English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall endeavour to be brief. I have only one amendment in this group. There is also an amendment by my noble friend, Lord Lansley, which, as I understand it, has a similar effect to my own, or at least points in the same direction.

The reason I raise this—I refer to my local government experience—is that anyone with local government experience is seized of the question of vires. We are always worried about whether we actually have the power to do that which we want to do, because, as is well known, if you do not have the power in law, you are probably acting outside your responsibilities and can be held liable for it, and all sorts of terrible things can ensue from that.

Here I am thinking ahead to the Railways Bill, which we intend to amend when it comes to your Lordships’ House so as to give certain rail responsibilities to mayors in certain cities at least. At the moment, that Railways Bill merely gives them the opportunity to be consulted and to request, and we think devolution could go a little further. Thinking ahead to that, one wonders whether the response to that from the Government might not be, “Ah, yes, but even if we were willing to give them such powers, they don’t have the vires to do it. They do not have the legal power to operate a passenger railway service, and it would be inappropriate to bring that into the Railways Bill, where it would be out of scope”. But of course it would not be out of scope of this Bill, which is about exactly that question: the devolution of powers to local authorities. So I thought we would fend off that difficulty if it arose later by making it explicit in the Bill that those local authorities had legal power to run passenger railway services.

Of course, it would not follow at all from this measure alone that they would be able to run passenger railway services. If you want to run a passenger railway service, you have to have a railway and some trains. This Bill would not change that situation at all, but it would give them the legal power should it be made possible for them to have access to trains and to rail in the future. For that reason, I think it is a very sensible measure to include here and I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I thank your Lordships for the opportunity to contribute on this. I fear that those of us who participated during the passage of the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill, such as the Minister and my noble friend Lord Moylan, will be having our Groundhog Day moment on this group because we will be examining, as my noble friend said, the question of whether it should be possible for passenger rail services to be operated by mayors.

My amendment is different from my noble friend’s because I am setting out to examine whether the legislation needs to change to enable that to happen. There has been something of a pre-emption of this debate by the exchanges that took place on the group before last in relation to exactly this question of whether TfL and the mayor should be able to take responsibility for the Great Northern inner suburban services. It raises exactly the point that is the burden of my amendment. So I want to start by asking the Minister: is it possible, as he suggested on the earlier group, for passenger transport executives, accountable to mayors, to run passenger rail services? The Minister is nodding. I shall just explain why I think it is possible and then examine whether that is the case. Maybe we do not need to amend either this Bill or the Railways Bill in due course, but we might need to look at those issues when they come up.

It seems to me that, in the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act, it is provided that the Secretary of State, as the franchising authority, when he or she—it is a she—wishes to procure passenger rail services, must do so only by a direct award of a public service contract to a publicly owned company. A publicly owned company, as we then proceed to discover under Section 30C of the Railways Act, as amended by the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act, is a company owned by the Secretary of State. We know what this now means: it means that Great British Railways will effectively be the franchising authority in the fullness of time—I think we are looking two years ahead or so—of all the passenger railway services other than those outside the present franchising agreement, such as open access operators.

How then could Great Northern inner suburban services be handed to the mayor in any practical sense? The answer is that, under Section 13 of the Railways Act 2005, passenger transport executives may enter into agreements. Section 13(4) says:

“A Passenger Transport Executive … in England may enter into agreements for … the provision, by a person who is a … franchise operator … of … services for the carriage of passengers by railway within that area”.


So TfL could enter into an agreement with Great British Railways to provide passenger railway services extending beyond London. “How far?” noble Lords may ask. Section 13 of the Railways Act 2005 gives us the answer: “within the permitted distance”, which is 25 miles from the boundary of TfL’s area. That takes us out to Stevenage—yes, Stevenage, no less.

