Train Operators’ Revenue Protection Practices Review

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The long-term answer is that the railway deserves to be run by competent, professional people. The involvement of Ministers in decisions about timetables and fares is extremely unusual in world railways outside North Korea. I am doing what I am doing now because I think that changes need to be made, and we need to make them faster than we can bring in the legislation on Great British Railways. In the long term, the railways should be run by competent people to an overall government policy. That is the Government’s aim, and mine too.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, concerning those changes, the report referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Beith, from the ORR, a highly respected regulator, is a valuable piece of work on behalf of passengers. Does the Minister accept that, under the new arrangements for the railway, consulted on by the Government earlier this year, the ORR would lose those functions, vindicating the rights of passengers to a toothless passenger watchdog, and be stripped of its independent decision-making powers as to who has access to the track and what charges they pay? These decisions will be made by Great British Railways, an interested party. Is this not regulatory vandalism on the railways?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord has a point of view, but I do not agree with it. Currently, the ORR is independent. In the future, the Government’s proposals will leave it independent. It will have a slightly different role in respect of access; it will be an appeal body. Fundamentally, somebody has to be in charge of the railway and somebody has to be in charge of the timetable. He will know, because we have discussed it here before, that it is mad that a Government Minister in the end has to decide to implement a railway timetable because nobody in the railway itself has the authority to do so. He is also wrong about describing the new arrangements for passengers. In due course he will see that the passenger standards authority will have real teeth and will represent passengers’ interests.