Railways Bill

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this Second Reading debate. In doing so, I declare my technology interests as an adviser variously to the Crown Estate and to Simmons & Simmons LLP.

Like other noble Lords, my thoughts are with all those who were affected on 7/7. I remember that day so clearly. It was less than 24 hours after we had won the right to stage the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In that 24-hour period we saw the best of humanity in the bid, we saw the worst of humanity in those terrorist atrocities, and, instantaneously, we saw the best of humanity in all the first responders and members of the public, who ran towards danger to help all those affected on the transport network and beyond.

I congratulate the Minister on the way in which he introduced this Second Reading debate. I would introduce a slight note of discord into our Second Reading proceedings, in that I hope the Minister does not keep his job when the new Prime Minister comes in, because his experience, expertise and enthusiasm for transport need to be recognised. I hope he can come back to your Lordships’ House as Secretary of State for Transport—I know he shares that political ambition.

I was delighted to listen to the valedictory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton. I had the good fortune to work with him many years ago when he was doing excellent work on inclusion and accessibility as Cabinet Secretary. It was an honour and a pleasure to work with him, though, having heard some of the other contributions in this debate this afternoon, I feel somewhat slighted that at no point did he ever try to shove into my hand a bound copy of Hansard—again demonstrating his wisdom, in that he obviously understood it would have been of absolutely no use to me whatever.

We are in the midst of a transport legislation movie. We have had the civil aviation Bill, we are now on the Railways Bill, and later down the track we have a roads Bill. It really is “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”. In my Second Reading contribution, I would like to consider that we are also in the midst of an AI revolution. Rail was the white heat technology of its time, and there are lessons we can learn from the revolution in rail, for both rail and the Bill, and for our approach to artificial intelligence.

Be in no doubt that rail was extraordinary. Steam literally changed time. What did we learn about safety and security? Brunel’s brilliant bells and whistles system is, in reality, still an extraordinarily effective way to do signalling. As for how we need to communicate the benefits and possibilities of rail, at the time when rail emerged it was often thought that you would get mortally injured and probably not reach the end of your journey on these horror machines from hell. What did Brunel do? He did not build stations but built cathedrals to the railway, at London Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads. What an extraordinary demonstration of the innovation of technology from both Brunel and the extraordinary Daniel Gooch.

That innovation needs to be brought right up to date with our approach to the railways and to artificial intelligence. What we saw with rail is that, when you have such innovation and you connect it through communicating it to the public, a glamour emerges. Look at how we were nostalgic about the railway so early in its operation. The Railway Children was published in 1905, and later we had Auden’s “Night Mail”, “crossing the Border”, and Philip Larkin coming down late one term from Cambridge in a button-studded leather carriage, witnessing all of those wonderful “Whitsun Weddings”.

Why do we have this glamour around rail and its technology and innovation? Because it is a human-connecting, social experience. It does not just connect us geographically; it connects us socially. That is what Richard Branson fundamentally understood when he took over the franchise, which I had the great pleasure to discuss with him many years ago. He understood that he could not control the track, the signals or the stations, but, for everything he could control and for the staff he trained, he understood that it was about service and the passenger experience.

I suggest that the golden thread to run through the Bill should be passenger experience and how we deliver, from the first touchpoint of considering buying a ticket, that end-to-end service. If you get passenger experience right, you will get accessibility right, because accessibility is just delivering excellence in passenger experience and service. As we have already heard, not least from my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, we are some way off that, which cannot continue. How accessible and inclusive a service is—in this case, the railways—is as good a measure as any of success.

The growth agenda of this Government is critical. Rail can deliver on that. That is also tied to access. The Government have a desire to get more disabled people into work, but it is quite right for a disabled person to ask how they are to get a job when they cannot even get on to a train. How enabling and empowering rail could be. The Bill needs to speak far more to that.

I move beyond passengers, to freight. What has happened to all of the work around digital rail? Where are all the principles from that project? The ambition then was for a 40% increase in freight through digitising the signals. That would be transformational for rail and for our economy. There is so much work being done with autonomous vehicles at the moment, to have a truck that can lead a convoy of 20, 30, 40 or 50 trucks. That sounds very much to me like a train. We need to get freight back on to the rails. It is more effective, more efficient and more able to drive economic activity.

