Have any of them remained in the Department for Transport’s ownership? Is there any chance that that will enable and accelerate the possibility of some new route coming into place on the Handsacre to Crewe line and relieving overcrowding?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. My understanding is that the number of properties sold is none. The capacity of the west coast main line north of Handsacre Junction is one of the many issues that we have inherited resulting from the decisions of the previous Government. The prioritisation of the High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill is recognition that east-west connectivity is immediately necessary for growth, jobs and housing. We will of course bear in mind the case that my noble friend makes for better connectivity north of Handsacre as we do the review.

Transport System: Failings

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to congratulate my noble friend Lord Snape on securing this debate. Over the years there has been no better advocate for the railway than him in your Lordships’ House and in the House of Commons before that. He features significantly in the three books on railways and politics that I co-authored.

I remind the House of my railway interests as declared in the register. I chair the Great Western Railway stakeholder advisory board and the North Cotswold Line Task Force and am president of the Heritage Railway Association. I apologise to the House for not declaring the HRA interest when I asked a question in the Chamber yesterday about coal supplies for steam railways.

For nearly 20 years from the mid-1970s onwards, I was an adviser to the British Railways Board. This was the last time the industry benefited from the influence of a guiding mind and from the energy and enthusiasm of its chairman, Sir Peter Parker, and his immediate successor, Sir Robert Reid. It was their misfortune—and the country’s—that this coincided with a period of managed decline and retrenchment on the railway, as transport policy placed far too heavy a reliance on car usage and road haulage.

One of the consequences of that mindset was the decision to reduce the size of the network and take out capacity. With the demand for rail travel having grown so markedly over the past two decades, much effort and huge expense have had to be incurred in the limited programme of station and line reopenings. So much more could have been achieved had many of those closures not happened.

We are now about to embark on another seismic reorganisation and have to get it right. The Government are not short of advice on what needs to be done, and I particularly commend the Manifesto for Rail published by the lobby group Rail Partners. It says:

“Whoever is in office after the next general election needs to take decisions to ensure the industry has the ability to attract passengers back to restore hundreds of millions of pounds in lost revenue, drive modal shift for goods against more polluting modes, and ultimately set up the railway for sustainable success. The public is not that interested in how our railways are structured or organised, they just want to have trains that run on time, that are not disrupted by strikes, and fares that offer them the best value for their journey”.


It is crucial that, with a general election coming so soon and—I think most Members of your Lordships’ House would agree—a change of administration very much on the cards, every effort is made now to achieve a cross-party consensus on what needs to be done. To his credit, I believe that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, gets this, as does the Minister for Rail in the other place, Huw Merriman. I very much appreciate the invitation the two Ministers sent to Members of your Lordships’ House to attend the briefing on the draft Bill on 19 March. The noble Lord, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, played a prominent part in that, and I am pleased to see him in his place today. The briefing was also given by members of the Great British Railways transition team.

The overriding priority is to pass rail reform legislation, establish Great British Railways as soon as possible and get on with improving the railways by stimulating demand and reducing cost. The Bill contains some helpful measures in this regard, notably the creation of an integrated rail body, the IRB. In legal terms, the body combines the DfT’s role as franchising authority and takes over the role of infrastructure manager undertaken by Network Rail. The IRB will be held to account on how it delivers rail services and be accountable for the whole system, including passenger revenue and a freight growth target. It is potentially good news for passengers and freight users and could simplify the railway, making it cheaper to run.

The Bill gets decisions away from a remote, non-operational Whitehall department and provides the opportunity to join up the railway closer to the people who use it. The new IRB model should help tackle high costs and project delays. One of our railways’ greatest challenges is the way UK capital projects regularly come in at a much higher cost than those in other countries. Stop-start investment and changing government plans result in project managers overspecifying schemes and suppliers putting in high cost estimates to cover the risk of uncertainty. The cost of electrification schemes is a particular example, and has proved to be the death knell of extending the benefits of HS2 to the north of England and Scotland.

