Railways Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I start by associating myself with the remarks made by noble Lords, particularly the Minister, concerning the doleful anniversary we are marking today of the attacks on London’s transport 21 years ago. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, on his valedictory speech and his service to your Lordships’ House over so many years as well as his broader public service. I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this wide-ranging debate. I do not propose in this winding-up speech to respond to each of them individually, but it is worth saying that I was very touched, as I think all of us were, by the remarks made by our noble colleagues who have been affected by the very poor service that the railways often give to those who are in wheelchairs or disabled in other ways.

I thank the Minister for the way he introduced the Bill. Personally, I would be delighted—I am sure your Lordships’ House will understand my position—if Mr Burnham were to replace the Minister on the Front Bench in speaking for transport, but I entirely understand why that is not a widespread opinion across the House.

I will start with a point of agreement. The existing model of privatisation, despite having been profoundly successful and transformative over 20 or 30 years, is not fit for purpose currently, because it depended on very high volumes of passengers. During the pandemic, those volumes collapsed, and they have not recovered since. In current or indeed foreseeable circumstances, it is not possible to maintain the financial model on which privatisation was based. I will grant that point to the Minister from the outset, as I did when we discussed the previous railways Bill that he introduced. Under the existing privatisation scheme, the transfer of fares risk to train operating companies that are not able to bear it in a crisis was a flaw. Although it appeared to work for a very long time, that was, as I said, because the railways were doing very well in terms of passenger demand, but it is not capable of being sustained now.

A degree of reform is needed, and it is worth congratulating the previous Government and my noble friend Lord Grayling on recognising a need for reform and setting it in hand. So we had the Williams review, which recommended maintaining private sector involvement but having the operations conducted on what is often referred to as a concession basis. That is the basis used for the Docklands Light Railway, the Elizabeth line, the London Overground, and buses in London and Greater Manchester. On a concession basis, the fares risk is retained by the franchiser; otherwise, it operates in a very similar manner to what we have at the moment. Nobody recommended going back to British Rail, but that is what this Bill gives us.

At the heart of the Government’s argument is the claim that managing the track and train together is more efficient than any alternative. However, my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham—I was not aware of his speech in advance—simply tore that argument to pieces, with complete forensic acuity, in explaining that what is regarded as fragmentation by the Minister is a specialisation that works in so many other areas of our lives. It is a completely ideological position—an unevidenced ideological bet—that the Government are taking on a particular model that has been tried in the past and failed, but they believe that this time somehow it will work again. The Minister needs to explain why the European Union has moved in the opposite direction. He needs to explain why train services are getting better with private competition on the European continent, not getting worse. He needs to tell us what would happen to this Bill if we rejoined the European Union. It would not simply be the detail that would need to change; the whole structure would collapse.

Let me move to the detail. The first question that comes up is devolution. These are the words of Andy Burnham in giving evidence to the Public Bill Committee in the other place:

“We want the right to specify timetables … Rather than a right to request, the onus should be the other way around; there should be the right to refuse”.—[Official Report, Commons, Public Bill Committee, 20/1/26; col. 78.]


He also said:

“From our point of view, we would want … joint decision making”.—[Official Report, Commons, Public Bill Committee, 20/1/26; col. 86.]


Do the Government still adhere to the principles in this Bill on devolution, given that that is what the incoming Prime Minister said just a little while ago?

And he is not alone. The Mayor of London—hardly a person I would expect to be quoting favourably—has said something very similar. He said that, as drafted, the Bill would give GBR extensive control over network access for both GBR and non-GBR operators; the difference between the Mayor of London and the Mayor of Greater Manchester, of course, is that the Mayor of London actually runs passenger rail services. He went on to say that there is no sufficient safeguard for devolved or open access services. So it is not simply a right-wing fantasy that express services might be given priority over local services. I ask the Minister plainly: will the Government now concede that Clause 5 must become a genuine right to devolution, or is the Minister going to come back to the Dispatch Box within months explaining why the Government have changed their position?

On the ORR, in effect, the Bill discards years of economic regulatory expertise that the ORR has built up on track access and charging decisions, handing that role instead to GBR for it to be judge and jury in its own operations. Where the ORR can still act under the Bill, its powers are illusory. It may quash a decision, but that appears to me no more than asking GBR to reconsider, with substitution of the ORR’s own judgment reserved for cases of legal error—a very high threshold and a very difficult bar to meet.

That brings us to understanding the policies that underlie the Bill. Five of the documents that are most central to how the Bill will work in practice have all, we are told, been pushed back to spring 2027. The rumour is that we are not going to have Committee on the Bill until October at the earliest—but even that is not good enough. It will not be spring 2027. We still will not have the documents we need. The ORR’s consultation on its own appeals function—the very process that freight and open access operators will depend on to challenge GBR—is not due until spring 2027. The retail code of practice, which was brought up by my noble friend Lady Harding of Winscombe and the noble Lord, Lord Dixon of Jericho, among others, is not due to be published until spring 2027. GBR’s own access and use policy—the document that is meant to stop it favouring its own services over freight and other users—will not appear until spring 2027. The long-term rail strategy will also not be out until spring 2027. So I ask the Minister: how are we meant to give the Bill serious and detailed scrutiny when so many of the documents are still missing?

Let us turn to freight in that case. I am happy to accept the Minister’s personal commitment to the role of rail freight and to increasing it, but there is a clear risk that freight will be deprioritised within Great British Railways—particularly given the network capacity constraints and GBR’s control of both infrastructure and passenger services.

We come to open access. The passenger-focused, innovative railway that the Government promise from GBR already exists. Lumo and Hull Trains scored 90% and 94% respectively for overall satisfaction in Transport Focus’s most recent survey, outperforming most of the contracted network, and they have delivered it through competitive fares and genuine value for money, not through a single national monopoly. Yet this is the sector now being asked to withhold investment in the railways because a Bill built around GBR’s vertical integration signals precisely the animosity towards open access enterprise that these operators have warned against throughout its passage. Of course, access charges can be set as high as GBR decides. It is a matter for GBR; there is no cap. Has the Minister costed the cost to the country of the loss of private investment from open access that this uncertainty is already producing?

That brings us to the passenger. Passenger numbers have gone up since privatisation, as journeys have roughly doubled over that time. The Government’s answer to any problems that passengers have is a new passenger watchdog expanded out of Transport Focus. It is going to cost a large amount of money to run, but what does the passenger get for this expense? It gets a watchdog with no enforcement powers of its own, because enforcement stays with the ORR on referral at the ORR’s discretion. What precisely is the watchdog for if it cannot make GBR do anything?

Turning to industrial relations, even the noble Lord, Lord Doyle, admitted that this is an area that needs proper attention. This Bill is a gift to the trades unions —one almost detects their hand in the drafting of it. The Government have removed in other legislation the 40% support threshold for strike ballots in important public services, including transport. They have scrapped the 50% turnout threshold as well, handing trades unions considerably greater latitude to shut down passenger services at will. But still there is no requirement that pay rises be linked to productivity. Indeed, the RMT’s own Network Rail settlement, which the union openly celebrated, secured a 3.8% RPI-linked rise with explicitly no efficiency or productivity conditions attached. The RMT has said that it now expects similar deals from the train operating companies. I have asked the Government twice at the Dispatch Box whether pay awards under GBR will be linked to productivity and twice received no answer. Will the Minister respond today? There is a further question that the Government cannot dodge indefinitely. The RMT has threatened national strikes, capable of shutting down the network entirely. Will GBR bring about the standardisation of terms and conditions as the sole employer? If it is going to do so, on what terms, at what cost and in exchange for what productivity benefits?

I come to the GBR website and app, mentioned by my noble friend Lady Harding of Winscombe and the noble Lord, Lord Dixon of Jericho. This is a solution in search of a problem. We already have a range of innovative retailers, and passengers are perfectly well served by them. Competition has built Britain a world-class rail retail sector, with passengers the primary beneficiaries. I have asked the Minister several times now in Written Questions how much the Government are spending on the GBR website and app but have not been told. Can the Minister answer today?

GBR will compete in a retail market that it also controls, having simultaneously taken over the industry management functions that are currently held by the Rail Delivery Group, including licensing retailers and managing access to data—that is an unprecedented structural conflict of interest, with GBR’s own retailer embedded in its operational business. There is no requirement for independent governance or accounting separation, and no safeguard against public funding cross-subsidising it against competition. When the Minister was Commissioner of Transport for London, under the wise guidance of Boris Johnson, all the TfL journey and fares data became open free to app developers. That was of great benefit to passengers, and we see the apps on our phones. Is he willing to make all of GBR’s fares and journey data, without restriction, open to app developers? Is that something that he might be willing to consider?

I conclude as I started, by trying to find a point of agreement. I concede that there are certain aspects of the railway where a single controlling mind is beneficial—for example, the timetabling or, potentially, the management, improvement and expansion of the infrastructure. However, there is no logic in the single controlling mind also being the largest operator of passenger services. It is that decision to make the single controlling mind also the largest but not the sole operator of passenger services that sets up all the contradictions and conflicts in this Bill which will keep us so busy in Committee.

Railways Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Moylan]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 8, at end insert—
“(1A) The body corporate must be a company constituted under the Companies Acts.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to clarify an ambiguity in this and the following Clause as to the legal character of the body corporate.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, in the course of preparing for this Committee, I have had a number of meetings with the Minister and his officials, and I thank them for making themselves available for those meetings. I say that now because I shall almost certainly forget to say it at more appropriate times later on, but if I do it is not because I do not mean quite seriously how grateful I am for the contribution and effort that they have made.

We are here on the first day of the Committee to create a Soviet-style railway in the United Kingdom and to go back—and we now know explicitly that it is the Government’s and the Prime Minister’s intention—to the warm and fuzzy 1970s. The 1970s are now the paradigm of where our nation should be. Those of us who remember the 1970s—there may be a number of us in the Room—do not have such fond memories of the standard of public services then compared with what we have today. We do not today have bodies unburied, we do not have refuse piled high in the streets as a result of government folly and we have railways that run broadly on time compared to the—I see that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, is not here to be annoyed by this—relative catastrophe of British Rail in its worst days as it trundled towards its final station. Now it is to be resuscitated. We are to get Great British Railways in place of British Rail and we are going to have it on a totally nationalised basis.

There are two separate things going on here. First, the Minister makes a case that the railways would operate more efficiently if, as he puts it, track and train were united. That argument can be debated. I do not wholly accept it, but it can be debated, but it is not necessary in order for track and train to be united that they should all be owned by the Government in a single company. We know that because the Williams review, which was warmly welcomed by the Minister when he was chairman of Network Rail and was supported by the Conservative Government at the time, gave an alternative way forward, so the decision to nationalise the whole thing is particularly spiteful. The only explanation for it—because it is not necessary for the purpose of achieving the Government’s stated objectives—is that it has been done to pay off the trades unions that made such generous contributions to Labour’s victory at the polls in 2024.

We know that privatisation has been a huge success on the railways and that passenger numbers increased enormously after privatisation. It would be astonishing if the Government nationalising the railways achieved anything like that increase in passenger numbers. New operators entered the market and competition stimulated improvements.

I have four amendments in this group, but one of them is consequential, so three that I intend to speak to. My Amendment 2 addresses a particularly vicious little clause in the Bill, which says, first of all, that the body designated as Great British Railways has to be owned wholly by the Crown. In other words, a future Minister would have to pass primary legislation to redesignate or designate a different body in the private sector to carry out Great British Railways’ activities. What is the need for that? It is simply to gratify the trades unions. A second part almost seems to impose a penalty of some sort on any Minister who makes even a suggestion that Great British Railways should be transferred to the private sector. My Amendment 2 deletes that part; it does not stop Great British Railways going ahead as a nationalised body but it allows a future Secretary of State without the need for primary legislation to redesignate a different body, not necessarily owned by the Crown, to carry out the role of Great British Railways.

Amendment 1 is addressed at sloppy drafting more than anything else. The Bill talks about a body corporate being designated as Great British Railways, whereas later, in the next clause, it is implicit that the body corporate should be a company constituted under the Companies Act. But the Bill does not actually say that the body corporate has to be constituted under the Companies Act; it only says that it has to be wholly owned by the Crown. Other bodies corporate could be designated, as long as they were wholly owned by the Crown. It is simply sloppy drafting not to say at this point that it is to be a body constituted under the Companies Act.

When I mentioned this to the Minister, he said, “Oh well, everybody knows it’s going to be a company constituted under the Companies Act”. Well, they do not, if they read the Act—it needs to be written into the Act by him that that is what the intention is. It should say quite explicitly that that is what he intends to do. We will come back to this when we discuss amendments later in Committee that relate to the board of this company. There are some from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to which I have added my name, about the board of this company and how this corporate structure works, because the Bill is very silent on that. This needs to be done.

Finally, Amendment 8 probes Great British Railways’ organisational structure. To this day we still have no idea at all—and maybe the Minister has no idea at all—how Great British Railways is going to be structured. Let me give a couple of options. It could be that it will be structured geographically, roughly mapping the existing structures, so that one division deals roughly with the south-western main line, one division deals with the east coast main line, and so forth. It could be structured like that, but you could have a totally different structure. There might be an argument for saying that we should have one division that deals with operating the railways, one that deals with managing the major stations, another division that deals with the minor stations and another again for retail. You could have an organisation that was completely functionally based rather than geographically based. These are important questions, which I think Parliament should have a chance to have a say on, yet not only is the Bill silent about them but the Government are silent as well. The effect of Amendment 8 is to require the Government to publish their organisational structure before the Bill can come into effect.