Finally, I ask the Minister about an anomaly. He quite correctly suggests that we have track and train connected, which makes sense from an integration perspective. But what happens in a situation, particularly in London, where we have shared track use between London Underground and rail? It is often the case that, in such instances, things fall between the cracks. Who is responsible when a signal goes down? Does it get fixed in hours or, as is often the case, days? That cannot be acceptable. What does the Bill do to deliver on that currently anomalous situation?

Rail matters, thus the Bill matters extraordinarily. Rail enables us to get about and to get on. Will the Bill succeed? As any prophet has to say to any sceptic, time will tell. There is plenty for us to discuss in Committee across all of these issues. At this stage, perhaps it can be seen as probably the greatest real-time experiment in “railpolitik”.

Railways Bill

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in day one of Committee. I declare my technology interests, as set out in the register, as adviser to the Crown Estate and Simmons and Simmons LLP and as non-executive director of Avalanche Foundation and Avalanche BVI Inc.

What a group to be part of. For anybody who thought that competition is not a good idea, the arrival of a second ex-Secretary of State for Transport has demonstrated clearly that competition is the way forward, as I am sure we will see in a moment when I sit down. Fundamentally, what is there left for me to say after my noble friend Lady Harding’s forensic introduction, which took apart all of the reasons for the current construction of these sections in the Bill, followed by my noble friend Lord Young’s intervention?

In many ways, my noble friend Lord Young inadvertently, but highly accurately, summed this up when he said “harm” rather than “arm”, because that is where we are at. He looked forward into the future and into, as he said, how this may develop, but I would go further. There is no crystal ball gazing going on here. This is not a potential, as he set out. This is an inevitability; this will happen.

How can we know this will happen? Because it has already happened in other departments in very recent history. We do not need to go into the details but, last year, there was a case in point where, when the growth pressure came along, a particular government department saw a piece of work it was involved in where, for years, it had worked collaboratively with the private sector to build particular solutions, but then it saw that there was a potential wedge that it could throw into the pot to put into its departmental contribution. Suddenly, a screeching change of direction was taken and a monopoly play was deployed. This is inevitable if we progress with the Bill as currently constructed.

What is the Minister’s response? The CMA knows competition—it does it every day—and its submission was conclusive. Why would the Government want to construct something so clearly and monstrously problematic at this stage, which will only cause them pain within such a short space of time, when it is so avoidable, either through functional separation, as I suggested, or through the eminently sensible alternatives offered by my noble friends? Why would the Government choose such a problematic path forward at this stage, when it is more than reasonably foreseeable that the problems will come? In fact, as I said, it is inevitable.

Competition is absolutely critical, and the other element within competition is innovation. This will not lead to optimal innovation. Let us imagine not just the potential plurality of ticket retail sellers but the kind of products that they could bring on stream. We could see tokenised tickets that could transform the passenger experience; they could contain so many details that there would not be a need for passengers to explain, for example, their needs, whatever they may be. They would all be contained in a tokenised ticket. That would be truly transformational, but it would require a level playing field, a crowding in of competition and, through that, a crowding in of innovation.

I move on to my second amendment, going broader and looking at the huge array of data already available to GBR. We have always had a huge volume of data across transport, not least in the railways, and it has never had the opportunity to truly drive the transformation that it could. We have talked tickets, but take the example of the rolling stock itself: imagine what innovation third-party, crowded-in businesses could bring if they had those data at their fingertips. The great news is that neither GBR nor this Committee has to imagine what that innovation could be; all that has to be done is to put those data out there on a level playing field, equally available through the technologies that exist. The innovation, transformation and improvement would simply flow.

For reasons of competition, innovation and taking all the advantage of these new technologies, I constantly mention the problematic nature of the Government flatly refusing to pass a cross-sector and cross-economy AI regulation Bill. We see it here and in the cyber Bill, for those who have been in Committee on that Bill. That could lay out a framework that could work in this rail context as it would in all other sections of our economy and society. If that will not be in place, how will the advantages of these technologies be felt by passengers, rail workers and everybody involved in the GBR entity coming into being? We need to see these changes if we are to feel, and be availed of, that transformational potential and the economic benefits that will flow. The Government would benefit from adopting changes set out in this suite of amendments. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate and I fully support comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, from her experience in telecom. I have suffered a bit myself from them, and what she told the Committee is no surprise.

