Railways Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)]

I speak in my capacity as a constituency Member and also as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on rail, which submitted a response to the Secretary of State on the changes she is bringing forward.

Will the proposals deliver improved rail freight and passenger services in my constituency and, indeed, across the network? There are lots of “buts”. Restructuring any industry can cause confusion and increase costs, and the billions invested by private companies will now disappear and have to be made up by the taxpayer. If we look back to the years before privatisation, when for much of the time the industry was in decline and desperate for additional resources, we see a vision of the future.

If the Government are to achieve one of their key aims of economic growth, improved transport infrastructure and a rail network that provides for the needs of the freight sector must be a priority. Ministers will have noted that the Rail Freight Group has suggested that the rail freight growth target of 75% by 2050 be put into law and that discounts to encourage use of spare capacity be introduced. Clause 17 of the Bill states that the Secretary of State must set a target and keep it under review. Setting targets is easy; delivering is much more challenging. Businesses in my constituency stress the urgent need for a new east-west freight corridor, and I would like to hear the Minister’s response to that when he sums up.

Rail freight is important, of course, but equally important is passenger traffic. There is nothing more parochial than Transport question time, and now that the Minister is going to take on even more responsibility, that will become much more prevalent. In my constituency, I have been pressing for a direct rail service to be restored between Grimsby and Cleethorpes and King’s Cross since 2011. British Rail withdrew the service in 1992. Local industry and passenger groups are pushing for it. There have been endless possibilities. Grand Central put forward an application to the rail regulator in 2015, which would have been accepted had it stood alone, but it was linked to extending services into North Yorkshire, and that would have taken revenue away from what was then the main franchise holder.

We desperately need the service. It will link Habrough and Barnetby stations in my constituency, which serve both Humberside airport and the port of Immingham, and it will then pass through the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) at Market Rasen.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

A direct train to London on this line is vital. Grimsby and Cleethorpes form a huge conurbation—probably much the biggest conurbation in the country not to be served by a direct train to London. We have been campaigning for this for so long, and I call on the Minister to just get moving with it. We do not need the Bill: we need action on a direct train from Grimsby and Cleethorpes, through Market Rasen and Lincoln, to London, in order to revive the whole area.

[Martin Vickers]

I thank the Father of the House for that intervention. LNER operates five or six services to Lincoln, and it would be easy to extend those services the extra 30-odd miles to Grimsby and Cleethorpes. There is also the possibility of an open-access operator. Indeed, Grand Central Rail has made another application to provide a service from Cleethorpes through Scunthorpe and Doncaster to King’s Cross. However, judging by recent decisions, the open-access operators have cause for concern, as do those of us who want to see other lines improve as a result of competition. There is no doubt that the east coast main line has greatly benefited from competition, as was mentioned earlier, from Hull Trains and Grand Central Rail. They provide services to provincial towns that have been without a direct service for many years.

Returning to the demand from my own constituency, the Immingham area has two oil refineries, numerous power stations, petrochemical plants and logistics operations, and it is a vital hub for the renewable energy sector. The Minister must recognise that if we are to further develop the area, direct services to King’s Cross are a vital link. The proposals are supported by the Hull and Humber chamber of commerce and large businesses, such as Phillips 66. I can only urge the Minister to get on with it and to give it the okay. Under the new structure, he will be able to do that with just a signature; he should do so.

Railways Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 10th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew]

My right hon. Friend rightly says that the needs of disabled passengers such as his constituent, whom he so ably represents, are very important. That is one performance indicator that the Government should impose on GBR, but is it not ridiculous that we have to have Government action to impose KPIs on a railway? We should not be doing it this way.

Instead of giving GBR a clear purpose and direction and then supporting it to deliver, the Government are imposing nationalisation, which will bring with it, as we see in the Bill, an inevitable explosion of bureaucracy, civil service plans, targets, long-term strategies and civil service rights to give guidance and direction, all in the name of the Secretary of State. What will be the impact of this on GBR over time? Will it lead to the dynamic management that this structural reorganisation must have if it is to have a hope of working? Let history be our guide. I cannot think of a single example of a nationalised industry in any country, either now or in the past, that is or was a byword for management dynamism. Members should try it themselves—we cannot think of one, can we? If GBR needs dynamic management, how can nationalisation possibly be the answer?

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

On dynamic management, I thought the Bill was about putting community at the heart of things. My hon. Friend knows that, for years, I have been campaigning for a through train from Grimsby through Market Rasen into London. When Mark Harper was our Transport Secretary, we were on the verge of getting one—we actually had a trial run. Will my hon. Friend give me an assurance on behalf of the Conservative party that when he gets into power at the next election—and he will—he will reopen this whole issue and give Grimsby the direct service to London that it deserves?

[Jerome Mayhew]

The Father of the House is nailing me down to a cast-iron assurance at the Dispatch Box. I am not in a position to do that, but I fully expect to be in this role in a future Government and look forward to the opportunity to encourage open access to provide the through train that the right hon. Gentleman needs or for GBR to do so.

If GBR needs the dynamic management that we say it does, the Government are imposing for political reasons—very popular ones among their Back Benchers, as we have heard—a management system that has never worked in the past, but somehow it will be different this time. They have made their choice and we need to make the best of it. At the very least, this founding legislation should identify core key performance indicators which will survive the test of time in legislation. New clause 53 and amendment 158 provide them. They are detailed, but in essence, they focus on reliability, safety, comfort and on-board experience, affordability and value for money, passenger and network growth, financial sustainability and freight growth.

Until covid, privatisation undeniably brought a focus on ridership that had been missing previously under nationalisation. I accept that private businesses are not trying to be nice; they work to increase ridership because it brings in fare income, which creates profit. They are not directed to do so; the natural incentives work to solve the problem. The innovation of privatisation, fought tooth and nail at the time by Labour and the unions, was supported by passengers, who voted with their feet. British Rail oversaw the long-term decline in ridership from about 1 billion in 1950, reducing in a straight line to 750 million in 1992. Privatisation immediately reversed that 40-year trend of decline, growing back ridership not just to 1 billion but to 1.7 billion in 2019.

Under the Bill, GBR does not even have a passenger growth target. New clause 14 in my name would rectify that by requiring the Secretary of State to set GBR a passenger growth target and to keep it under review. How can the Government be against that? They have agreed to put one in for rail freight growth, but for some reason passengers are not listed in the Bill. Instead of these sensible, pro-growth and pro-passenger measures, we have clause after clause of political control, micromanagement of a nationalised structure, and unfettered rights of guidance and direction by the Secretary of State—by which we mean Department for Transport officials—over GBR at any time and for any reason, under clauses 7 and 9. It is a recipe for corporate paralysis where decisions are second-guessed by civil servants.

Amendments 150 and 151 limit at least the giving of guidance by Department for Transport officials to issues where GBR fails to meet a key performance indicator, and the giving of mandatory directions to serious issues where GBR has missed KPIs and the chief executive has been removed in consequence. I fear that over time, as the corporate memory of the train operating companies fades and with it their focus on the customer experience, this focus will be replaced by other incentives.

Heavily unionised workers of a nationalised industry well understand that the Government will now be politically exposed to industrial action as never before. It will be entirely rational for them—I do not blame them for doing so—to use this new bargaining power to increase pay and improve conditions, which sounds good, does it not? Why would they not do so? It does, however, increase costs and reduce productivity. Who benefits? Not the passenger or the taxpayer. Labour will be too weak to stand up for the taxpayer and for fare-paying passengers. Services will become more expensive, worse, less frequent—or all three—and we will be back to the rationing of resources as we see in every nationalised sector.