That is enough for the moment—I understand that other noble Lords have things to say. I will just say in advance—and I hope that the noble Baroness will forgive me for pre-empting her—that I have taken note of the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. They are not wholly aligned with my view of the role of the private sector and she will not therefore, I think, be surprised if I find myself not able to support them. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to join this first group in Committee. I am sitting to the left of the Liberal Democrats because that is where I now find myself; I always want to be sitting behind my noble friend on the Front Bench in Committee to back him up, but I cannot do that because there is no back row in this Room, so I cannot be self-effacing in the back row. Anyway, I look forward to Committee. I do not have the experience of railways that the Minister and my noble friend speaking for the Official Opposition do—I do not pretend to that intimate knowledge of the railways—but I hope to bring something of my interest in how competition should be applied in the delivery of public services to some of the issues that we will be debating.

I turn to this group. There are a number of amendments in my name which are just about trying to find out, as I was going through the Bill, whether it works in the way described or precisely what it means. Rather in line with what my noble friend was just saying, we need to be sure that we understand that the Bill is functionally correct in the way that it works. I have just two amendments in this group.

Amendment 3 relates to the question of what must be wholly owned. As my noble friend said, Clause 1 is constructed around the proposition that Great British Railways not only must be wholly owned by the Crown but cannot be anything else. That relates to GBR itself. The purpose of Amendment 3 is to test whether that also applies to GBR companies. We do not encounter GBR companies in Clause 1, but we do subsequently as a means by which GBR will undertake its activities. This is not surprising. As my noble friend said, we do not know how GBR will be corporately structured but, by way of example, we know how Network Rail is structured. It has a significant number of wholly owned subsidiaries and quite a number of joint venture subsidiaries, including through Platform4.

For example—and here I declare my interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum and others—Platform4 is a Network Rail subsidiary company that has just recently, happily, entered into an agreement with partners to develop at Cambridge North station as part of the Government’s proposal to develop around stations, with 450 homes around the station. It is a joint venture company; it is not wholly owned by Network Rail. So my starting proposition is that this prohibition on companies not being wholly owned must apply to GBR itself but cannot apply to GBR companies. I want to be sure that that is the case. If it is not absolutely clear in the statute then it ought to be, which would be the purpose of my amendment.

That differentiates the amendment from those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, to which we will no doubt turn in a minute, who wants precisely that to be the case. For the reasons I have just explained about the many joint ventures for things such as housing developments and commercial developments around stations through companies such as Platform4, if I may respectfully say so before she has put her case, I do not agree with the noble Baroness that all GBR companies should be—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, with the permission of the Chair, I will do something I have not done in the 13 years I have been here as a Peer. The place name in my title is “Mole Skoomb”, okay? There is a railway station at Moulsecoomb, near Brighton; in fact, it is not in Moulsecoomb but in Bevendean, which is a source of great irritation to people living in Moulsecoomb; Moulsecoomb is a mile up the road. Anyway, it is pronounced “Mole Skoom”. Thank you.

I said in my speech at Second Reading that I welcome the Bill; the Green Party has long argued that our railway should be run as a public service, not for private profit, and that is exactly where my five amendments here are going: they all make basically the same point. It was very kind of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, to point out that he did not agree with me; in fact, it sort of made me feel slightly better because, worryingly, there are times when I do agree with him, so it is good to get back on our tracks.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

Tracks?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Sorry, I did not mean that.

What I am trying to do with these five amendments is to make sure that public ownership of our railways really means public ownership. The Bill, as it currently stands, could allow companies within Great British Railways to have private shareholders. The Bill is, or should be, about bringing our railways back into public ownership, and we therefore should not be creating a back door that allows private ownership to creep in.

This is the worry that the Association of British Commuters, We Own It and Bring Back British Rail have brought to us. They and the others are asking a very simple question: what exactly do we mean when we say that Great British Railways will be publicly owned? At the moment, the answer is not clear in the Bill. The Government made a welcome commitment that all the shares in the parent company of Great British Railways would be publicly owned, but does that extend to the companies sitting beneath it?

The Bill defines a GBR company as a subsidiary within the meaning of the Companies Act 2006. A subsidiary does not have to be wholly publicly owned; it can be partly owned by private investors, provided that the parent company retains control. We could have a railway where the parent company is entirely publicly owned but where companies carrying out important railway functions have private shareholders. Does that not fundamentally change what public ownership means? The Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 used a much clearer definition: a public sector company had to be wholly publicly owned. The Companies Act itself provides the Government with the wording they could have used if they intended to require wholly owned subsidiaries. I think we have to ask this: why was that stronger definition not used here?

This is not helped by the Government not being clear about exactly which functions GBR companies will carry out, as the Bill gives these companies the ability to carry out potentially any GBR function. That could include train operations and infrastructure management, which leaves the door open to a very different railway in the future. In a worst-case scenario, the new definition of GBR companies as subsidiaries could even lead to the part-privatisation of rail infrastructure management—a direction of travel thought impossible in the UK since the days of Railtrack.

Railway privatisation has been a disaster: it fragmented the railways, drove up costs and put private profit ahead of passengers. We should not be creating a structure today that would enable a future Government to say, “Well, the legislation already allows private investment and we’re simply making use of the powers that Parliament has already given us”. These amendments would stop that happening. I should also say that I have not yet had the delight of meeting with the Minister, but I am sure that that is in progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. My experience of Network Rail’s property and Platform 4 is offset by increasing age and failure to remember the details. I will not only write to noble Lords about the 50:50 aspect, but about Mayfield, which I remember vaguely is of a different percentage, partially because much of the land is owned by somebody else rather than the railway. I will write on both those points, because I think they are germane. I appreciate the point that people need to understand how this will work in practice, particularly with those areas of activity of GBR that are not the provision of passenger railway services or the basic railway.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, before I start, may I add to the comment made by my noble friend Lord Lansley? My example is not a Network Rail example, but a TfL one, with which the Minister will be very familiar: the Earl’s Court development. The essential structure is that the initial ownership of the joint venture was based on the value of the land that each party was contributing, but that the TfL structure would fall well below 50% over the course of time, as more investment was added by the private sector partner. Structures such as that would simply not be possible for Great British Railways land under this Bill, because you could not go below the 50%. So, a site such as Earl’s Court, if it were a national Network Rail site— pari passu, mutatis mutandis—would of course remain undeveloped until the Government found the money to develop it. The Government will never find the money to develop these things.

Turning to the debate that we have just had, I must say that, whenever I speak in Committee, I always seem unwittingly and unintentionally to attract the disappointment of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. I am surprised about this, because the only reference I made to her in the course of my speech was to say something complimentary about amendments that she has tabled, which we will debate later in Committee and to which I have added my name. Obviously, I am at fault in some way, in that I am constantly giving her cause for complaint.

On the question of organisational structure, the Minister has read out some words about how Network Rail will be organised, but they do not provide a level of assurance or satisfaction that people are looking for. They are very woolly, but I will leave that and grant him that for the moment; he can stick with that level of woolliness. However, let us switch focus slightly and think about timing. When I spoke on the then passenger railway services Bill when it was in your Lordships’ House, I said that the Government were embarking on a very long multi-year transformation process. Here we are, two years later, and we still have not completed that. We are at least six months away, I should guess, from seeing the enactment of this necessary legislation. That is two and a half years on.

Transforming an organisation as complex as Network Rail and all the companies being brought into this group is something that is going to take years. So let me change the question: is the Minister able to say, before we conclude this debate, at what time he expects that structure to be in place, which he has described to us even in woolly terms?

Just to develop that a little further, it is said throughout the industry, although it is acknowledged that nobody has written this down, that the intended designation date for Great British Railways is October 2027, which is 12 months from now—say, six months after the enactment of the Bill, if it goes through in its current form, according to its current plans. Is that date valid? Does the Minister believe that the structure that he has described in whatever woolly terms will be in place in time for that designation date, or is it all going to muddle on for years afterwards, being put in place?

Finally, on the second important point that we have discussed in this short debate, I express my gratitude to—I am going to say this correctly now—the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. Kudos! But do not minute that in Hansard. I am very grateful to her because she put her finger on one of the key issues in this group, which is the question of the justification for private ownership. She has said, effectively, that it is party policy, in her case, and she is going to stick to it, for that reason if not for others as well. But we did not get a clear answer from the Minister to my question: what is his justification for wholesale nationalisation for the purpose of achieving his objectives, which could have been achieved by a Williams report approach? It is wholly irrelevant whether the last Government did anything about it, for heaven’s sake—what is the point of making a comment like that? The last Government were all over the place; that is why they lost the election. Is that the standard that the Minister is setting for the Government, that they are just about better than Sunak? Is that it? Is that the point of making that remark?

The Minister has one further opportunity to give us a clear explanation. The only explanation that he has given is that it is in the manifesto. If that is the sole explanation, that is very helpful to us, because knowing that there is no rational basis for the decision makes it very much easier for an incoming Government to advance the argument that the necessary measures should be taken at pace to reverse it.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, first, the operative date for Great British Railways will be sometime in 2027, but of course it depends on the passage of this Bill. Secondly, I can give a very sound explanation for being in favour of public ownership, which is that progressively, as we have taken recent train operating companies into public ownership, we have been able to put both the track and infrastructure and the operations into the management of the same person. That is delivering results that no previous arrangement for over 30 years has been able—

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

Why, if that is such a good thing, are there fewer and fewer services?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I shall continue with what I was saying. It has not been possible, in any previous iteration of the railways since the early 1990s, to have both under the same control. There was such an arrangement with South Western Railway in the 2010s, and it collapsed, because the commercial arrangements were incompatible. We are making steady progress in improving the railway in some pretty difficult circumstances, in companies that had not been particularly well managed, as a consequence of being able to manage them together. To my mind, that is a very good reason for public ownership.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am very happy, in so far as that is directed at me, to bear it in mind. Of course, I could be quicker in challenging the Minister when I sum up. I am not summing up, of course; I am actually testing him on his response to the points I made in moving my amendment. I would be a great deal quicker if he had properly addressed them to my satisfaction in the course of his speech. When Ministers do that, I shall of course be briefer. But, if the Minister does not do that, then, with every respect to the noble Lord, I shall take exactly as long as is needed, because we are in Committee and those rules do not apply. I will not be curtailed. After all, thanks to the noble Lord and the Whips, we have five hours, not four, to play with.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

It sounds like I have missed the best bit.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

You really did not.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

The noble Lord should stop waving his hands around like that.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

Does the noble Lord wish to withdraw Amendment 1?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I beg your pardon. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Moylan]

7: Before Clause 3, insert the following new Clause—
“Purpose of Great British Railways(1) The purpose of Great British Railways is defined by the following objectives—(a) prioritising the needs of Great British Railways passengers in decision-making,(b) delivering reliable, safe and accessible railway passenger services,(c) providing value for money for passengers and taxpayers, including consideration of the affordability of fare prices,(d) increasing passenger numbers and growing usage of the network year-on-year,(e) expanding and improving the network, including services and connectivity, and restoring or adding routes,(f) modernising working practices and innovating to improve productivity, efficiency, and passenger experience,(g) supporting economic growth and national productivity, and improving connections between towns, cities and employment centres,(h) improving the experience of disabled and vulnerable passengers and ensuring consistent access to assistance, (i) ensuring fair and transparent treatment of open access, freight and devolved operators when allocating access and charges,(j) growing rail freight, including supporting delivery of the national freight growth target,(k) strengthening the financial sustainability of the railways, reducing reliance on operating subsidy over time,(l) integrating track and train, simplifying structures, and avoiding duplication, and(m) supporting multi-modal integration with buses, trams and local transport networks.(2) The Secretary of State and Great British Railways must have regard to the purpose set out in subsection (1) in exercising their functions under this Act.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause defines Great British Railways’ purpose.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak, with my customary brevity, to Amendment 7 and to open the debate on this second group. I have a large number of amendments in this group, so I shall speak only briefly to each of them because I do not want to provoke any noble Lords to start waving their hands at me again, which is only intended to distract and does not promote debate.

Although Amendment 7 starts the group, I intend to return to it towards the end of my remarks. I will start with Amendment 9, which may appear to be pernickety, but I will explain it to noble Lords, many of whom will know that I have a background in local government. But it is not entirely a local government matter; it applies to legislation more broadly. We are well familiar with the notion of powers. Local government is given powers to do things, and so is the Secretary of State periodically. We are also familiar with the notion of duties—we are clear what the distinction is—which can be placed on local government and, similarly, on the Secretary of State. I do not claim huge experience, but I have never come across the question of functions, and I do not understand what a function is. It is sloppy drafting. Is a function a legal power? We understand what that is. Is it a duty? When does a function slip over into being a duty, and vice versa?

But then I go to a second level of refinement. Clause 3 refers to the “general functions” of Great British Railways. If I am unclear what a function is, I am doubly unclear what a general function is. It could be that this is a fuzzy notion—it is a general thing and we are not quite clear what it is—in which case it is not very satisfactory as a piece of legislation. Or it could seek to set out a hierarchy of functions, where these are the general functions and there are other more minor functions that sit under them but have to conform to, contribute to and be ancillary to the general functions. Is that what “general functions” is meant to mean, or is the word “general” simply redundant? I ask because later the Bill refers to “the functions” of Great British Railways on several occasions and the expression “general functions” never reappears.

I suspect that this is not a very complex issue. I suspect it is just sloppy drafting. But we cannot put up with that—we need to know what is meant by functions, how many duties are being imposed on Great British Railways that we can hold it to account for, how many powers are being given to it by statute that it has to explain and justify using or not, and whether “general” is creating a hierarchy with subordinate functions that must comply or not. I do not think this will necessarily be settled today; it is very likely that we will come back to this so that we really understand what the Bill is doing.

