Railways Bill

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Graham Stuart

Report stage
Wednesday 10th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander]

My hon. Friend has been a dogged campaigner on the railways for her constituents in Hastings and Rye. I believe her proposals are worthy of consideration by Southeastern, a company in public ownership. I would be happy to pursue that further on her behalf.

GBR will sweep away decades of inefficiency and waste. We will finally bear down on spiralling costs. We will wave goodbye to a system riddled with perverse incentives, in which armies of lawyers argue over whose fault a delay is. Instead, GBR will be a publicly owned and commercially agile company run by industry experts, not politicians. We will turn a web of competing interests into one railway that makes decisions in customers’ interest and their interest alone.

[Graham Stuart]

I speak to the staff on Hull Trains, which are used by the Secretary of State’s ministerial colleagues—to her left, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), and to her right, the hon. Member for Selby (Keir Mather). I speak to the customers of Hull Trains and I see the huge economic benefit that Hull Trains, an open access operator, has brought to our region and all the other areas it serves down to London. They are fearful of the perverse incentives of a GBR that does not necessarily have any regard for open access operators. What is there in the Bill to protect Hull Trains when it seeks access to rail track in future?

[Heidi Alexander]

I have always been clear that there is a role for open access operators on our network where they provide value for money.

If I may now turn to passengers, I am not ashamed of the fact that GBR will be obsessed with delivering for its customers. In fact, it will have a statutory duty to promote their interests. That starts with ticketing, which is currently a mind-bendingly complex system. I have said it before and I will say it again: buying a ticket should be effortless. Fares should be simple and consistent, and passengers should know they are always getting the best value—and under GBR, they will.

A new ticketing app and website will give passengers the ability to buy tickets, check train times and access a range of support all from the palm of their hands—no booking fees, no navigating lots of websites; just a 21^st-century way of paying for a service. If passengers are let down, if accessibility falls short or if performance is not up to scratch, they will have a powerful champion fighting their corner: a strengthened passenger watchdog.