The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, is also absolutely right that we need a level playing field. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, probably hit the nail on the head when he said that the sooner we do this, the better, so I definitely support his Amendment 48.

It is worth reminding ourselves that there is not just one big private sector retailer and all the ones that retail for the TOCs at the moment, but there are lots of smaller ones as well. The ORR will have to look at making sure that the fair competition between the big ones and the little ones is kept in line with competition policy and that we do not have one of them running away with everything else. It would be no good having one private sector company becoming a private sector monopoly—you might as well have a GBR monopoly—but we do not want monopolies. That is my message.

One noble Lord who spoke was concerned about the workload that may be coming to the ORR. I have had many experiences with the ORR over the years and it tries very hard, but it needs to be prepared for an extension to its scope. However, one thing I know is that it is capable of doing it and will be interested in doing it. I am sure many noble Lords have talked to it in the last few months. I think the ORR is also quite relaxed about the involvement of the CMA, because the CMA needs to be there as well, possibly as a second line of defence. It will just not work unless the level playing fields are separated from the great work that GBR will do in running trains and making sure the infrastructure works and things like that. Having a separation, including the accounts, as some noble Lords have said, is really important. I hope my noble friend will come back with some positive views on competition, and we maybe will even have to have a meeting or two before Report.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group, but I will not speak to them because right at the outset my noble friend Lady Harding said that there were quite a lot of amendments in this group which offered different means of achieving the same thing, and it was hard to say which were the better ones. I am not claiming that mine are better than others, and I think my noble friend Lord Harper said something along the same lines. We have put them down because we feel strongly about a very important issue, we want it debated, we want the Government to take note and to do something about it before we get to Report. Whether they do what my amendment or somebody else’s amendment says is something we might have a chance to debate and discuss privately before we get to that point—I do not know—but I am not wedded to my particular solutions and therefore will not speak directly to them.

I will say that we on our side support everything that has been said, in that we are curious about why GBR is doing this. I will come back to this point; I will make the Minister’s case for him in a moment, rather against my own interests. We are curious as to why the Minister wants to do this in the first place but, if he is going to do it, there has to be a level playing field for those who are already in the field and other new entrants, because they have demonstrated the advantages they can bring to passengers. The difficulty here—it will arise in the next group—is that GBR is effectively a huge bear sitting in your front room. That bear is both a competitor and a regulator, and its slightest twitch, even unintentionally, could do serious damage to your business. There are a lot of private sector businesses, not just in ticket retailing but those who want to have access to freight and for other purposes, which we will come to later—open access and so forth —which are very worried about what is being created.

The only assurance we are getting from the Minister is essentially, “We are decent professional people; we will do this well”. That is fine. The noble Lord is a decent and professional person. Having worked with him for many years, I am happy if it is of any value to him to give him that endorsement. However, he lacks the quality of immortality. It is necessary to give at least 30 years’ guarantee, if this is going to be the legislative background for 30 years.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

He could do that.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

He may do that. He lacks the ability in himself to give us the level of assurance that we and various aspects of the industry—not just retail—want.

I am grateful to the noble Lord for having held a meeting, which was open to all interested Peers, last week. I will say something that I raised then. I have to say that I had to slip out briefly during my noble friend Lord Holmes’s speech. He may have said something along these lines. I know he spoke about data.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

It was very good.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

It was a very good speech that I will read several times in Hansard before tomorrow is out. I just wanted to address what I would do if I were in the Minister’s position—and he and I have been in a similar position together when we were responsible for Transport for London. One of the interests you have as a business in operation is that you want the direct contact with your customers. You want direct customer contact, partly because you want the data. The noble Lord has said this—we have had some conversations, both privately and in that meeting. You want their data. This is perfectly obvious.

In my pocket now, I have a Nectar card and a BP card. I am carrying these things around, not really for my benefit but for the benefit of the companies, which want lots of data and information about me. GBR will be in no different position. Therefore, in one sense, it wants to be, like TfL, a monopoly supplier of its own tickets. The temptation to be a monopoly supplier of its own tickets will be huge, quite apart from any pressure that might come from the Treasury or anywhere else, because it wants that data.

