Railways Bill

Debate between Jerome Mayhew and Graham Stuart

2nd reading
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew]

Let us wait to see if Labour actually nationalises it first; but the Conservatives are here to lead, not to follow.

There is plenty of evidence because we have tried the nationalisation experiment before. The railways were nationalised in 1948. [Interruption.] If Labour Members listen, they might learn something. When the railways were nationalised in 1948, there were a billion passenger journeys a year. Thereafter, the impact of nationalisation was immediate: year after year, fewer customers chose to use the trains; year after year, they voted with their feet because the service did not give them what they wanted and was not focused on them and their needs. There was low investment because the railways were competing with schools and hospitals, followed by poor industrial relations with an organisation more focused on itself than its customers—[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), says from a sedentary position that it was because there were more cars—let us just hold that in our minds.

By the 1990s, just 735 million passenger journeys were taking place a year, instead of a billion. In 1993, the system was privatised by the Conservative Government. The unions hated it, and Labour therefore hated it, too. However, every year, more and more passengers were attracted to use the trains—not just a few more, but vastly more. By 2019, 1.75 billion people were using the railways each year—and there were many more cars. Labour cannot explain it; it should not have happened, but it did.

If the purpose of the railway is to carry passengers, any rational observer must conclude that privatisation beat nationalisation hands down. Why? Profit is made only by attracting customers. Train operating companies focused on new and more trains, more services, innovative ticketing and customer service, and people voted with their feet.

The railways are a complex system where capacity is limited and costs are high. It is absolutely crucial to drive efficiency, maximise the scarce resources of track access and drive value for money with dynamic management. Can hon. Members think of a nationalised organisation that is a byword for management dynamism and efficiency anywhere, in any country at any time? I cannot either. If poor railway management is the problem, nationalisation cannot be the solution. Why is it that socialists and the fag packet party are such bad learners?

[Graham Stuart]

The Minister responding to this debate represents Selby. One of the great successes of the open system has been Hull Trains, which provides a fantastic service from Hull, through Selby, down to London, and then back again. Does my hon. Friend worry, as I do, that open services such as Hull Trains will be crushed by Great British Railways and the Minister, despite whatever he may say?

[Jerome Mayhew]

My right hon. Friend is right. If Members read the Bill properly, they will see that it spells the death knell for open access.

It is true that the last few years have exposed serious weaknesses in the train franchise model. The separation of track and train created perverse incentives—I accept that. Too often a lack of effective competitive tension allowed there to be poor services. Changes to the DFT contract meant that franchises were encouraged to overbid, leaving them financially vulnerable to any downturn. This Bill was the golden opportunity to address those issues, but the Government have messed it up. Instead of keeping the best and fixing the rest, we have a damaging return to 1970s state control, with 1970s industrial action likely to follow.

The Government are already finding out that money does not grow on trees, that merely saying that they are in favour of growth does not make it happen, and that funds from hard-pressed taxpayers are not limitless. Their plan replaces private investment with taxpayers’ money, drawn away from schools and hospitals and Labour’s ever-growing welfare bill. Their plan replaces railway management teams with civil servants, increasingly micromanaging operations, who will have powers to direct GBR across all its functions.

Then there is that trademark socialist arrogance: gone is the independent economic regulator, for the gentleman from Whitehall knows best. GBR will mark its own homework, save for a toothless passenger council that has no enforcement powers. It will not just mark its own homework but decide whether to allow any competition against itself. It will decide how much to charge its competitors, limited only by how much it thinks they will be able to pay. GBR, on the other hand, will pay no charge at all. The right of appeal is not to be allowed on the merits of a decision, only on the grounds of procedural irregularity.

The Bill marks the end of competition on the GBR rail network, and it is such a shame. This could have been transformational. It could have solved the tensions between the operation of track and train. It could have refined concession and franchised contracts, removing the micromanagement of DFT officials. It could have solved the stop-start funding approach by National Rail and its dysfunctional control periods. It could have focused relentlessly on benefits to passengers and the taxpayer.

Instead, we are seeing a Government floundering at 14% in the polls, whose Back Benchers are in open revolt against their own leader, and whose union paymaster, Unite, is discussing disaffiliation in the press. This is a Government desperate to shore up their fading support. They are sacrificing the future of our railways on the altar of left-wing ideology. We heard speech after speech from Labour Members demonising profit as a motive for economic activity. Do they have any idea how the productive economy works? Ideology before practicality, state direction before dynamic management, and union demands before passenger demand—no, no, no.