I am looking to the Minister to say whether any of this train of thought is not correct. Is it possible for mayors to be given not the franchising authority for the delivery of passenger services in their area but an agreement for the operation of passenger services, to the extent that that is negotiated with Great British Railways and approved by the Secretary of State under Section 13(5)? That operational control, of course, is subject to what we will discuss, no doubt, in due course: the directing mind of Great British Railways. The nature of the operational activities undertaken by TfL must therefore be entirely constrained by the agreement that Great British Railways and Transport for London will enter into. But it seems to me that it is possible to do it now. If it is not possible to do it now, the Bill should be amended so as to enable this to happen, which is what my amendment was originally intended to do.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I want to be absolutely clear in my own mind and check that my noble friend is as well. It is very easy, in London, to think that Transport for London runs those services, partly because they are branded to look like Transport for London, and that therefore, Transport for London is in roughly the equivalent position of a train operating company, but that is not its position. With those services, the Secretary of State’s role as franchising authority has been transferred to Transport for London—Transport for London is not the train operating company, but the franchising authority. All the services are run by train operating companies, which are invited to bid for them. I am not sure that that system applies in other conurbations.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. What I am describing and think is now legal is not the arrangement that he describes as applying to TfL as it stands. TfL cannot be made the franchising authority, because that has to be the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State can procure passenger railway services only by a direct award of a public service contract to a publicly owned company and only the Secretary of State can own that company.

However, I am suggesting that this is a different arrangement. The franchising authority remains the Secretary of State, who makes a direct award of a public service contract to Great British Railways, which, under Section 13(4) of the Railways Act 2005, enters into an agreement with Transport for London as a passenger transport executive. I am agnostic as to how Transport for London delivers those services. I suspect that we may find only in the fullness of time precisely who the operators are which are accountable to Transport for London for doing this.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

Under the arrangement that is struck, is it not likely that the only potential operating company that would be acceptable for such an agreement would be Great British Railways? Great British Railways would be agreeing with a mayor, “You can pay us to run services”, which is more or less exactly what the Bill envisages and which many of us find objectionable. What my noble friend is describing may be accurate and permissible—we will find out from the Minister in a moment whether it is—but it does not take us beyond the Railways Bill, which many of us would like to do. That is the purpose of my amendment.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My noble friend makes a good point. If the Secretary of State were to ask Great British Railways to enter into that agreement with Transport for London, I do not know who would be the operator of the passenger rail services concerned. It might be Great British Railways, because Section 13 of the Railways Act 2005 clearly envisages payment for this. That could be to GBR, in exactly in the same way as it has been in the past to Great Northern or any other operator.

The point is that the agreement under the 2005 legislation enables passenger transport executives to enter into agreements with the franchise operators to run those services. As far as I can see, that is not being taken away, as long as the legal authority is not transferred to the mayor. What my noble friend Lord Moylan is correctly saying about the current legal status of TfL is not what can be reproduced in relation to Great Northern in suburban services, as far as I am aware.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, these amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Lansley, are really testing the provision for rail devolution for passenger rail services and its legal status. It has been a really interesting discussion.

The Government’s White Paper said:

“Mayors will be given a statutory role in governing, managing, planning and developing the rail network. In addition to partnerships with Great British Railways, Mayors of Established Mayoral Strategic Authorities will have a clear right to request greater devolution of services, infrastructure and station control where it would support a more integrated network”.


I am not sure that anything before us today goes that far. When we debated the public ownership legislation, I kept talking about Manchester being really keen to extend the Bee Network. I was doing my weekly reading of the rail press earlier today and there was a picture of a lovely branded Bee Network train up in Manchester. They are keen to move forward with that. In response to my amendments on rail devolution on Report of that Bill, the Minister said,

“this Government are absolutely committed to strengthening the role of local leaders and local communities in shaping the provision of rail services in their areas … I can reaffirm to your Lordships’ House that the railways Bill will include a statutory role for devolved governments and mayoral combined authorities”.”.—[Official Report, 6/11/24; col. 1543.]

Yet when I look in the Railways Bill and at what is before us today, I am not sure that the Government have gone as far as they promised at that stage of that earlier legislation. What has changed? Can the Minister assure us that they are not rowing back on rail devolution? Has there been a change of heart or are we all slightly misinterpreting it and will we see far more rail devolution across the country, whether to Manchester, London or other regions?