Yet the position of the noble Lord seems to me slightly incoherent. He could step forth boldly and say, “We want that data. We need to be a monopoly supplier, and all these private companies, whatever they do, have to go, because they are getting in the way of what we want. You cannot buy your groceries from Sainsbury’s through a third-party retailer—you can only buy them from Sainsbury’s”. He could say that. That would be a coherent position, although not a politically very easy one in current circumstances, I have to say. Or he could say that he is happy to have a large amount of competition, which is what he seems to be saying.

I can be corrected if I am wrong—I have heard this figure without absolute certainty in it—but I understand that close to 90% of tickets are currently sold by third-party retailers on the railways, so when the noble Lord starts, he will be starting from a very low base. To get any useful data at all on his customers, he will have to build up a huge customer base from a very low start. Is that his intention? Does he regard that as a business goal, and if so, what does it say about his strategy for dealing with the private sector?

I do not know what the answers to these questions are. It is difficult. It is right to look at this, as noble Lords have, from the point of view of the benefits of the customer. However, it is also worth thinking about the commercial imperatives that GBR will have and whether it should be allowed to pursue those commercial imperatives, or whether it should be constrained in order to benefit a competitive field.

Railways Bill

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 63A I will speak to other amendments in my name in this group.

Before I start, I express my gratitude to the Minister, not only for the very fine cushion he has provided me with for the course of Committee today, to match his own, but for the meeting he gave me yesterday, in which we discussed the general functions of Great British Railways, a subject that came up on the first day in Committee, when the noble Lord offered that meeting. I discovered in that meeting that the question of GBR’s functions is a great deal more complicated in the noble Lord’s mind even than we discovered when we debated it here. I discovered that there are functions of GBR that are not functions, and that some activities of GBR are subject to the Secretary of State’s direction while others are not. I cannot force the noble Lord, and I would not want to, but I wondered whether he wishes to take, at some point—not necessarily today—an opportunity to introduce into our debates in Committee a reprise to some extent of what was debated rather messily on the first day. We would then have his whole view of the question set to music, so that we can all understand it. I leave that thought for the noble Lord to take up if he wishes.

In this group, I will start with Amendments 63A, 91A and 116A, all of which are related to innovation. It is only a few years ago that people in the industry were debating what a digital railway would look like—what would that expression mean? Everything was very forward looking. But I look in this Bill, which is about the future of the railways, and I find nothing at all about innovation. I find no obligations on the part of Great British Railways to innovate, no policies directed towards innovation, no mandate on the Secretary of State to include innovation in the long-term rail strategy, and so forth. That is missing.

I do not want to be too difficult about this, but it is part of the general pattern of this Bill, which is very “back to the 1970s”—a theme of this Government under Mr Burnham. He has made that very clear. We could go back to the 1970s technologically as well, but I do not think that is the Government’s intention, although there is no intention here to make any progress. So these amendments, which I will not go into in detail, are tabled with a view to encouraging the noble Lord to make a statement about the Government’s intentions and how they might be reflected in the Bill in any changes he might bring forward later in Committee or on Report.

Amendments 330D and 330E have been put forward by techUK. It is anxious about the information and data gathered and generated by Great British Railways, and it wants to ensure that that data is in the public domain and is transparent. I hope the noble Lord will have no difficulty in accepting that principle—completely free and open access—because that, after all, is the policy he introduced for TfL data when he was commissioner. It led to an explosion in apps in the private sector, some of which turned out to be very useful to members of the public—some fell by the wayside, but that is the way of technological development—helping them find their buses, connect their trains to the buses, make the most intelligent choice of door to get on the Tube in order to make a quick exit, and so forth. All these things are done in the private sector, and they are possible only if the data is provided. So that commitment to completely open data, and its inclusion in the Bill, would be extremely helpful.

Amendment 330E, also suggested by techUK, is about smart data schemes in which rail planning and integrated ticketing are identified as candidate use cases. The rail data marketplace itself falls within scope of the work. This amendment is intended to ensure that the relationship between the two is resolved and reported and would commit the Government only to considering their own policies. Again, I hope that it would be easy for the Government to accept this amendment.

Finally, Amendment 89A is on a slightly distant subject—but that is the way our groupings often work—and is to do with steel. The Government have shot British industry in the foot by imposing tariffs on imported steel. That is the policy they have gone for. It is reminiscent of the 1970s, I might say, and would not have been possible, naturally, had we stayed in the European Union. It is a Brexit bonus, as far as the Government are concerned.