Amendment 13 would exclude rail safety advice and standards from Great British Railways. Under Clause 3(1)(g), Great British Railways will be

“publishing advice and standards on matters related to railways and railway services”.

I really do not know why it is doing this. Publishing advice and standards is normally the function of either a regulator or an independent standards board. I do not know why Great British Railways is doing this. In so far as it is doing it to itself, that is okay. I have no objection to its setting internal standards. However, my Amendment 14 says that it should not be able to create standards and issue advice to non-GBR actors on the Great British Railways network. Internal standards are no problem, but if standards are to be set then they should be set by an independent board, a regulator or the ORR.

Finally on this point, Amendment 13 would exclude safety standards entirely from that scope. I say this because safety on British railways has been at a very high standard and it is a common view that the role of the Office of Rail and Road as safety regulator has been an important contributor to that. I do not want to see its role diluted, and I do not know anybody in the industry who does. The danger here is that the power being given to GBR to set standards implicitly for other people operating on the railways, implicitly including safety standards, creates a tension with the role of the ORR that can be only destructive of and damaging to the effectiveness and reputational safety of Great British Railways.

Amendment 18 relates back to the question of functions. It would remove the Secretary of State’s power to confer additional railway-related functions on Great British Railways. If it requires an Act of Parliament to set up the general functions of Great British Railways, why should we want to give the Secretary of State the undiluted, unrestricted power to create new functions to add to them? I do not think this is the correct way of doing it. If there is a requirement for further functions in future, it should at the very least be done by statutory instrument, if the power is to be granted at all.

I turn to Amendment 80. My noble friend Lord Grayling, with his very considerable experience of the railways from being Transport Secretary, has tabled a number of amendments but unfortunately is unable to be in the House this week. But I have signed Amendment 80 in its support, so I will speak to it. It is slightly out of place in this group, but we will come back to this topic eventually.

The amendment would require that charges imposed by Great British Railways for certain railway services are “reasonable”. Who can object to that? Who would want charges that are not reasonable? But that is not the power given to Great British Railways by the Bill. The power to make these charges is relatively unconstrained— I agree that it may be constrained by competition law—and would, in effect, allow GBR to set charges as it sees fit. That is too much latitude; the power should be constrained by the necessity for charges to be reasonable.

Amendment 81 is, in fact, in my name, but is close to the previous one. It would give to an individual—it might be a company—who is aggrieved by the charge, term or conditions imposed by Great British Railways a right of appeal to the Office of Rail and Road. Again, who would think that this very modest constraint on the absolute discretion of Great British Railways could be anything other than reasonable and necessary? I beg to move.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I am keen not to be seen as a support act to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, although some of my remarks might echo points that he made in the previous group.

Amendment 15 would place on Great British Railways a duty to act as a single employer for the staff transferring into it from Network Rail and the train operating companies, as they move into public ownership. The starting point is that the Bill is silent on this question. It creates Great British Railways and sets out its functions, and it deals in some detail with the machinery of transfer, but says nothing about who will employ the people who run the railway. There are well over 100,000 people involved: more than 40,000 are directly employed by Network Rail and there are more than 60,000 across the train operating companies. They are no clearer today about who their employer will be than they were before the Bill was published.

This matters more than it might appear. The operators are coming into public ownership on a staggered basis, contract by contract, over several years. The uncertainty is therefore not settled by a single moment of transition; it is spread out and repeated. Staff in one company would inevitably draw conclusions from what happens in another. In the absence of a stated employment model, people will assume the least favourable one: that subsidiary companies will be retained, terms and conditions will diverge and the integrated railway will turn out to be a holding company with much of the same fragmentation underneath it. I hope that this is not what the Government plan.

The founding document here is Getting Britain Moving. Those interested in the reason for putting the railways into public ownership would find their time well served by consulting that document, which addresses the issues in contention today. That document was explicit that Great British Railways would be “a new, single employer” and that the workforce would be treated

“as an asset to be nurtured rather than a cost to be cut”.

That was a clear commitment, and these amendments asked for it to be put in the Bill or, failing that, restated from the Dispatch Box.

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[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for these amendments and the noble Lords, Lord Redwood and Lord Harper, for their contributions.

I start with Amendment 7, which would introduce a purpose for GBR into the Bill. The Bill already provides a purpose for GBR, just as we promised the Liberal Democrats it would during the passage of the public ownership Act. The Bill’s purpose is set out through its functions and duties. The functions tell us what GBR must do, and the duties tell us what GBR must consider and achieve while doing it. Much like the noble Lord’s amendment, the duties provide a list of objectives for GBR, which it must bear in mind when undertaking every decision and its railway activity.

I hope the noble Lord can see that the duties are in fact similar to the breadth of outcomes his amendment is seeking. The duties already require GBR to prioritise the needs of passengers and disabled passengers; to consider value for money, high standards of performance including reliability, social and economic benefits, and the environment; to grow freight; and to advance the public interest. We do not need a new purpose clause to provide GBR with these objectives: the Bill already does so.

Unlike the proposed purpose clause, the functions and duties are supported by the Secretary of State’s long-term rail strategy, which will also provide clear long-term objectives. That strategy is how Ministers will communicate to GBR what it should consider while planning, expanding and improving the network over the next 30 years, and GBR will develop its own pipeline of projects in response to that. Rather than a static requirement in the Bill which is not set in the context of wider priorities or funding expectations, we have a system that might actually work better to make our railway better. Instead of setting out a clear purpose, the proposed new clause duplicates many of the provisions already in the Bill, making outcomes less clear and, overall, less likely to be deliverable.

Amendment 9 is seeking clarification of what “general” means. A general function is an umbrella term for an activity which a body can undertake by doing lots of different things. For example, running passenger services involves a large number of intermediate actions such as procuring and operating rolling stock, employing train drivers and other staff, and selling tickets. The Bill requires GBR to run passenger services as a general function, and it therefore does not prescribe exactly what actions it should take in which order to do that.

In comparison, a specific function would be an individual action that the Bill requires GBR to do at a certain point or in a certain way. An example of this would be the requirement on GBR to draft and issue the access and use policy in Clause 59. This is a specific requirement to kick off the access process and not a general function.

The term “general” is therefore helpful in distinguishing between a specific activity that GBR is required to perform and the continuing business of GBR in running the railways. I assure the noble Lord that functions are a standard drafting approach, used also, for example, in the Communications Act 2009, the Climate Change Act and others. I hope that this explanation provides the clarity that the noble Lord seeks and that he can withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, if the Minister would be so good, this really is very important. I did not think he would adopt that approach, but it is one of the two approaches I offered him, and he has chosen to adopt that which says that this is essentially hierarchical, so that the general functions set out in the Bill subsume a whole load of subsidiary and ancillary functions. I am still not clear whether these functions are powers or duties. Does GBR have some choice over whether to carry out these functions—in which case, they would be akin to powers—or is it obliged to do so?

My key question, now that we have established that, is this: to carry out a general function, there are a whole load of subsidiary and ancillary functions you may have to carry out. I understand that completely, and the Minister did not have to give examples, but he did very helpfully. Is the functionality, so to speak, of Great British Railways therefore limited to the functions set out in this clause? In other words, can it do anything else or is it limited to doing the things that are general functions here? Does it have the power to carry out any other activity? These are really important questions, which may end up being tested in court. I know he has quoted some examples but, because generally unfamiliar language is being used, it is unclear to me whether we are talking about the general functions being the full scope of GBR’s activities or not.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. I am at least clear about this. The functions are more like powers; the duties are the things that GBR must do when doing the functions, but it is not limited to those general functions. Indeed, we have already discussed quite extensively what it might do, for example, in property development and with third parties, which, because it is a Companies Act company, it can do. I think that is reasonably clear. I would be happy to discuss this with the noble Lord in more detail, because I think we are getting tied up in nomenclature. I think it is reasonably clear what GBR’s functions are, which are described in Clause 3; it describes running the railways. It is also clear that, in the process of running the railway and because of its activity, it is able to do a number of other things.

Let me carry on to Amendment 12, if I may. Amendment 12 would require GBR’s functions to facilitate the provision and use of railway services to be carried out in a fair and non-discriminatory manner. I absolutely agree that GBR should act fairly; however, the duties in the Bill already require GBR to act in the interest of the public, taxpayers, passengers and freight customers. GBR will act fairly in accordance with its duties, not only when exercising this function but across the full range of its statutory functions. We will no doubt discuss this more when we discuss ticket retailing and access. For now, suffice it to say, there are already protections in the Bill—and indeed in wider statutes, such as public law principles and the Competition Act, which applies in full to Great British Railways—that will require GBR to act in a manner that is fair, non-discriminatory and not anti-competitive. This additional requirement would duplicate only the Competition Act requirements, adding uncertainty and administrative burden without increasing protection for non-GBR operators.

Amendments 13 and 14 relate to the publishing of advice and standards for the railways. I thank the noble Lord for this probing amendment, and I reassure him that the ORR is the sole safety regulator for the railway. The Bill does not transfer the ORR’s safety regulatory functions to GBR, nor does it change the current railway safety regime at all. The ORR will continue to exercise its independent safety, regulatory and enforcement functions, including its ability to ensure that GBR and other operators comply fully with all safety legislation requirements.

Comparatively, GBR’s function to publish standards is a reference to technical standards, which GBR would publish and share with industry as a method of promoting best practice. This is similar to today; at present, Network Rail and the train operating companies develop and publish technical standards covering many aspects of their operation. These standards include operation and maintenance protocols, design specifications and engineering guidelines. This does not in any way prevent it adhering to the ORR’s safety regime, which it is required by law to comply with. This also does not give GBR any remit over safety regulation. The standards are non-binding and designed simply to support shared learning across the industry.

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[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The obligations placed on GBR by the long-term rail strategy, and the consequent approval by the Secretary of State of the business plan, should adequately deter Great British Railways from seeking to achieve that by diminishing services. Indeed, there was an example in the franchising era of the Government being loose with their definition of train services, only to discover that the franchisee had, remarkably, reduced the subsidy by withdrawing a number of services on rural branch lines. That clearly would not be possible with a decent long-term rail strategy and a consequent business plan to which a Government should agree.

Amendments 80 and 81 relate to the Clause 13 provision allowing GBR to charge for its functions. I agree that GBR must act reasonably while setting charges, and I assure the noble Lord that there are already safeguards in the Bill to ensure that charges are reasonable. GBR has a duty to ensure that railway service providers, such as other operators, can plan, invest and make decisions about their own businesses, so GBR must set charges that are consistent with this and do not undermine other people’s ability to run viable and successful businesses.

Competition law will apply to GBR, ensuring that charges it sets are not anti-competitive. In this context, an additional reasonableness test is duplicative without delivering any material additional protection. It is also important that GBR can recover appropriate costs from those who access and benefit from the services it provides. If it were prevented from doing so, the burden would ultimately fall on the taxpayer and passengers.

Amendment 81 would provide an appeal route. All I say to the noble Lord is that an appeal route to the ORR across every possible charge that GBR could levy is disproportionate. I have already mentioned the safeguards in existing law to ensure that those charges are fair.

On the private sector growth target referred to in Amendment 114, nothing in the Bill seeks to exclude or marginalise the contribution of the private sector, but I do not agree that a statutory target is the right approach. The Bill is absolutely an opportunity for the supply chain, but in that case, we have to let the market determine its contribution.

On Amendment 305 from my noble friend Lord Berkeley, I assure him that existing legal rules already allow railway operators to seek recovery of costs and other losses through civil law. A substantial amount of cost recovery is achieved already, and the limit to it is to do not with legal powers but with the identification of perpetrators who drive off. Given what I have set out, I encourage noble Lords and noble Baronesses not to press their amendments.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I begin with a craven apology to my noble friend Lord Harper for my comments about the Sunak Government. For the avoidance of doubt, had the last general election been fought solely on the question of his conduct of the office of Secretary of State for Transport, I am sure the result would have been very different and more favourable to the Conservative cause.

I will not refer here at any length to the question of functions, except to say that it is a mess. At the end of this debate, everybody in the Room who has thought about it can probably see that it is a mess. However, the Minister kindly offered me a meeting to discuss this, and I think my noble friend Lord Lansley is now very much included in that invitation, and possibly other noble Lords. I ask that that meeting takes place reasonably promptly as these issues will return at later stages in Committee rather than being left to the end of Committee and rushed through just ahead of Report. A sensible meeting on that could be very valuable.

I will comment about the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton. I do not agree that there should be a single employer as such, although I think there will be one because I think the unions will get their way. My noble friend Lord Harper explained the danger to the public of going down that route. I fully expected—and was disappointed—that the noble Lord, given his background, would refer to the difficulty with pensions, particularly the fact that all these organisations currently have individual pension schemes within the Railway Pensions Scheme. Is the Minister satisfied that it will be possible, in the timescale he is working towards—namely, the designation of GBR in the second half of next year—for the Railway Pension Scheme trustees and Railpen to achieve a smooth and lawful transition of pension arrangements in that time? He may not be able to answer that question now, but we must find some way of coming back and discussing this because pensions are a very important aspect of the remuneration of the employees.

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[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a strong debate on an important issue. It is about ensuring that passengers have a wide range of retailers from which to buy their tickets and other associated services, whether for leisure or onward travel and so on, and that there is a level playing field between Great British Railways’ retail arm and the third sector providers. At the start of the discussion on this group, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, made a clear case about the issues, which are uniting members from across the Committee.

