Railways Bill

Jen Craft Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 10th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Steve Witherden]

The hon. Member serves a similarly large and rural constituency to mine. Getting stations open in such areas is incredibly important, and I urge him to work closely with community groups, as I am sure he is already doing, so that what I am trying to do in mid and north Wales might also be done in Cornwall.

Great British Railways presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebuild our railways and create a service that works for the public good rather than for private profit. Workers must not be sidelined; jobs, pensions and trade union rights must be protected; and passengers must see genuine improvements in affordability and reliability.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

This Bill represents a once-in-a-generation chance to create a simpler, more effective and more accountable railway. I am pleased that c2c, which serves my constituents in Thurrock, was one of the first operators to come under public ownership. I look forward to the reversal of 30 years of privatisation, which have seen fragmentation, outsourcing and a dangerous lack of investment in infrastructure. Nationalisation and the establishment of Great British Railways will allow us to protect the long-term future of our railways, putting passengers first, not profit.

When we commit to putting passengers first, however, that must mean all passengers. That is why I strongly support amendments 70 and 71, proposed by the Chair of the Transport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury). Last year, the Transport Committee released a worrying report on access to public transport by disabled people. The Committee estimated that more than one third of disabled people were regularly avoiding travel because they believed it would be too complicated, too unsafe, or things would be too likely to go wrong.

The amendments would require a commitment from Great British Railways and a proposed passenger council not simply to consider the interests of disabled users, but to carry out their responsibilities in a way that actively promotes their interests. Accessibility must not be viewed through the same lens as customer service, where minor delays or engineering faults are considered irritating but, unfortunately, normal. Accessibility failures should be incredible rare, and failures to meet standards should be regarded as a serious infraction of people’s rights.

[Melanie Ward]

My hon. Friend is making some important points about railway accessibility, which is also an issue for my constituents, particularly at the railway stations in Burntisland, Cowdenbeath and Kinghorn. That is why I added my name to new clause 23, which would have introduced a strategy to ensure full railway accessibility across the country within the next 10 years. We have been waiting far too long for our railways to be accessible. We need action now.

[Jen Craft]

I completely agree. We have waited since the inception of the railways for them to be accessible. As anyone who, like me, is a bit of a rail geek and enjoys a trip on a stream train of a weekend will know, railways in the past were not designed with access for all in mind, and we can and must do better.

If a train station lift breaks overnight, wheelchair users who travel regularly on the train might find themselves in a position where they are unable to travel to work or school, visit family or get to their local hospital. That is not inconvenient; it is unacceptable. The lifts are currently out of service at Tilbury in my constituency, and the solution that is being offered is for people to travel on to the next stop, change trains, go round and come back. It is completely and utterly unacceptable. This sentiment is not reflected in the way we currently talk or think about service provision for disabled people. We urgently need a change of mindset, recognising that accessibility is a non-negotiable matter—it is the bare minimum.

At my local station in Grays, we have been waiting for operational lifts for years. Although c2c received a grant under the Access for All scheme, the lifts have been a categorical failure. As the fourth most used station in the east of England and a busy transport hub, it should have the proper infrastructure. The lifts were initially promised for late 2024, but they were not delivered until August 2025. They did not work—in fact, they have never worked. They frequently break down. Now, due to quite a lot of persistence from me, they are finally being torn out and replaced.

This has had a significant impact on my disabled constituents. One woman told me that she was trapped in a lift for 35 minutes and had to be removed by firefighters, while another told me that her husband is reluctant to use the station because he has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and struggles with stairs. It is just such a shame that these brand-new lifts, which were promised under an access scheme, are out of order so very often.

I am very pleased that the Bill will bring Network Rail, which is responsible for providing, servicing and now replacing these lifts, into Great British Railways. It is absolutely right that the organisation becomes part of a unified, publicly owned body that is accountable to all the passengers who rely on it. I am hopeful that this added accountability will help to foster genuine progress on accessibility.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I wonder whether I could give the hon. Lady an update from my own constituency. A year on from South Western Railway’s nationalisation, its performance metrics continue to fall. My constituents commuting to Portsmouth or Fareham can expect that one in every three journeys will be late. It is not a good sign for the Government’s nationalisation plans, especially as GBR is now marking its own homework. The trains are dirty and overcrowded, and passengers are lucky if they can find wi-fi that works. That is the lesson we have learned from the Government’s nationalisation so far.

[Jen Craft]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I find that quite unusual, as, having travelled on privatised trains for a number of years, I am very familiar with dirty, unreliable trains, and GBR will finally unite rail and the networks to enable them to turn those things around, ensuring a rail network that delivers for all who use it and puts people over profit, which is absolutely fantastic.

It is absolutely crucial that there is added accountability in a rail service. If amendments 70 and 71 are given proper consideration, we could really see a turning point in how disabled people who regularly use the rail network are viewed. We have to consistently get the basics right. We need lifts that work, ramps with railings and staff on hand to help people on and off the trains. We also need these things to be reliably available.

With Great British Railways, we also have the potential to use the power of procurement to ensure that trains are fully designed to meet the needs of all passengers, instead of being designed around one bloke with a briefcase travelling to and from the office, as they were in the past. In the modern world, so many different people use the train, and we have an opportunity to have a rail network that services all who use it.

With Great British Railways, we have the opportunity to go further still by being more innovative and forward thinking in our efforts to support disabled passengers. I would like to shout out Railscape, a business operating locally to me, which has been developing an interactive model that allows neurodiverse people in particular to look around the station ahead of time. When neurodiverse people are looking at getting into the workforce and travelling to work, a huge barrier is anxiety over how to navigate a rail station—where the ticket barriers are, where to buy a ticket and so on—and this model allows them to plan ahead of their visit and see where they are going. I hope that this is the sort of work that Great British Railways will encourage and incorporate, as it is a fantastic example of how important it is to actively promote the interests of disabled people.