This amendment responds to the Government’s new steel trade measures, which came into force on 1 July this year. Those measures reduce the overall tariff-free steel import quota by 51% compared with the previous safeguard regime and impose a 50% tariff by value once the relevant quota is exhausted. In other words, there is much less tariff-free steel available to British industry, and the tariff on that which comes in is higher than it was before. All very bad news.

One of the Government’s central arguments for the creation of Great British Railways has always been that bringing the railway together would reduce costs. The Government say that their reforms on the railway will secure more than £1 billion in savings and efficiencies by the end of the decade. For the railway, the Government’s own document on the UK’s steel trade measure, from 1 July 2026, specifically identifies product category 19 as “railway material”. That is significant, because Network Rail has already contracted almost 450,000 tonnes—that is, European tonnes—of rail over the five years to 2000, including at least 78,000 tonnes from Germany and 8,500 tonnes from Austria. Network Rail has said that these European suppliers are important for specialist products and security of supply—of course they are. The issue here is where GBR needs imported railway steel to maintain, renew and improve the network. Should the taxpayer bear an additional 50% cost simply because the relevant quota has been exhausted?

The amendment would exempt steel imported specifically for GBR railway infrastructure from that additional tariff. It should therefore, and I imagine will, be welcome to the Minister and to everyone in the railways. I hope the Minister will explain why the taxpayer, who will be paying for GBR, will also have to pay higher costs due to a separate and distinct government policy. I hope he will explain that he is willing to take this opportunity to remove that difficulty. With that, I beg to move.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to make the first contribution from the cushion-less seats—perhaps that will change for me when we get to day 4 of Committee.

I congratulate the Minister on everything he did when he was in charge of TfL on innovation and the smart use of data. There is nothing smart about data in itself; it is the uses we put data to that make it smart. That is what is behind my two amendments and those to which my noble friend has eloquently spoken in this group. When the Minister was in charge of TfL, he transformed how the network ran and, critically, the passenger and user experience. His legacy lives large today on that network.

But when we come to this Bill, we do not see very much of that at all—there is nothing that is even a distant echo of what was achieved at TfL—so my amendments are somewhat probing but also offer some solutions. Amendment 130 seeks to put a technology and innovation imperative on GBR. I have set up some technologies but the key when drafting amendments and indeed legislation is to be tech-neutral, because by being tech-neutral we have a good chance of being tech future-proofed.

Whether it concerns passenger safety, passenger experience or the efficient running of the rail network itself, you would imagine that all forms of AI would have a role to play. My second amendment, Amendment 329, goes to the heart of the issue of cyber. We currently have a cyber Bill in your Lordships’ House, but I would really like to see specific cyber requirements across the slate of legislation coming through. Otherwise, how will we have a sense that something as critical as the rail network has the protection and the posture it requires in the face of the key cyber risks? Those risks are here today; this is not something for tomorrow. Surely that must be a key consideration and function, or perhaps direction, for GBR, because without it, we will leave the railways open or with optionality to take a view on this. Cyber is critical, so there should be something in the Bill to this effect.

This is perhaps even more significant than the other technology and innovation amendments in this group. I look forward to the Minister’s response to them all.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene briefly to speak to my noble friend’s Amendment 63A, on innovation and new technology. This country has had a fine tradition of both innovation and technology in the railways, right from the beginning. We have had the finest engineers—in Victorian times, and then, in the last century, in the 1920s and 1930s, we produced the fastest steam train.

Under British Rail, the engineering was of the highest quality, but it was focused on the heavier end of the rail industry: rolling stock, signalling and track. Post privatisation, innovation and technology switched to customer service, marketing and cutting costs. That was because, under the franchise system, which you did not have under a monopoly, there was an incentive to win new customers, improve customer service and reduce running costs. None of that was there with the previous monopoly, and there is a risk that once you move again to a state monopoly, the incentives we had in the private sector to innovate and use technology will fall away.

There is a risk of losing another change that happened post privatisation. If one franchise, such as Chiltern Railways, introduced a new innovation or service, customers would then expect the same, or an improvement, on Greater Anglia or Great Western Railway. Once you move to a monopoly, that sort of competitive advantage within the industry falls away, and you rely on looking at what happens overseas. That is why I wanted to intervene: to underline the importance of driving forward innovation in technology in the absence of the drive of the profit motive and the need to win business—a motive that risks falling away once we move over to GBR.