Throughout the discussions on all the amendments in these groups there has been a desire for genuine and fair choice for passengers. We want to promote a competitive retail market and equal access to systems, data and products so that they can be used by start-ups and others as well as established practitioners in this area. The latter point is important. It is part of Amendment 211 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and is supported by a number of other Members, including my noble friend Lord Dixon of Jericho. I want to spell out why these issues are so important.

I was really interested to hear about the recent product launched in Wales earlier, which not all third-party retailers were able to promote. In the last week, South Western Railway has had a special discount, some kind of flash sale, on rail tickets on its services. I was not able to find these on my usual app—Trainline, though others are available—but only on the South Western Railway website, which is what I had to use to purchase these super-discounted tickets. It may well be my technological limitations failing me, but, if I had not seen an email from South Western Railway, I would not have known about these special tickets and would have ended up paying three to four times the amount for my travel.

There has to be a genuine level playing field where all retailers can sell the same tickets and discounted tickets and use their skills and innovations to drive more traffic through their sites and apps. Different people read data and information in different ways, and that is why we have such a range of apps; we all look at things differently and have different ways we want to purchase tickets. It is important that this can thrive, with the jobs and innovation that this creates.

Members from different parties are in the same area on this issue, but some go further. Amendment 17 from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, wishes to prevent Great British Railways having any retail website or application until Parliament has had a say over its full-life cost. This sounds a little bit like what the noble Lord, Lord Harper, was talking about—when he was in the department saying, “Why is Great British Railways getting into this space at all?”

As we have already heard, if you look internationally, SNCF has a retail arm in France, but it is kept separate from the main SNCF network, so there is no conflict. In some ways, that is a bit like the regeneration and planning functions of a local authority. They are a part of the same body, but they have to be kept separate because of their distinct functions. Amendment 182 from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, suggests a way to do this, which may help with this concern.

My noble friend Lord Dixon of Jericho spoke eloquently at Second Reading about this area. I know he has held several meetings with officials to discuss his concerns not just about the existing third-party retailers but the ease for new entrants—start-ups—to come into this marketplace and offer the quality services that passengers desire.

Finally, I want to pick up on Amendments 208 and 339, tabled by my noble friend Lady Leaman. This is so important for passengers. It would ensure automatic Delay Repay compensation, whichever retailer you have bought your tickets with. It is about putting the passenger front and centre so that, if something does go wrong, they are compensated without having to jump through hoop after hoop. It is a basic right if we are to transform our railways into the modern, passenger-focused service that we all desire.

I look forward to the Minister’s response on this really strong debate; I hope that it is far more than simply saying that the retail code of practice, as an approved document, will deal with all these issues. I think the Minister will have heard loudly and clearly—and not just from the transport enthusiasts, though many of us are here in this Room—that noble Lords are rightly concerned about this area, and we must get this right.

[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.

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Moved by

[Lord Moylan]

16: Clause 3, page 2, line 37, leave out from “plans” to end of line 40 and insert—
“(2A) Decisions about access to, and use of, railway infrastructure for the operation of trains will be made by the Office of Rail and Road.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that the Office of Rail and Road continue to make decisions about access.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, there are two amendments in this group. I have extracted them because, if we thought that the last group dealt with private sector concerns of some significance, this group deals with much larger private sector concerns. One of the biggest fears of the private sector, particularly those who operate trains, is the question of access to the rails—access to the track. The current system is that an independent body, the Office of Rail and Road, decides on applications for access to the track. Network Rail decides what should be paid for that, but that is also supervised and approved by the Office of Rail and Road. So there is an independent balancing authority in place that makes these crucial decisions.

Who are we talking about? About 75% of the train movements on Network Rail’s track will be GBR movements. The other 25% are people who need access to that track. They need an independent body; they value an independent body deciding whether they can have that access. They are freight operators; they are what I will call regional operators, such as Transport for London with the London Overground network and Merseyrail; and they are the open access operators. Here, I also have to mention, although it will be debated separately, the heritage railway sector, which has made representations to us and no doubt to other noble Lords about its need for access to the track.

I said on the last group that Great British Railways was like a huge bear—though a friendly bear, in the shape of the noble Lord—sitting in your front room, and the slightest twitch could wipe out your business, even inadvertently. The fact is that this bear will be a regulator making regulatory decisions about access and will be a direct competitor for use of some of those tracks. I say “some” because there will be some tracks where there is sufficient capacity and everyone can have a go so there will be no problem, but a lot of the network is congested. GBR will have a powerful incentive to allocate to itself tracks that it needs for its growing passenger service. When it is not doing that, however, it will be held up by the fact that it also has an objective to increase freight. There is a number attached to that; I cannot remember the number just now, but it requires freight to be increased fairly consistently over a period in order to hit that target. Its second thought, if it is considering who is to have access to congested track, will be, “If it’s not us at GBR, perhaps we’re going to give it to freight”. But that will not be always; not all the freight people will get what they want. Then it will only be further down the line that it will be thinking about the other players that I mentioned.

Amendment 16 is straightforward. It would leave the current situation as it is and those decisions would be made by the Office of Rail and Road. Everybody would understand what was happening. Amendment 221 offers a fallback position. It says that, if the Government are going ahead with this, there must be a right of appeal to the ORR. At the moment, amazingly, having created this huge insensitivity, the Bill says that you can appeal to the ORR but its decisions will not be binding. They will, in effect, be advisory to Great British Railways. This amendment states that the process would be binding and that it would be done not simply on judicial review grounds—that is, whether GBR followed the right process—but on the merits of the case. That, I think, would be a good fallback. The Minister, in writing a very lengthy and helpful letter to noble Lords after Second Reading, said that, if we were to have an independent appeal body, it would create what he called a second directing mind, and he is not willing to have a second directing mind.

I just want to dwell on that for a second because I think it shows the difficulties that we are all going to have with this problem. It is true that you could say that the ORR in that capacity would be a second directing mind, but there are many other second directing minds. The structure being created by the Minister will not have a single directing mind; after all, the courts could make decisions about matters subject to judicial review that will be binding on the Minister. But the Minister does not say, “I wish to be excused supervision by the courts because that would be a second directing mind”. Again, of course, the Secretary of State has huge powers of direction over GBR built into the Bill, but the Minister does not say that that is impermissible because the Secretary of State would be a second directing mind. So to say that a regulator is a second directing mind—and to some extent all regulators are, where they exist—is not a defence to the claim that there must be somebody capable of giving the assurances to the open-access operators, regional government operators and freight operators that their case will be considered fairly and that the charges when set will be fair.

Then we come to another point. The Bill requires GBR to set a scale of charges for access to the track but then gives GBR the power to decide to set a higher charge for access to the tracks if it believes that an economically efficient operator can bear it. Of course, deciding what is an economically efficient operator requires a whole set of experts doing nothing but that. If you go to somewhere such as the Civil Aviation Authority, which has to make decisions about whether something is economically efficient, there is a whole suite of people working there who make these decisions. It is their expertise; they are economic utility regulators. The same thing happens with other utilities. There is no mention in the Bill, however, or anywhere else, that GBR is going to recruit that capacity, but none the less it is going to set itself up to make the decision about whether somebody is or is not an economically efficient operator and what they can bear. It will be able to set higher charges limited only by that consideration. None of this washes with the private, municipal or freight sectors. They simply do not accept this any more than the retail sector accepts what the Government are offering to it.

As with the retail sector, the private sector operating on the railway—it is very sad that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, is not here to disagree with me about this—has added huge amounts. The whole of the freight sector is privately owned, and nobody is suggesting that there is going to be any change to that. Open-access operators using white track spaces offer benefits. The heritage sector brings in a modest, but none the less very useful, income to this country. It is part of our tourism industry and very useful in that regard. It gives jobs, entertainment and value to people who live in the communities served by the heritage railways.

The purpose of these two amendments is to open up a debate on this very important issue, where the Government have been obdurate, despite all the representations made to them, but which I think will have to be addressed by this House. I do not think this Bill can leave this House with this structure in place. I beg to move.

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[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. I will not give it now but will come back to that in the debate. I should also say for the benefit of the Committee that Network Rail is publishing the access and use policy consultation tomorrow, which will apparently address the noble Lord’s questions on abstraction. I am sure we can debate his points further when we get to the detailed debate.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it will not wash. The noble Lord did not give any explanation of why there should be an appeals system which cannot look at the merits of the case and cannot bind GBR. He says that we are going to come back and discuss this again. I am sure we will and I hope we will. We should be discussing it several times in Committee, and we will certainly be discussing it on Report. At the moment, I beg to withdraw my amendment, but I am absolutely clear that this will not wash.

Amendment 16 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Moylan]

21: Clause 4, page 3, line 26, at end insert—
“(e) such other body corporate as they see fit.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to explore why the Bill places limitations on Scottish and Welsh ministers as to the manner of their exercising their functions relating to the railways or railway services.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 4 deals with relations with the devolved authorities in Scotland and Wales. I have a number of amendments here—five, in fact. They all appear in a sense to be relatively minor but they go to the heart of the devolution settlement. They raise the question of whether the Bill is in line with the new Prime Minister’s policy—I know he has not been elected to anything but he is the new Prime Minister—of making devolution a reality. I will run through the amendments fairly straightforwardly and leave it to others to debate them and the Minister to respond.

One of the things that can be done is that any combined authority or devolved authority has a right to request. I always find this slightly offensive, because we are a free country—everyone has a right to request something from the Minister—but apparently, this valued “right to request” is going to be given. You can go along and ask GBR if it will run a service local to you, which might even be branded your way, to which you might contribute some of the costs. That is the general idea. I can understand that in relation to English combined authorities but not the devolved Administrations.

For example, I do not understand at all why Scotland should be confined by statute to running that service using Great British Railways. If the path is available and the service can be run, why should Scotland not make its own choice about who the operator of that service should be? As I understand it, that would not be possible under the Bill; it would have to be a GBR service. I think that is a bit insulting to Scottish devolution. The same applies to Wales. My Amendment 21 would correct that and allow them to exercise railway functions through a body corporate other than Great British Railways.

Amendment 145 goes hand in hand with Amendment 146, because they relate to Scotland and Wales. They relate to the fact that, under the Bill, there will have to be a memorandum of understanding between Great British Railways and the Scottish and Welsh Governments. There is a great deal of reliance on memoranda of understanding in the Bill, but we never see them and have no entitlement to do so. I am not saying that they will not be published, but I am not sure that the Government are under an obligation to publish them. They are so much a part of this Bill, but their substance is being concealed from us in Parliament and wrapped up in documents that are ancillary to the main agreement. My Amendments 145 and 146 would require those memoranda to be laid before Parliament before they could come into effect.

Finally, I have the paired Amendments 294 and 295. Again, one relates to Scotland and one to Wales. Amendment 294 relates to Clause 82. There is something fantastically cheeky in Clause 82, which reads:

“Great British Railways must consult the Scottish Ministers before making a decision within subsection (2)”—


which would be a decision about cross-border services and additions to a part of the railway network operated by Great British Railways that is situated in Scotland—

“if it appears to Great British Railways that the decision will significantly affect the interests of Scotland’s economy or of persons living in, working in or visiting”

the area. I come back to a similar question I asked in the last group: what economic capacity would Great British Railways be employing to make disinterested decisions about whether something would have a significant effect on the interests of Scotland’s economy? Secondly, is it not more likely that the Scottish Government would be the appropriate body to make a decision about whether something will have a significant effect on the interests of the Scottish economy? My amendment would put that right by reversing it. Amendment 295 would do something similar for Wales.

There is a certain arrogance in the Bill, certainly with regard to local government in England, but the arrogance towards the Scottish and Welsh Governments is beyond the pale, given what the Prime Minister has been saying and what those Governments would accept. I hope that, when the Minister replies, he will say that the matters to which I have drawn attention are slips in the drafting that he will be happy to correct, either through my amendments or amendments that he will draft and submit to us on Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to talk to my Amendment 22 in this group. Before I do that, I might just say so to my noble friend that I see the point he is driving at with Amendment 21, but I think it is a little more complicated. It seems to me that this is about the circumstances that apply where the Scottish or Welsh Ministers wish to use Great British Railways or a company jointly owned by themselves and Great British Railways. In effect, they are not subsidiaries of Great British Railways: we can already see in the Bill this distinction between GBR companies and a company that is jointly owned by Scottish and Welsh Ministers and GBR.

They can use that to provide services but, as far as I can see, they are not prevented from doing the following. If you look at subsequent clauses, we have seen the whole process of designation of passenger services, which those of us who did the public ownership Bill will remember. They have to designate passenger services with a public sector company, but the definition of a public sector company in a later clause is not the same. It could be a company wholly owned by Scottish Ministers or by Welsh Ministers; they are not required to use Great British Railways. They could even do the same thing that the Secretary of State can, which is exempt services from designation, and then do the same as the Secretary of State does with TfL but in Glasgow, Cardiff and so on. So I think it is a little more complicated.

In particular, I think putting “other body corporate” in here is not necessary. More to the point, if I may say so to my noble friend, is to re-enter the question of the scope of who might provide designated services, which I know he will do with further amendments at a later stage.

Amendment 22, on my part, is just to see whether there is really a problem. At the point at which Scottish and Welsh Ministers look to change arrangements that they have made with Great British Railways to provide some services, they are required to consult with the Secretary of State and Great British Railways. However, those arrangements will necessarily lead to issues that need to be governed by the regulatory functions of the Office of Rail and Road and relate to the licensing of those operators through the ORR. It seems to me perfectly reasonable to require that Scottish and Welsh Ministers, at the point of making or changing those arrangements, should also consult the Office of Rail and Road in order to ensure that there is not a difficulty associated with what they are asking GBR to do on their behalf. The purpose of Amendment 22 is to put in that consultation with the ORR.

