Railways Bill

Baroness Humphreys Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

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 Covid and the strikes. Its trains are newer, air conditioned and clean. The train managers keep passengers informed and are there to help if needed. I hope that there will be no further discussions about “managerless” trains on GBR. Their presence provides a sense of security, especially to female passengers. Many users of the west coast service hanker after the days of Virgin Rail and its two-hourly direct trains from Holyhead to Euston. Is it possible that this valuable service will be restored?

The most common cause of delays to journeys appears to be the perennial “signalling problems”. It is perhaps a cover-all excuse, but it points to a very real problem. Another of the Office of Rail and Road’s reports tells us that pockets of signalling systems from the 19th century remain active and that roughly half of the UK’s rail network relies on signalling infrastructure that is more than 30 years old: an age at which the infrastructure could be deemed to be obsolete. Running a modern-day Great British Railways on a signalling system which is 50% obsolete seems designed to fail, so what plans does the Minister have to upgrade the signalling system, and over what timescale?

As noble Lords will be aware, in Wales, responsibility for rail infrastructure is a reserved matter, with only responsibility for the rolling stock being devolved to the Welsh Government, which is responsible for the Wales & Borders passenger services that Transport for Wales operates as TfW Rail. It is a strange semi-devolution that is all the more bizarre when compared with Scotland, where the whole railway system is devolved.

There has been a history of underinvestment in Welsh rolling stock, with the Welsh Government having to take funding from other devolved areas to make up the shortfall. The boneshaker of a train that I travelled on from Chester to Llandudno Junction last Thursday was testament to this underinvestment. On the same day, services on the branch lines between Wrexham General and Chester and between Llandudno Junction and Blaenau Ffestiniog were reduced or cancelled as there were “more trains than usual needing repairs”—all symptoms of a system under stress. This Bill’s introduction of a long-term £14 billion investment plan for Wales is very welcome, particularly the approval of seven new railway stations, mainly in South Wales, to ease commuter pressure on the M4 corridor, and major infrastructure upgrades, including future plans to electrify the north Wales coast line.

The problem is that, beyond the £445 million committed to by this Bill, funding for future plans is not guaranteed. The rest of the programme is not legally mandated by this Bill and will remain entirely dependent on allocations in future UK Treasury spending reviews. The remaining £13.5 billion-plus is therefore currently unfunded.

We have been here before. Welsh railways have seen promises and disappointments over recent years. The Tories’ promise of the electrification of the north Wales line and the electrification of the Cardiff to Swansea line came to nothing, while the Tories’ cynical designation of HS2 as an England and Wales project, and this Labour Government’s equally cynical collusion with this and the subsequent outrageously cynical designation of the Oxford to Cambridge line as an England and Wales project have added insult to injury. This latter designation alone robbed Wales of some £360 million of consequential funding through the Barnett formula.

The investment plan is, in fact, the work of Transport for Wales. Its long-term master plan, Today, Tomorrow, Together, has been endorsed by the UK Government, which begs the question: if the plan has been created in Wales by Transport for Wales, why can it not be delivered in Wales by Welsh Ministers? The investment plan is underpinned by a memorandum of understanding between the UK and Welsh Governments and, of course, it maintains the current devolution settlement—instead of, as many people would wish, transferring full network ownership and funding powers to the Welsh Government. The MoU was signed by a Welsh Labour Transport Minister in the dying days of the last Welsh Labour Government, so, given Plaid Cymru’s commitment to the devolution of the rail network to Wales, what discussion has the Minister had with the new Administration about changes to the MoU?