I ask colleagues to support the reasoned amendment in my name and help put this bad Bill in the bin.

Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Debate between Jerome Mayhew and Graham Stuart

Committee of the whole House
Monday 20th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

We are all wrestling with the question “Why?” As my hon. Friend has said, the Government’s position was clear in 2017: namely, that the ICJ had no power over a deal we made with a Commonwealth member. Perhaps this Prime Minister has, without telling us, reversed that in some way, and the Government have decided that this should be subject to the ICJ, in which case the Minister would have a point, but should we not know that we made ourselves subject to the ICJ when previously we were not? What other answers are there?

[Jerome Mayhew]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to ask those questions—questions that have been asked of the Government time and again throughout this legislative process, but to which we simply have not had an answer.

The Government seem to be blind to the risk of the craven withdrawal of influence from the Indo-Pacific region. This is more Jonathan Powell. He was, of course, the Prime Minister’s envoy, and the architect of the negotiation and the deal. The more I learn of Jonathan Powell, the more I realise that he seems to have a long-term instinct to downplay the threat from China—a threat in the Indian Ocean through this negotiated deal. Let us not forget that this is the same Jonathan Powell who now wears a different hat. He is now the National Security Adviser, and that, very unusually, was a political appointment. There is the question of his involvement—or perhaps it is not his involvement— in the collapse of the Chinese spying case. We are asked to believe that he was not involved in it, and that seems baffling as well.

Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jerome Mayhew and Graham Stuart

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

I will press on a little, but I may come back to the hon. Lady.

I understand that, following the loveless landslide that brought the Government to power, the Government, and Government Members, have done an about-face. They now delight in more powers for the Executive, so much so that the Bill’s very first subsection gives the same Secretary of State I just referenced the power to make regulations anywhere in the UK, without consulting Parliaments in Westminster, Holyrood, Cardiff Bay or Stormont, on more or less anything he likes.

I was so pleased that the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim raised the devolution question. I was a Minister for eight years, and such is the complexity of the devolution settlement now that even with thousands of civil servants working on primary legislation, Ministers can come to the House and suddenly it gets pointed out to them that they are in breach of the Sewel convention and ignoring how Northern Ireland has a slightly different environmental or energy regulatory environment from Scotland or Wales. They find that the situation is more complex than they first thought. Now, we are giving powers to Ministers who will not have to go through any of that rigmarole. They will not get to find out how they are trampling on the devolution settlement, and that is a serious issue.

We on the Opposition Benches can make the arguments, but what we must really do is engage Government Members and get them to recognise that they are not here just to back the Government. They need to question these things, and not just ask whether the powers could be used for good. The hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield gave a brilliant speech with examples of the speeding up and pace of technological change—I think he spoke about the drones in Ukraine. Even though Opposition Members may maintain that the system that we had worked perfectly well, he made the case that perhaps we need something speedier going forward, and I can see that he made a strong argument. None the less, is the answer just to hand to Ministers, in this skeleton Bill, all the powers in the world? I suggest that it is not.

I know the Minister and the Secretary of State are decent people, and I hope that we will see, as the legislation proceeds through this House, ways to curb some of the powers while allowing us to have a regulatory system that can speedily respond to inappropriate products. None of us wants to see parliamentary pride getting in the way of an effective system; we have to find a way of making things work. This Bill, however, goes too far the other way. That is why the cross-party experts on the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee have looked at it and said that they do not feel that the case has been made to justify such massive powers.

Some parallels were raised by the hon. Member for Walthamstow, and I think it is fair enough to say, “Look at the way that Henry VIII powers and delegated powers were taken by the Government in the last Parliament.” Quite rightly, people questioned it, but that was about implementing Brexit; it really was something enormous that had to be done at a reasonable speed. Those of us involved were cognisant of the fact that we did not want it to set a precedent; we did not want Government to take the unique conditions of implementing Brexit and take it as a new way of governing. To the comment from the hon. Member for Erewash about rebuilding the world that the ancient Egyptians had, they were very good at centralising authority and I do not think that that is an entirely good thing. That is exactly what the Bill does, so I agree with him on that.