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[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord draws my attention to something which, having read it to him, I concluded myself. This is the purpose of Committee, of course: to discover things that you have not thought about. I am as willing as the next Minister, perhaps, to decide what to do. We will take that away, and I am grateful to the noble Lord. For the avoidance of doubt, I still do not accept the contention about the connections between the MoU and the strategies, but I accept the points that the respective boundaries of the strategies could be much better placed than they are.

Amendment 146 from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, goes further on the provisions on the allocation of ticket revenue from cross-border services operated by Transport for Wales. We do not think that is appropriate. Such operational and commercial matters are more appropriately dealt with through established industry arrangements such as public service contracts and the Wales and borders agreements rather than through an intergovernmental co-operation agreement, which is fundamentally about the governance of GBR, so I urge the noble Lord not to press the amendment.

I turn to Amendments 294 and 295 on consultation. The Government fully recognise the importance of ensuring that Scottish and Welsh Ministers are consulted on decisions that have a significant impact on their nations. That is precisely why the Bill already places a duty on GBR to consult them before making such decisions. The amendment would go further by requiring devolved Ministers to determine whether consultation was required. That would add significant delay for no practical benefit, as Scottish and Welsh Ministers would be required to review decisions that would often be irrelevant to them before steps can be taken. The approach could create uncertainty about when decisions can proceed and risk shifting the focus from effective engagement to procedural questions about whether consultation is required. Scottish and Welsh Ministers will also continue to have important mechanisms through which they can influence the railway, including their respective rail and transport strategies, their powers, which are strong, and guidance. The Government therefore consider these amendments unnecessary.

Finally, Amendment 296 from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, specifies that GBR should consult on access decisions where they impact Welsh Ministers. Clause 82 already requires that GBR consults Wales on issues affecting it. That requirement would also extend to access decisions. Therefore, I can reassure the noble Lord that his intent has already been achieved by the Bill but, bearing in mind what he said in support of his amendment, I will write to him, and copy it to other noble Lords, about the ownership and control of infrastructure in Scotland and Wales now and in the future so that he and other noble Lords—though I see the noble Lord is not in his place—can be clear about the present and future arrangements, since I think what he said expressed a degree of confusion about them.

I finish by saying again, as I started with, that Scotland and Wales have been intensely involved in the drafting of the Bill and that both Governments are very supportive of it. Therefore, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, we see a pattern—there is always an argument as to why the bear in the front room should be able to make the decisions without constraint, and here we go with Scotland and Wales. If the Minister tells me that Scottish and Welsh Ministers are happy that Great British Railways, a largely unaccountable body that is largely concerned with English railways, should make a determination as to what is of economic significance to Scotland and Wales, and that they have had that question put to them, considered it squarely and come back and said “Yes”, then of course that is what the Bill should say. It strikes me as odd and not consistent with the general approach that the Scottish and Welsh Governments would take to these things. Beyond that, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Harper on drawing out various points. I feel a swathe of government amendments coming on Report.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Only one.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I think there will have to be others as well. None the less, for the moment, I have done my best to defend the devolution settlement, keep up the policy of the Prime Minister and give Scotland and Wales a say over the future of their own economies in so far as they are affected by public transport. Having done that, I will subside and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 21 withdrawn.

Railways Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I think it might fall to me to speak next, if my noble friend does not want to speak to his amendments at this stage.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I will speak at the end, if I may.

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[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, before I turn to the substance of this group, I would like to say that I received this morning from the Minister, as I imagine other noble Lords have, a letter setting out certain corrections to statements that he made on Tuesday. I have not had the opportunity to study that, but I hope that there will be an opportunity at a later stage in Committee, if necessary, to come back and question the noble Lord on the points made in that letter.

However, I also yesterday received an email from a group calling itself the Association of British Commuters. It referred to the debate that we had on Tuesday concerning what constituted in this context a wholly owned subsidiary of GBR and whether that was consistent with some sort of public/private partnership for the purpose, for example, of developing land. This was not a strange email; it was very coherent, sensible and well written. The thrust of it was that not only did noble Lords on these Benches get it all wrong—if I may say so to my noble friend Lord Lansley; if he has not received the email, I will send it to him—but so did the Minister.

I have two questions before I start on this section. First, has the Minister received this email? If not, I am very happy to send it to him. Secondly, does he expect to return to the Committee at the earliest opportunity to make corrective statements? Clearly, if he has not seen the email, he will not be able to answer the second question, because his officials will not have had the chance to advise him, but he is under an obligation to return at the earliest opportunity if he has something to correct, as he has today—I am giving him that opportunity. When I sit down, I will send him the email. If he tells me at the end that he has not received it, I will very happily send it to him, as I will to my noble friend Lord Lansley.

I turn to the group of amendments that we have been debating. I shall speak to—I shall not read out the numbers—all the amendments that I have tabled in this group, which are quite a lot. I shall also speak briefly on Amendment 27 on behalf of my noble friend Lord Grayling.

These amendments go to the heart of the devolution agenda. None of us is satisfied with what the Bill contains on devolution to local authorities, strategic authorities, regional authorities—whatever they are called. I have been thinking about why none of us is satisfied and what the fundamental flaw of the Bill is in this regard. The answer is that there is no devolution in it. What the Bill does is give those authorities the right to request things from Great British Railways—as I said on Tuesday, I find the phrase “right to request” quite objectionable in a free country, because we all have a right to request things of Ministers as part of our democracy. In other words, they have the right to ask to become customers. If those things are granted to them, they will have those services provided by Great British Railways and they will make payments towards them, if necessary, to justify the carriage of passengers on that particular route. All they have, therefore, is the right to request to become customers. There are no devolved powers in any of this. There is no devolved running of railways, because that would be inconsistent, I suspect, in the Minister’s mind with the single directing brain that is going to be controlling the railways. So there is very little.

The amendments that I have tabled fall into two groups. Two of them relate to devolution in general, and the second group relates to TfL in particular. To start with TfL, I need to start by saying that although it is not a current interest, as many noble Lords in the Room will know, I used to be deputy chairman of TfL and indeed worked closely with the Minister during that time. The Mayor of London has made it clear that he wants further devolution of rail services to TfL. In fact, this is a process that started when I was deputy chairman of TfL and the Minister was commissioner, and very successful it has been. Lines that were, in effect, abandoned became busy commuter routes, with very little investment—just through good management, making the stations attractive and having some new trains. It has been a huge success. The London Overground is one of the huge rail successes that this country has achieved in the past few years—all of it run on a concession model, incidentally, involving the private sector or external train companies of one sort or another.

The Mayor of London wants more of that—that is understandable. I think Londoners want more of that. The Mayor of London now has a high-powered friend in Downing Street. The Prime Minister has said that power has been hoarded in SW1 for too long. He wants power carried to every postcode in the land—et cetera—and the Government will be redistributing power. This Bill does not redistribute power to anybody in local government. So I would hope that the Minister would have changed his mind in recent weeks and would be extremely sympathetic to these amendments.

Amendments 28 to 30 seek to ensure that the Secretary of State remains properly involved in arrangements between GBR and TfL, rather than allowing those relations to be determined solely within GBR. This is the bear in the room again. GBR is going to be so huge. It will make all the decisions. Everybody else is just a taker of decisions by GBR, they are not participating in them.

Amendment 159 seeks to protect existing TfL and London Underground arrangements and would ensure that they could not simply be displaced without proper process and consultation.

Amendment 301 makes the principle even simpler: where GBR is making a decision affecting TfL, it should inform TfL and allow TfL itself to determine whether the decision is sufficiently significant to require consultation. That seems entirely consistent with the Prime Minister’s philosophy. The same principle lies behind Amendments 23 to 25, 156 and 297 in relation to mayors and local government more widely, to which I now turn.

Amendments 23 and 24 would give greater flexibility for railway functions to be exercised locally and for the necessary financial arrangements to flow in either direction. At the moment the Bill allows GBR to collect money from local authorities. Why should it not be the other way round? What if GBR makes a profit on a line? Why should it not pay money to the local authority? Why is everything so one-sided in the Bill?

Amendment 25 would provide an independent route to the ORR where agreement cannot be reached. There is no way in the Bill of resolving disagreements. So let us provide one. Let us have an appeal to an independent ORR. It is not that I think the ORR is tremendous, but it is currently the only available appeal body. If the Minister says he is happy to have an appeal but would like a different structure, we would be open to discussing that, but let us have an appeal route so that disagreements can be resolved independently.

Amendment 156 would allow mayoral and combined authorities to procure local passenger services through concession agreements, including using private operators where that offers the best solution. Currently they are limited to using GBR to provide the services. What if GBR is no good? I know that GBR is going to be managed beautifully and nothing will ever go wrong in the utopian vision we are looking forward to, but what if it is not actually very good? What if people are constantly on strike? What if the management is sloppy? Why should you not be able to turn to a private train operator to manage your local service? This is not a question of track access or timetables, because they have been agreed, but why would you have to use GBR to provide these services if you are genuinely enjoying devolution?

Amendment 297 would require GBR to notify a mayoral combined authority before taking a relevant decision. I accept the point made by my noble friend Lord Lansley that that terminology might be improved, but I am not entering into that issue at the moment. That would allow the authority itself to judge whether the decision is sufficiently significant to require consultation. Why should GBR be the body to decide whether something should be consulted on, when it is the local authority that has the knowledge of how sensitive it might be with the local communities that could benefit from consultation?

These amendments test how far the Government intend to follow through on the Prime Minister’s policies. Do they genuinely trust mayors and local authorities to shape local services? Do they support further rail devolution to London where TfL can demonstrate that it would improve services? Will they ensure that GBR becomes a partner in genuine devolution—not simply acquiring local authority customers—rather than just a national body through which decisions are centralised? Given the new Prime Minister’s stated agenda, I hope we will see a different approach from the Minister for the first time.

The amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Berkeley, and my noble friends Lord Lansley and Lord Grayling are at the heart of many of the issues that I have raised in this group. They also sit squarely with what the Prime Minister himself advocated when he was Mayor of Greater Manchester—a song that he has continued to sing, on the whole, since he became Prime Minister, about the importance of devolving power, giving local leaders greater control over transport and allowing places to shape growth around their own priorities. It is time for the Minister to step up, get real and get with the swing of where, we are told, Burnham’s Britain is going.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, before we move on, I return briefly to a point raised in Committee on Tuesday on Amendment 146, regarding the long-term rail strategy and its relationship with devolved railway responsibilities. I was less than clear on this issue when we discussed it previously and thought it would be helpful to make a point of order to provide clarity and correct the record.

For clarity, the Government consider that Clause 15 is correctly drafted and accurately reflects the devolution settlement. The Secretary of State’s long-term rail strategy will cover Great Britain. It will cover all of England and Wales and will address the railway in Scotland with regard to reserved matters only. Reserved matters include issues such as cross-border services, technical standards and railway safety and security. Scottish Ministers have devolved responsibility for matters such as Scottish passenger services and Scottish funded infrastructure. Accordingly, Clause 15(3) prevents the long-term rail strategy making provisions about functions of the Scottish Ministers, who will cover those matters in their own strategy.

I hope that explanation is helpful. The key point is that there is no inconsistency between describing the strategy as Great Britain-wide and providing an appropriate carve-out for devolved Scottish functions. I also reassure noble Lords—

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[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. We thought that we had been saved by the bell, but we were not, so I thought that it was right to put it right.

I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that to my knowledge I do not have an email from the Association of British Commuters, although I do get several emails a day. If he sends it to me, I shall talk to officials about what it suggests. I think that is the most I can say.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

It is on its way in a matter of seconds.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

On group 1, of course this matter is of significance to this Government, with a new Prime Minister, and I firmly believe that the Bill already empowers mayors in local areas. I am clear that Great British Railways will not work unless it works for and with mayors and local communities.

In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, who quoted me, I stand by what is said. This is absolutely not a tick-box exercise.

I turn to Amendment 22A in the name of my noble friend Lord Blunkett, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, has kindly spoken today. I absolutely agree with him and with the noble Baroness that the partnership approach that the Bill sets out must be effective. GBR must engage with partnership offers seriously, and the bar for GBR to reject a partnership must be exceptionally high. As we are aligned on the intent behind the amendment, which she described as the principal amendment in this group as it covers all circumstances, I commit to taking it away and I shall see what can be done after this debate.

I turn to Amendments 147 and 156. The Government absolutely support further rail devolution where it is in the interests of passengers and the wider rail network. That is why the Bill already provides a route for passenger rail services to be devolved through exemption from designation by the Secretary of State in Clause 28. Where services are devolved, mayors already have flexibility to choose their approach to securing passenger services and may secure them via a concession contract, including to the private sector, if they so wish. The Bill does not change that. TFL, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, describes, operates on precisely this basis. There is therefore no need to duplicate the existing devolution provision in the Bill, which already achieves that intent in full.

On Amendments 23 and 24, Clause 5 is already intended to support local commissioning arrangements: it enables mayors to contribute funding where they wish to secure services or improvements that reflect local priorities and go beyond the national railway offer. This gives local leaders a mechanism to invest in additional rail outcomes for their area where they choose to do so, providing the local input that we know is so important for enhancing our communities. The details of these arrangements, including revenue-sharing options, will be agreed separately from legislation via collaborative partnerships between GBR and mayors. Work on developing this model has already begun, using Greater Manchester as a pathfinder—I am going to meet the new mayor of Greater Manchester tomorrow.

The Government absolutely support greater local influence over rail services, but allowing mayors to run rail services is a financially significant decision, with safety and public interest impacts; that is why it is right that the current process in the Bill for devolving services to local leaders remains the route that is used for this. That route is well understood, familiar to industry and proven effective. Allowing mayors to run GBR services outside of the usual process is not necessary and does not better serve local communities.

