Great British Railways: Rolling Stock

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right that there are a lot of old vehicles. The average age of vehicles on the national network is 17 years. There are 12,000 vehicles across 14 operators, and it is essential that we plan for the future, if only because several thousand jobs in the manufacturing plant in Derby and the assembly plants at Newton Aycliffe, Goole and Newport, Monmouthshire, all depend on this—as does, as she is right to say, passenger comfort and reliability for rolling stock that has reached the end of its normal life.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, when the Government nationalised the train operating companies, they said that one of the advantages was that they would no longer be paying fees to the private sector. Have the Government carried out, or do they intend to carry out, an assessment of the value for money to the taxpayer of continuing to finance rolling stock through the use of roscos in the private sector?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The Government’s policy is to continue to use the private sector to supply rolling stock to the British railway market. That has been quite clear since the manifesto before the election and nothing has changed. I think it is likely that the cost of rolling stock will be better than it has been, simply because the life of the rolling stock has been uncertain, but not sufficiently to diminish the risk taken by those companies, which is why they exist and why they should make a profit.