I am sure the Secretary of State is an excellent judge of things such as the safe operation of a laptop, say, for a trainee solicitor, but he will now have the power to regulate any product for sale in the UK on the basis of safety or functionality. The immense power given to him will allow him to decide what is and is not sold in the UK, without consulting this place and by merely providing a written statement. The Bill goes further, with Ministers acquiring the power to give inspectors the right to enter somebody’s home to seize any product that the Minister has decided, on the basis of non-compliance. That can be imposed on manufacturers, marketers, installers, importers or people who run an online marketplace, the definition of which, by the way, can be altered on a ministerial whim and at any point.

We have heard about dangerous and often unpopular electric bikes and scooters, but the powers in the Bill allow a future Secretary of State—we have had some eccentric ones in the past—to decide to ban bicycles because he considers them to be dangerous. He might look at the figures on that. After publishing a statement, he could instruct anyone he likes to enter the house of every bike owner and every bike shop to seize every bike in the United Kingdom. The Secretary of State could effectively end cycling in the UK without coming to Parliament. He could create legions of cycle inspectors who could enter people’s homes or businesses and seize their property before disposing of it. And the Government want to hide this act under the innocuous name of the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. It is a massive power to give to the Secretary of State.

I say this to the many new Labour Members: I am not very keen on any Government, even the one of which I was a member. It was Lord Acton who said:

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Well, there is an element of absolute power in this Bill, but we have an opportunity both to recognise the powerful case made by the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield for an appropriate system and by his colleagues talking about different challenges, and to make sure that we limit and reduce those powers as the Bill goes through the House. I know that my cycle example is a little extreme, but it is also true. It would not require the Government to return to this House; they would be able to do it.

The Prime Minister has told us that the No. 1 mission of this Government is growth, yet his Ministers, not satisfied with taking the fastest growing economy in the entire G7 and bringing it to a shuddering halt, have introduced what may be the most tediously named but potentially dangerous Bill in the history of Parliament. We can look at what the Government have done for business so far. They have ended the rate relief for hospitality, made part-time workers too expensive to hire, hiked the cost of employing people through next week’s jobs tax, strengthened the trade unions and made it impossible to fire new workers. I would not want to exaggerate this Bill’s role, but in a crowded field, it takes the biscuit in many ways. Businesses are struggling to cope with all these things already, and now we will have greater business uncertainty caused by the fact that Ministers can, on a whim, choose which products can and cannot be sold. This will provide the exact opposite of the certainty that Labour Members suggested the Bill could bring, in a way that has no logic behind it.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Every single one of the measures in that infamous list that my right hon. Friend just went through required a vote in this House, and Labour Members had to put their name to each proposed legislative change. They will not have to do that under this legislation, will they?

[Graham Stuart]

They will not. The Secretary of State—not the current wonderful, benign, insightful and genial Secretary of State, but a future rather less palatable one—could wake up one day and impose new regulations on business that effectively strangle and bring red tape to every business in the land. Remember how close we were in 2017 to having a Government that would have been very different from the one that is opposite us today, or indeed from the Conservatives.

Why are the Government doing this? I cannot look into a man’s soul, but I have an idea, because Labour spent years fighting the UK’s attempts to remove the burden of regulation on business after we left the EU. At every turn, Labour tried to cling to nurse rather than let businesses innovate and sell their goods. This Government are seeking to undermine and erode the freedoms we have won over the last few years. Indeed, that is in black and white in the Bill. The Secretary of State may reimpose EU law on products without the requirement to come to this place and ask our permission to do so.

I am not saying that this is the worst thing the Government have done. As I have said, there is quite a packed list, including cutting the winter fuel payment for pensioners, the farm tax, the jobs tax, imposing stamp duty on first-time buyers, which comes in, I think, today—[Interruption.] Suddenly someone wants to buy a house. There is also the hospitality tax. I could go on, but executive powers are at their most pernicious when they have no limits. This legislation is not about metrology or about the better regulation of products; it is about giving the Government the power to do what they like, when they like, for reasons they do not have to explain, and then impose it as they see fit. The fact that we might like, and even trust, the current Secretary of State is no reason to give powers like this to Ministers about whom we know nothing now. I hope that Labour Members will join us in opposing this Bill.