I turn to Amendments 26, 64, 304 and 333. The Bill is focused on mayoral strategic authorities to reflect their growth across England and the role that mayors can play to convene local partners and tackle regional challenges. Mayors have the most far-reaching and flexible powers; therefore, this level of authority is of the appropriate scale and capability to integrate rail with wider public transport, enabling them to engage effectively with Great British Railways.

Furthermore, as outlined in the Cabinet statement Rewiring the State, published in July, the Government consider that mayors who are directly accountable to the residents who elect them can provide the best governance for their communities. As a result, the suite of powers available to areas with mayors will be commensurately greater, recognising the role that they play as leaders in their regions. However, this is not to say that other levels of local government will be excluded from engagement with Great British Railways, and I take the point that it is important that no local authority is left out, as indeed the Prime Minister said a few days ago. The plan is for all tiers of local government to benefit from local GBR business units, and some existing authorities have collaborated well with the existing structure, including Devon, with several new stations, and, recently, Cornwall, with the Mid Cornwall Metro.

Our approach does not intend to exclude anyone from working with the railway, but we think it is sensible to use mayors as a focal point for powers, responsibilities and representation in their local areas. That said, I am happy to see if there is anything we can do outside the Bill to reassure foundation authorities that their views will be properly considered, and I will reflect on that further.

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[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I think that illustrates a point. The Minister talks of devolution, but everything is flowing one way, so I will come back to this point. It arose in relation to Scotland—and, I think, also Wales—on Tuesday. GBR will be obliged to consult with local authorities on matters of significance. Significant is the word. But GBR will decide what is significant. Amendments I tabled that would allow the local area, or, in the case of Scotland, Scottish Ministers, to decide what is significant for them were brushed aside on the grounds that it would be far too difficult, they would have to review hundreds of decisions and could not possibly do that.

Of course, GBR has to review hundreds of decisions to decide whether they are significant. In local authority terms, one picks out very quickly what the significant decisions are because one has the local knowledge of what will cause a terrible fuss, which GBR does not have. Does the Minister see that the Bill cannot survive claiming a devolution mandate on the basis of this mentality, which keeps coming back? The Minister wants to be a proactive partner but, given GBR, I find that a rather terrifying thing, because it suggests that the other partner will be managed the whole time by GBR; then, at the end of the process, it will think it had a successful partnership. It is the wrong mentality, and it has to change.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I think the noble Lord is in a different place in his imagination of this. These proposals will generally originate with GBR. Its structure, which I described on the first day in Committee, will be organised locally and regionally and so it will know how those proposals are going to affect local communities.

There will be timetable changes, station improvements and infrastructure improvements. It is much easier for GBR to identify those in relation to the local and combined authorities that it deals with than it would be for them to sift through what, sadly in many cases, is railwayese in describing what is going on. I do not agree with the noble Lord. I believe this will work and that it will be a genuine partnership with those authorities.

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[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, these amendments cover directions and guidance from the Secretary of State. They push for greater transparency around those, which is something that we really support. Information that has supported key decisions and directions should be placed in the public domain. It is really important that Great British Railways develops an open culture right from the start and that it is clear where and how decisions have been made and on the basis of what evidence. The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, focus in particular on any Secretary of State directions relating to the level and structure of fares, which are, I think, of great interest to everyone. Clarity on these points from the Minister would be helpful as we continue our scrutiny of the Bill.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 37 in my name, which is a probing amendment. It would limit the power of the Scottish Ministers to issue directions to GBR to circumstances where a KPI has been missed or performance has not been up to snuff.

I do not advance that because I think it is an appropriate thing to put in the Bill; it is a question of probing when the Government think the powers should be used, because it is not clear. We are meant to have a single directing mind—GBR is meant to be the single directing mind—but, as I said on Tuesday, we have several other directing minds here, too. One of them is the Secretary of State, who can issue directions—after all, directions are exactly what a directing mind would be expected to produce—but, now, we also have the Scottish Ministers issuing directions, and it is not absolutely clear that they cannot overturn the directions of the Secretary of State. I want to know what the powers can be used for, how clashes and contradictions can be avoided, and how all this is coherent with the Minister’s claim that he is creating a single directing mind in the shape of Great British Railways.

I wish to comment briefly on the other amendments in this group. My noble friend Lord Grayling has tabled Amendments 34 to 36, to which I have added my name. It is an important constitutional principle that directions issued by the Secretary of State are not only published but laid before Parliament. The Minister will say, “You can’t possibly expect MPs to read these things. They haven’t got time. They might be full of railwayese. What is the possible advantage of putting them in front of MPs?”, but I think that MPs and Peers would value having these important directions put before them so that the Secretary of State can be held accountable for his or her actions in the management of the railways.

My noble friend Lord Lansley’s Amendments 32 and 33 are also entirely reasonable. Where relevant functions have been delegated and the Secretary of State proposes to give GBR directions affecting infrastructure, capacity, timetables, charging or performance in Scotland or Wales, surely it is right that the Scottish or Welsh Ministers are consulted.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions to this group.

On Amendments 32 and 33, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, access to railway infrastructure is a reserved matter. It is important that access and timetabling decisions make sense across the entire rail network; therefore, there must be one central decision-maker, to avoid fragmented and disparate decision-making, which increases delays, cancellations and disruption. However, GBR must consult Scottish and Welsh Ministers before issuing, revising or replacing its access and use policy. It must consult them on other decisions if those decisions may affect their interests, and must take into account their transport plans when making access decisions. There are therefore already adequate safeguards for devolved Governments in relation to the access regime.

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I reassure the noble Lord, however, that the Government will absolutely publish the objectives, criteria and assessments used to set parameters for fares and that this will be published within or alongside the public services contract. I hope the noble Lord feels reassured enough to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

On my Amendment 37, if the Minister insists on responding solely in the literal sense to explicitly probing amendments—seeking in this case to work out how a conflict in directions between Scottish Ministers and the Secretary of State, for example, might be addressed—all he does is encourage further amendments to be tabled to the Bill to bring the subject back so that it can be debated. One has to keep finding wording that will make that happen. I genuinely would like to know how he sees these multiple direct laws, producing directions, operating together. Do they collaborate, what happens in the case of contradictions, and so forth? These are questions to which Parliament is entitled to an answer.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I believe I did answer the noble Lord: the memoranda of understanding between Scottish Ministers and this Government, and between Welsh Ministers and this Government, set out the processes by which these things will be co-ordinated. Were there to be any real difficulty in the circumstances he is describing, we would not have been able to get as far as we did in drafting the MoUs, which we have done, and in the agreement of Scottish and Welsh Ministers to the provisions of it.

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[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, when I was deputy chairman of Transport for London, I found London TravelWatch a rather annoying body. I suspect that when the Minister was the transport commissioner he found it even more annoying than I did, because of course it was there to complain as well as to make suggestions for improvements, so I can understand that there may well be a level of resistance to the suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. However, I have added my name to her amendments because, objectively speaking, she is absolutely right: this is a very important statutory body. It should be treated on a level footing with other transport users’ committees. I can see no possible grounds for objection that the Minister may have. I suspect this will be one of the concessions he makes on Report and, if he does not, it will be inserted in the Bill whether he likes it or not. I look forward to hearing him say that the noble Baroness is spot on about this and that he willing be able to accept, if not her amendments as drafted today, at least amendments in lieu to the same effect that he might produce in the near future.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, for these amendments. I should directly contradict the noble Lord, Lord Moylan: as the commissioner of transport for Transport for London, I found London TravelWatch a very constructive body. I enjoyed dealing with it; there were other people we dealt with who were far more difficult.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I shall not list them.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I think they include the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Some of the board.

As the noble Baroness says, London TravelWatch plays a vital role as the statutory watchdog for London, championing the interests of people who travel across all modes of the city’s integrated transport network. That is precisely why the Bill will strengthen its rail powers to ensure there is consistent passenger advocacy across Great Britain.

However, the passenger watchdog will have a new role in the reformed railways which will be different to the role of London TravelWatch. It will go beyond being solely a watchdog and passenger champion. It will have a central role in holding rail operators, including GBR, to account by setting consumer standards for the industry and monitoring operator compliance with them. It would not be appropriate to have two different bodies setting standards, which is why the watchdog will work closely with London TravelWatch to ensure that standards applied across all operators reflect its expertise. That is why London TravelWatch is treated differently in the Bill and why GBR, the Secretary of State and the Office of Rail and Road must consult only the watchdog on certain matters such as the licence, the long-term rail strategy and GBR’s business plan. London TravelWatch is not expected, for example, to have any role on the licence.

That said, I can reassure the noble Baroness that I absolutely agree that London TravelWatch must continue to have a voice on matters that impact the London transport network, and indeed the wider scope of London TravelWatch that she referred to. I understand that Transport Focus, the future passenger watchdog and London TravelWatch will update their existing collaboration agreement to reflect changes in roles. I expect this will include additional expectations around consultation and engagement where matters will affect London and the other services which London TravelWatch oversees. For these reasons, I urge her now to withdraw her amendment, though I am happy to discuss this with her further after Committee.

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[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group: Amendments 65 and 73. Rather than the broader issues of funding, mine are much more nitty-gritty questions about the transparency of the business plan and how the funding processes for Great British Railways are to work.

Amendment 65 is to Schedule 2, which is that part of the Bill where Great British Railways shows us in its business plan how its money is received and allocated towards activities. If I remember correctly, we are in that bit where it has to set out various things. We are at line 27 on page 71:

“The plan must set out … the activities Great British Railways proposes … the costs of carrying on those activities, and how Great British Railways proposes to meet those costs”.


Strictly speaking, all the things that I am asking for in Amendment 65 might be comprised within that.

This is an opportunity for us to be clear about what Great British Railways should do. In a separate group I will come to another issue related to the relationship with local government bodies. In this particular instance, there would be important transparency in Great British Railways being required, when setting out its business plan, to show what contributions are received by GBR itself from GBR companies, presumably by way of profits or revenue remitted to GBR for this purpose, and vice versa: how much is being paid out through GBR companies and how much is being received. Amendment 65 is for that purpose: where the activity is carried out by a GBR company, the contributions received from or provided to GBR in relation to those activities. I hope that is a straightforward transparency issue when the business plan is being presented. A good plan would do that anyway; it is just a case of trying to be clear about that now.

This affords me the opportunity to say something to my noble friend Lord Moylan. We discussed on Tuesday the question of GBR companies, and he returned to this issue and chastised me, saying that I was inaccurate. I do not think I was as inaccurate as he might imagine.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I never chastised.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I would never dream of doing that. It is inconceivable that I should do that. I drew to my noble friend’s attention an email that I had received that said that he had made a mistake and that the Minister had also made a mistake. I gave no opinion myself on that. It was very well argued, and I shared it with the Minister and the noble Lord. In writing to the noble Lord—I hope he has received that by now—I explicitly said that I did not know whether it was right or wrong, but I wondered whether he wished to make a comment. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, may wish to make a comment at any time he chooses, but not a comment, I hope, that is intended to be a rebuttal of any chastisement, or even a mild criticism, suggested by me.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that correction. He has shared the email with me. I think it is worth putting on the record the point, made in that email, that it is important to distinguish between joint ventures on the one hand and corporate activities of companies on the other. However, the point of the debate on Tuesday was that I was seeking to establish under the legislation that GBR companies do not have to be wholly owned. Hansard will show that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, was seeking to establish that GBR companies are required to be wholly owned. That was the simple debate.

As I understand it, Clause 99 of the Bill makes it clear that GBR companies are a subsidiary of GBR, and a subsidiary under the Companies Act does not require to be wholly owned. If the Government had wanted GBR companies to be wholly-owned subsidiaries, they would have said so. So, as far as I am concerned, it is a subsidiary and, as we know, under the Companies Act, a subsidiary is a matter of control, not of complete ownership. As far as I am concerned, I got what I wanted out of that debate, which was my assurance that GBR companies are not required to be wholly owned.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, we are now redebating what was debated the other day. However, since there was an element of confusion, the noble Lord has accurately characterised the difference in position between himself and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, but it was in the context of an important debate about whether GBR would be able to carry out partnership—I use the word loosely—arrangements with private sector developers for the development of land in which GBR had a stake, with a view to achieving things like more housing or whatever it might be. Of course a subsidiary does not have to be wholly owned, since it is a question of control, so there can easily come a point where a joint venture company might not be controlled by GBR, and the question then is whether those arrangements would still apply.

The fundamental issue in the debate as I saw it—I entirely understand what the noble Lord is saying—is whether the structure proposed by the Government in the Bill inhibits what we would all agree are desirable developments that could take place using GBR assets working with the private sector. I heard the Minister give assurance on that, and of course I accept that, but I was merely advancing this to him because the suggestion was that confusion had arisen about joint ventures, subsidiaries and wholly-owned control in the course of debate, and that the Minister had fallen into that confusion, along with others. Therefore, I was giving him the opportunity to say whether that was in fact the case, although I do not expect him to do so today because he has only just had the email.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I think that was an intervention. I can only speak for myself, but I do not think I am confused now. The Bill does not inhibit this from happening in future and that is a satisfactory position for us to have reached. That is relevant to this debate in that my Amendment 65 is about the relationship between GBR and its companies, and financial transactions—the resources provided to or the resources received from GBR companies—ought to be explicit in the business plan.