A prerequisite for the IRB’s success is to take revenue risk away from the Treasury and cost control from the DfT. The new body needs to be judged solely on the net subsidy and public investment cost. Rail usage has broadly doubled since privatisation, resulting in a much more congested network, and it is important that we have proper trade-offs on its future usage and meet that demand.

It is evident from the statements made by the Prime Minister and No. 10 that railways are now seen as a problem rather than an opportunity and that tactical policy is now strictly controlled by the Treasury rather than the DfT, with minimising costs being the primary objective. Yet rail is essential if we are to meet the carbon reduction targets required in the transport sector. While electric cars may help, no such solution is available for aviation or heavy haulage, which will be dependent on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Rail passenger services that offer times competitive with air are essential to reduce the need for internal and short-haul European flights. The same is true for container trains between the ports and inland distribution centres. Not only is rail now cheaper for many of these flows but customers are increasingly demanding environmentally sustainable rail solutions to reduce their carbon footprint.

I will finish with the concluding sentence from Signals Passed at Danger, my third book on railways, published last year:

“The railways’ capabilities are manifest when the management of the railways is restored to those competent to operate them, with a clear strategy and funding agreed to deliver the outputs of that strategy”.

Transport: Zero-emission Vehicles, Drivers and HS2

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. I note his reflections and, to be honest, I share his disappointment to some extent, but I accept the decision. He made some valid points about the challenges that still face the HS2 project as a whole, and I agree: there are no major infrastructure projects that do not have significant challenges. But it is heartening to know that the Government are beefing up the governance arrangements of HS2 Ltd. A new chief executive is being recruited, and Sir Jon Thompson, the new chair who took his place in February, is very much involved in the recruitment to make sure that we get the right person to take the project forward.

My noble friend mentioned that there is some switch from capital to revenue—that always makes a Transport Minister excited because we do get much revenue funding in transport—but it is still mostly capital, of course, because we are talking about capital spend. This is an opportunity to mention one other piece of good news that I have not been able to mention to date: the “Get Around for £2” bus fare cap has been extended to the end of December. Again, that is revenue spend, and it is being used by millions of users. It has been really well received, and I am very pleased that we have been able to extend it.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interest as chairman of the Great Western Railway stakeholder board. It is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, who in the view of many of us was the most outstanding and successful Secretary of State for Transport in the past 12 years. The very good sense with which he spoke in this debate is an indication of why he is regarded with such respect.

The noble Lord was absolutely right in all his points. I do not intend to repeat them, but I would like to address the Minister, for whom I feel enormous sympathy because she has defended High Speed 2 day after day from that Dispatch Box and has not been supported by everyone in the House—and certainly not by everyone on the Benches behind her. She has now come along to defend a decision that is, frankly, absolutely indefensible because of the damage it does to the future prospects of the great cities of this country, as the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, said.

I have one question, which occurred to me when I heard the Prime Minister’s statement and read the documents today: what has happened to Great British Railways? Has it now been completely junked? If so, would it not be honest of the Government to say so? It is not a question of waiting for parliamentary time or using other means of establishing Great British Railways, about which I have written to the Minister. Is it still the Government’s intention that there will be a guiding mind and that the decisions about the future of British railways will at last be taken by people who understand how they work?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I reassure the noble Lord that it is still the Government’s intention that there will be Great British Railways. As I have said previously, it will depend on parliamentary time, but an enormous amount of work is of course going on in the meantime to establish an interim guiding mind to get as many things as we can. There are matters to work through as we develop the guiding mind principle—industrial action obviously being one of them—to give the senior leadership the head space they need to make some significant changes to establish a guiding mind.

West Coast Main Line

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The department is well aware that there is some overcrowding on CrossCountry routes. We are considering options, with CrossCountry, on the size of its future fleet. This will be balanced with the interests of taxpayers, given the financial pressures.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of the Great Western Railway stakeholder board. GWR is of course a FirstGroup member, so it is proper that I should declare it. I thank the Minister for the letter she sent earlier today. In that letter, there is no reference anywhere to Great British Railways. How does the new contract for Avanti fit in with the Government’s plans for Great British Railways, or is it the case that GBR is not going to happen?