I turn to Amendment 73. Now we really are in a happy position. It is many years since I was responsible for the public expenditure of a government department. I do not mean as Secretary of State; I mean as the official responsible. Knowing what powers one is using in relation to spending money is important. Amendment 73 is a probing amendment but I have used the structure of saying that the same activity should not be funded out of both the powers in the Bill, where financial assistance can be provided by the Secretary of State to GBR, and Section 6 of the Railways Act 2005, which noble Lords who know these things better than I do will remember is a broad-ranging power to provide financial assistance to GBR. I want to establish at this point—we might return to it at a later stage to see whether it is a satisfactory position—which GBR activities will be in receipt of financial assistance from the Government under the Section 6 power that exists now under the 2005 Act, or the financial assistance to be provided under this legislation. We need to avoid the confusion of two different powers providing financial assistance to the same activity.

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[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, what an absolute pleasure it is to hear from my railway expert noble friend Lord Bradshaw. It is such a delight that he has been able to join us in Committee in person today and to contribute to our debate, particularly after he had a significant birthday yesterday.

Funding certainty is absolutely crucial for the railway going forward. Being able to plan investment and work properly, and deliver it in a timely manner, is essential. My noble friend Lord Bradshaw’s amendments try to show the seriousness of changing mid-programme railway investment and putting in additional steps for any material change to an agreed funding settlement by involving the ORR for an independent assessment, which should be published. This would ensure transparency and expert assessment if funding for the railway is changed, particularly mid-year.

Amendment 65 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, would require more transparency. That is welcome, as was the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Harper. In fact, it is notable that he has spoken on every group apart from the one with solely my amendments on London TravelWatch. I will not take that personally, but I say, “Once a Secretary of State, always a Secretary of State”. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group: Amendments 55, 56, 70, 78 and 86. I start with Amendment 78. Paragraph 15 of Schedule 2 states:

“Financial assistance given to Great British Railways or a GBR company”


primarily to enable it to carry out its infrastructure functions under Clause 3(1)(a)—this is one of the general functions that we discussed on Tuesday—is not to be treated as

“a subsidy for the purposes of the Subsidy Control Act 2022”.

This is a probing amendment to find out the justification for that. I suspect that the justification is that it is not treated as a subsidy currently and, therefore, the Bill simply carries forward the existing situation. I wonder whether that is appropriate.

The Subsidy Control Act 2022 exists for a purpose and requires that public authorities should consider whether subsidies are proportionate and necessary, whether they distort competition or investment, and whether their benefits outweigh their adverse effects. I wonder why the management, renewal and operation of infrastructure on railways should be specifically exempt from those requirements. This exemption does not apply to the other general functions listed in Clause 3, but it applies to this one. I do not want to be hypercritical, because I know that these things are very difficult and there are often excuses, but why should this condition not apply to these functions—particularly when there is a general lack of confidence in these functions being carried out with great efficiency at the moment and when they always seem to be very expensive? Is there a reason other than simple inertia? I do not think that inertia is enough.

The Act also requires safeguards on transparency, the scrutiny of particularly significant subsidies by the Competition and Markets Authority, and ultimately the ability to challenge subsidies decisions via the Competition Appeal Tribunal. Noble Lords may say, “All of this is going to happen. It’ll be GBR doing stuff for GBR rail, so how does competition come into this?” But, as noble Lords know, a great deal of maintenance activity on the track is carried out by private companies contracted for that purpose; that may upset the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, but there we are.

As far as I know, there is no indication in the Bill that that will change, and so I understand why the provision of subsidies might raise competition concerns. There is an appropriate authority here that can address them. That is my first question. It is a probing amendment, but I would like to know why these potentially very substantial sums should be outside the regular framework.

In Amendment 70 I am simply asking for the business plan to be published. I think it is important that people should be able to see it. It is possible the Minister will say that he has every intention of publishing the business plan; TfL publishes its business plan, and most other similar organisations publish their business plans. As far as I can see, there is no statutory obligation in the Bill—I may have missed it—to publish the business plan each year or period to which a new business plan would apply.

Amendments 55, 56 and 86 are about building financial discipline, both in the Government and elsewhere. Here, perhaps, I contest the comments made by my noble friend Lord Harper and will say something about the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. There is a serious issue here and I do not think that the noble Lord has got it right. I do not actually think that my amendments have got it right, but this is the right place for us to talk about the general question of how the Government treat the railways in terms of funding and the provision of funds—not how much they give, but how they do it and what the process is.

The reason for that is as follows. I used to be in a local authority and very often we had to set a budget in March but did not know until Christmas—even after Christmas—what the subsidy from government would be. It is extremely difficult to put budgets together at short notice. With the railways, it is even more difficult. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has already said that significant changes require a great lead-time and planning to be delivered and just as long for them to be reversed.

Most of my amendments are trying not to fetter Ministers—I accept the comments from my noble friend Lord Harper that Ministers have to be accountable for public expenditure and that they have to make difficult decisions sometimes—but to build in a notice period. I have suggested two years so that, if changes are to be made, they would be lagged by that period, so that Great British Railways knew where they were going to be.

When the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, talked about timetables and so forth, he was discussing the operational side of the railway, but there is also the infrastructure investment side of the railway, which may extend to building a completely new railway. One of the problems we have—we all acknowledge this—is that it is impossible to build new infrastructure on a one-year settlement. We give long-term settlements to railway developers so that they know that they will have the money to carry the project through to the end. Should that change in funding not also be subject, if it is necessary, to some sort of notice period?

Further down the line from that, we have the supply chain. A colleague of mine recently visited a British train manufacturer. I will not say which one because I cannot remember. Maybe I can, but what I was going to say might be adverse—not about the manufacturer but about its situation—because it is down to using one manufacturing line at the moment, as the orders have effectively dried up.

We all know that the ideal situation is that British train manufacturers have access to a steady supply and a steady stream of demand, so that they maintain jobs and do not go from famine to feast. Where is the discipline going to come from, as a result of all these changes, to address that? What sort of lags and notice are necessary? As I said, I do not think I necessarily have the answer in these amendments, although they all point to this debate. We may not get further on this today, but the Government will have to talk seriously about this. When they create a wholly new structure to operate the railways—Great British Railways—funding has to be mentioned. An understanding of the approach to funding, not just for the operations but for the infrastructure, has to be addressed.

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My amendment says that, within six months, the Secretary of State should consult the ONS on this and then publish a report setting out the fiscal impact of the Bill on the public finances. This might sound like an abstruse matter, but if there is a reclassification, the consequences could have a severe impact on the department’s budget. I will listen carefully to the Minister’s reply, which I expect will follow very closely the script prepared by his officials.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is difficult to follow my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham because his expositions of difficult issues are always so clear and compelling. There is a movement on the left wing of the Labour Party—which is well represented in your Lordships’ House—to nationalise the roscos so that we can have a full sweep of nationalisation. To date, nationalisation of the railways has cost the Government nothing because, of course, they already owned nearly everything. All it has done is allowed certain franchises to expire at no cost to the taxpayer.

But the cost to the taxpayer of nationalising the roscos would be absolutely enormous, which is one of the reasons why the Government have resisted pressure from the more Corbynite wing of their party to proceed on that basis. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham is suggesting that, at the stroke of some scribal pen in the Office for National Statistics, at least the financial consequences, if not the legal consequences, of nationalising the roscos would land on the Government’s plate as a result of the Bill—in other words, as a result of eliminating the relative multiplicity of buyers of rolling stock that exists at the moment and replacing it with a single buyer: a state-owned entity. As I understand it, that is the gravamen of what my noble friend is saying.

The amendment is almost too gentle for the circumstances because this is something that we would need to know in advance of the passage of the Bill. It is dilatory of the Office for National Statistics to say that it would review this matter only after the Bill has passed because it is of such consequence that legislators should know before they pass the Bill whether it will ensue as a consequence of their doing so. This is a matter of considerable importance. I do not know whether the officials advising the Minister perceived the full complexity of the noble Lord’s amendment in advance. They may not have given him a full response to the points made by my noble friend—although they may have done so, of course—so he may wish to follow up in writing. That may be acceptable to my noble friend—I do not know—but this is an extremely important matter that we really need to know about.

I do not propose to comment on the other amendments in this group so I turn to my own amendments, which were slightly mocked by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. We have been told—I accept that this is probably the case—that, should the Bill pass into law, it is likely to set a framework that will last for many years. People say that it is often 20 or 30 years before you get round to restructuring the railways; that is roughly the cycle on which it happens. I think, therefore, that it is very disappointing that the Government are seeking to restrict the debate to very narrow issues around the structure of the railway, which is the main basis of the Bill, when noble Lords want to debate other matters.

For example, in our debate on the previous group, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who is sadly not in his place any more, wanted to discuss the whole structure of funding the railways—not the amounts of funding but the mechanism by which it is done—in order to avoid crashing from one decision to another and to make it possible for both the railway and suppliers to plan what they will do with some knowledge that the funding will continue for at least a period into the future. Essentially, the Government want to escape having that debate and say, “Everything’s fine as it is so we’ll carry on as before”.

Through my amendments here, I want to have what I think is a very important political discussion about the Government’s vision for the level of subsidy that should go to the railway and for the balance between fares and taxpayer funding to support it. We have in this country a particular balance that is different from what exists in many European countries, and we have held on to it, but where do we want to go with it? The noble Baroness says that the railways will always require funding but, for their first 100 years, they did not require any public subsidy at all, and they provided the most comprehensive, intense and innovative transport system you could imagine, reaching to nearly all parts of the country. Further, they did so at a time when there were practically no roads, and there was certainly no air travel. Yet they did this without subsidy. We really only talk of subsidies to the railways when you get to the 1920s and 1930s, when money started leaking out of government and into the railways. That was before we had the full subsidy regime that came in with the Second World War and what followed. So it is possible to think about it.

I am not saying that it is particularly realistic to think about it, because I accept what the noble Baroness says: there is likely to be an element of subsidy all the way through. But what is the Government’s plan and what is the direction of travel on this? Would the Government not like to set out their policy and vision? If they do not want to do so today, then where in this process is it going to appear? Is the noble Lord going to tell us that it will all be in the long-term rail strategy, so that we can have a debate then about what is the appropriate level between taxpayer and fare payer? Remember that only 10% of the population makes regular use of the railways; the rest of the population is expected to subsidise it through their taxes, but only 10% actually use it. Is that a fair and sensible balance in an allocation of subsidies? These are important issues.

Amendment 112 is closely related but not quite the same. It asks for the railways to publish annual savings targets. Why should they not have such targets? There are great inefficiencies in every organisation. I do not say “in every public sector organisation”, although that is true, because there are inefficiencies in private sector organisations as well. When I was deputy chairman of Transport for London, we had a process for trying to reduce, with an annual savings target of 3% per annum. We took out that amount of cost year after year, bringing it down because we could find those efficiencies. I had learned from local government officers that they could do exactly that, because they knew where the inefficiencies were. In fact, they built them in a little, to give themselves some fat, but if they were required to reduce them under pressure, they could do it. Why should Great British Railways not have a similar discipline imposed on it? Where is the sense of financial discipline that we are looking for?

These are times when the Government have very little money; I think we know that. The tax burden is higher than ever, yet public expenditure is under huge pressure. Choices about defence and so forth cannot be made sensibly because of commitments elsewhere. I am not disagreeing with or criticising the noble Baroness. It is all very well to say that railways will always require subsidies, but the fact of the matter is—I believe this firmly, and I am a believer in the railways—that a railway that relies consistently and heavily on subsidy, in the current and foreseeable fiscal circumstances of this country, is a railway that will come under huge pressure and will be cut. It is not sustainable unless it can show that it is contributing from its own efficiencies and through generating higher fare income, which does not necessarily mean through higher fares but can be a combination of fares and passenger numbers. It needs a plan to show that it is doing that. These amendments ask the Government to set out that plan or tell us when they are going to do so, in the interests of Great British Railways itself.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendments 57, 58 and 61 are about the funding of passenger services. In principle, I support the intentions of these amendments and acknowledge the benefits to business planning that aligning the funding cycles could bring. However, the reality of passenger services funding is that it is inextricably tied to passenger revenue, which changes in response to a number of factors that are difficult to predict, particularly over longer time spans.

Certain factors, such as wider economic conditions and the weather, are outside both GBR and government’s control, so it is quite difficult for any Government to commit passenger services funding in fixed five-year periods, given the revenue-forecasting challenges. It will, however, be a goal to work towards, and in particular it cannot be achieved before GBR’s funding settlement processes have bedded in and Ministers have confidence in how the settlements operate.

I recognise how important it is that GBR has the confidence to plan across track and train to make the most of integration. That is why it will be required to produce and publish a business plan covering all its activity, including on passenger services, and this plan will span the duration of the five-year funding period, regardless of changes to passenger funding. In addition, once Ministers have more experience of funding an integrated body and GBR has demonstrated that it is fiscally responsible, the Bill will provide a route to include passenger services in the five-year funding settlement in future, via statutory instrument. That will allow passenger services funding to join the five-year settlement. I hope the noble Baroness sees that we are as aligned as we can be on this amendment and that she can therefore support the Bill as drafted.

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In response to the noble Lord, I note that the Secretary of State will work with both the Office for National Statistics and His Majesty’s Treasury. This will no doubt contrast with the recent past, where the Government have in effect, for a considerable time, specified rolling stock for individual train operators, some of which have been in public ownership for nearly 10 years. Given everything I have set out, I hope that noble Lords feel able not to press their amendments.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

Is the noble Lord’s position that one of the consequences of this Bill, if enacted—we will not know for some months until after it is enacted—is that roughly £25 billion-worth of rolling stock could be added to government debt? I do not want to argue about the figure, but I believe that is roughly right. We are going into this in the dark, not knowing whether that will be the case. What soundings has the Minister taken with Treasury colleagues about this interesting possibility?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Since it is independent, nobody can predict the consequences of an Office for National Statistics examination until it concludes one. I said that the Secretary of State will work with it, because it will also need to consider the recent past. The Bill is in Parliament because it has cross-government agreement from all the departments of government. We cannot contemplate what the future might hold in respect of the decisions of the ONS.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am sorry to press the noble Lord. I agree that if the ONS is independent he cannot say what its decision will be, but he could secure that decision before the passage of the legislation. That cannot be too difficult. Given the consequence, it must be possible to secure the decision first. Nobody, I think, is suggesting that you would try to manipulate the decision; that is not my objective. Could the Government not take that approach? These are very significant sums, and to hold one’s nose and just jump into the dark seems reckless.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I already said that one thing the Secretary of State will do is to help the ONS with its understanding of both the recent past and what will happen as a consequence of the Bill. In the recent past, the Government have specified, to the most extraordinarily detailed degree, all the rolling stock used in all franchises for probably the past 10 or 12 years. They have also determined how long it runs for and how long it lasts. In those circumstances, we are very content to wait for the ONS to do its work when it chooses to do it.

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[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. Amendment 59 looks at the statement of objectives that the Secretary of State sets out for GBR and what is intended to be achieved over the funding period. The objectives, as we can see in paragraph 2(2),

“may include objectives as to standards to be achieved when carrying on activities”

that are to be set out in the business plan. It is a simple proposition and one of those happy subjects that we always discuss in Committee: should the word be “may” or should it be “must”? The implication of “may” is that it may not be, and we are considering whether it would be acceptable for the statement of objectives not to include reference to the standards that are to be achieved in relation to these activities. One of these lists about which we are not supposed to be too specific follows, but standards to be achieved are not set out as such in that subsequent list. They tend to be objectives relating to other things.

However, my other amendment is intended to see how these things interact. Separately, in Clause 65, Great British Railways has the responsibility to consider whether it should have a performance scheme, which, as I understand it, is essentially about minimising disruption to the network and to passengers. The question is: where are the objectives in relation to minimising disruption to passengers? I do not see them in paragraph 2(3). You could argue that they arise from the carriage of passengers and goods, but I do not think it is sufficiently explicit. I am not sure whether it is included in objectives as to standards. Are those the same standards as in a performance scheme?

I see the two amendments being linked. We are looking to ensure that the objectives set out standards and are clear about what is required in terms of avoiding disruption and enabling passengers to be confident about the availability of services according to the timetable. I beg to move.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it may be helpful to the Committee, since I have such a large number of amendments in the group and no one else who is present has any, if I speak now, and then it will be easier for the noble Baroness to comment on the amendments I have moved.

I shall start with Amendment 63A. I have tabled it because in the last 24 hours I have been contemplating the wipe-out of 10% of the global population by artificial intelligence, which a whistleblower at Anthropic has said is a very likely prospect some time in the next 10 years. It is possible that these claims are somewhat overblown—I do not know—but it is astonishing that we have a Bill whose measures in all likelihood, as I say, will stay in place for 30 years but we are not having any debate about digital, artificial intelligence or the innovative future of the railway.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

May I just interrupt my noble friend? I think he has moved on to the next group. We are on the group led by Amendment 59, to which I just spoke.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

And today’s Committee is due to conclude with Amendment 63.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I beg the Committee’s pardon. May I subside?

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

AI might have helped there.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

It would, yes.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

I will speak to my Amendment 82 in this group, to which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has added his name. It would create a new board of Great British Railways, and it provides detail of the composition of this board. The board would increase the transparency and accountability of the Secretary of State’s decisions, as it would create a vehicle for these to be properly discussed and would ensure that a wide range of expertise were at the table. If the Secretary of State decided to make a decision that was against the advice of the board, the reasons for that would need to be set out clearly and publicly.

The membership of the board would represent Great British Railways and other key stakeholders in the running of the railway, such as open access operators, freight operators, the Office of Rail and Road, the Passengers’ Council and organisations that represent passengers with accessibility requirements. It would comprise of at least six members. To make sure that there is a voice for other stakeholders, no more than half of the board’s membership would be employed by or otherwise represent Great British Railways.

This amendment would allow for any decision or direction from the Secretary of State concerning Great British Railways to be notified to the board prior to its being made. The board would then need to publish any decision or direction it had considered and whether it had approved it. If the board did not agree with the Secretary of State, it would still be free to go ahead with the decision, but it would need to publish a statement setting out its reasons for that. For us, this is a way to ensure that the Secretary of State uses the powers in this Bill wisely, with a proper sounding board for feedback from experts with different viewpoints in the field. I hope that the Minister will consider this proposal seriously.

The other amendments in this group are around clear objectives for Great British Railways. Amendment 64A from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, would require consultation with the supply chain and railway service providers when preparing objectives for a funding period. That would appear to be a sensible way to ensure industry buy-in and prioritisation. Other amendments seek different ways to try to measure and assess the performance of Great British Railways. I hope that the Minister will be able to provide details of how the Secretary of State and Parliament will assess this going forward, and I look forward to his response.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I beg the Committee’s pardon: I got slightly muddled because of changes to the groupings.

I come to my Amendments 60, 64A, 83, 84, 87, 94, 124, 125 and 291. The central issue running through these amendments is accountability. We are creating an enormous, new, publicly owned organisation that will, in all likelihood, receive billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and exercise extraordinary control over the railway. It therefore needs clear objectives, measurable performance indicators and consequences for when it fails to deliver.

Amendment 60 addresses the funding objectives. As drafted, the Bill says that the Secretary of State “may include” the specified objectives. My amendment would change that to “must include”.

Amendment 64A would require consultation with railway service providers and the rail supply chain when those funding objectives are prepared. GBR will continue to rely enormously on the private rail supply chain. These businesses invest in skills, equipment and capacity on the basis of decisions taken by the Government and GBR, so it is sensible that those decisions are informed by their expertise and knowledge, as well as the consequences for employment and profits in the private sector that would arise from those decisions being made. They should be consulted.

The remainder of my amendments address what might be called the problem of the missing key performance indicators. We have repeatedly been told that GBR will be held to robust performance measures, but what does “robust” actually mean? Amendment 124 would answer that question by establishing a proper, statutory KPI framework covering the things that passengers and taxpayers actually care about: reliability, safety, passenger experience, affordability and value for money, passenger growth, financial sustainability, productivity and efficiency, and freight performance. Of course, one can argue about what should be on the list; I would be willing to enter into discussions with the Minister about putting in something else or maybe adjusting something that I have proposed. However, we need to know what performance indicators are in the Bill—otherwise, we will be allowing GBR far too much unconstrained power and latitude, with little accountability.

Amendment 94 would ensure that the long-term rail strategy is geared towards enabling GBR to meet these KPIs. The Government may say that a long-term rail strategy should not be dictated by short-term measures, but we have to get from the short term to the long term. A 30-year aspiration is of little value if there is no way of measuring whether GBR is moving towards it year by year.

Amendment 125 would, therefore, require annual reporting and quarterly updates against those KPIs. Even I admit that quarterly updates might be a little onerous so, if the Minister objects, I will meet him half way and say, “Let’s have semi-annual updates”—I am a reasonable person and am open to suggestions—but something is needed if we are going to succeed. It is no good saying, as we did the other day, that the target is to achieve 75% growth in freight by 2050. Only the day before yesterday, the Government produced a statement saying that they have set an interim target. So they appreciate what I am saying, which is that there should be interim targets. However, the interim target is that freight should achieve 40% growth by 2040. None of us will be here. Nobody is asking, “What is the 2030 target?” There is no 2030 target; there is merely a 2040 target. That is not good enough. It is playing with achieving targets and would be simply laughable in the private sector. We need these targets; as I say, quarterly updates may be too onerous, but an update every decade or 15 years is just not good enough.

Amendment 291 would give the ORR the important, independent job of assessing whether GBR is actually achieving its targets. Surely GBR cannot be allowed to mark its own homework.

Amendment 84 would apply the same principle during the transition. This is a generational restructuring of the railways, involving employees, operators, freight, open access, local authorities, the supply chain and millions of passengers. A quarterly ministerial Statement—or even one once every six months—on progress towards GBR becoming fully operational would increase transparency, maintain focus and, importantly, prevent drift.

Lastly, Amendment 87 concerns consequences. When I have asked the Minister privately how the Secretary of State will exercise control over GBR, he has said—he said this in a meeting for all Peers the other day, so I think I can repeat it—“Of course, she can always sack the chairman”. I suppose she can, because she is the sole shareholder in the business, but there was nothing about sacking the chief executive. Of course, it is not the Secretary of State’s job, as I understand it—we are not vouchsafed of these arrangements—to appoint or sack the chief executive; that would be a decision for the board. I am trying to introduce some accountability for the chief executive. We are giving the Secretary of State the power—not a duty, obviously—to dismiss the executive head of GBR when the organisation is failing against the KPIs and has also failed to act on guidance issued by the Secretary of State. It is not enough just to sack the chairman. You will not get anybody of any quality applying for the job if they are the only person whose head can roll; the chief executive needs to have their neck on the block as well.

My noble friend Lord Lansley’s Amendment 59 is obviously sound. The Secretary of State may

“include objectives as to the standards to be achieved in relation to railway services”,

but that “may” ought to be a “must”.

My noble friend Lord Grayling’s Amendment 66, to which I have added my name, would require GBR’s business plan to contain measurable performance indicators for its statutory duties. This is simply basic accountability. If Parliament gives GBR duties, its business plan should explain how its performance against them will actually be measured.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Let me come to that point. I believe that there is a provision, but before I say so, let me check.

The long-term rail strategy is designed to provide ministerial direction on the long-term trends that will affect the railways and, at a high level, what they expect GBR to do about them. The business plan is clearly the right place for short and medium-term targets to be included, which GBR should set for itself and which the ORR should review and comment on.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

Can I be absolutely clear about that? The Minister is saying that GBR should set its own KPIs. The ORR may look at them and comment but, having heard the comments, GBR will set its own KPIs and amend them, or not, as it sees fit. That is the plan.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The long-term rail strategy will set out the Secretary of State’s expectations. The business plan will set out what GBR believes it can achieve to move towards the long-term rail strategy. The business plan has to be agreed with the Secretary of State, who might well disagree with some of its targets. In the end, GBR has to satisfy the Secretary of State about the progress that it proposes to make. I do not think that is much different, as the noble Lord will recall, to the Transport for London business plan, which translated the mayor’s transport strategy into targets related to the budget of the organisation and which were agreed by the mayor.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that some of these KPIs relate to wider economic circumstances than the railway currently has, but we discussed on the first day in Committee the fact that the need for a long-term freight target is so that GBR focuses on its own part in growing freight. Clearly, it is much subject to what shippers want to send, how they want to send it, where they want to send it and so forth, but I do not see any conflict in GBR having a long-term freight target. It may have to take different action if the economy or the things which are transported by rail change over time. There has been no greater case of that than the case of coal and steel, which were once a significant part of railway freight but which today are virtually nothing. On the other hand, intermodal traffic and construction materials have vastly increased, and there is no doubt in my mind that the railway could contribute more than perhaps it has done in the recent past to growing those particular categories if it were minded to do so, and the freight target is designed to make it think about how it could do it.

I do not see any contradiction in that; it will be like running any other business. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, referred to his experience at Transport for London and it is, of course, exactly the same. It is a large organisation which is contributing to, but to some extent dependent on, the economy of London; that will be true of the railways as a whole. I agree with noble Lords that there should be KPIs for GBR, and it should be held to account for meeting them. The reason we are discussing these now is because there is no doubt that, in the end, they should be in its business plan, set next to the costs that they incur and the revenue it will derive from them.

I should go back to what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said. Paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 says that GBR must keep the business plan up to date. We are pretty clear that that means annually; it could be more often if circumstances change. It is not unknown for businesses of this scale to have to change their business plan if the economic circumstances dictate, but I think annual is reasonable. I would not expect the Secretary of State or the board of GBR to tolerate any circumstances where it did not propose an annual business plan.

If I may, I will try to find my place regarding Amendment 66. I am glad that the noble Lord agrees that GBR’s business plan is where its KPIs should sit. However, these need to evolve over time while, by contrast, GBR’s duties are unchanging—a core list of ambitions guiding GBR over the next decades. While GBR’s business plan is where it will show both how it will discharge its duties and set out its KPIs, there is an important distinction between them. Duties and KPIs are not the same thing. KPIs need to be driven by the specific, often numerical, outcomes sought by the Government, whereas duties are behavioural expectations. Some of the duties would be impractical to even turn into measurable KPIs. How would GBR measure whether it has provided businesses with certainty or acted in the public interest? I believe it is right that the two should not be statutorily linked.

Amendment 87 proposes action about the chief executive. I hope the noble Lord understands that, primarily, the powers of the Secretary of State rest with the right, in the end, to dismiss the chair if that chair fails to do the job that the Secretary of State expects of the chair and the board. That might well be the case if the Secretary of State believed that the chair failed to challenge the executive and chief executive effectively. The Secretary of State will also have the right, as we discussed this afternoon, to issue legally binding directions to GBR, and those could be where remedial action is required. The Secretary of State could also remove accounting officer status from the CEO, effectively taking financial management of the company into the department.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

Where does it say the CEO is the accounting officer?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

What I would say to the noble Lord about all these things is that we are setting this organisation up and, conventionally, it is the chair and the board that support, hire and fire the chief executive. I do not believe that his amendment is the right way of doing this. It should be done through the chair and the board, and the expectations of the Secretary of State should be conveyed to them. Whatever action might be necessary regarding the chief executive should be taken as a consequence of that relationship.

On Amendment 83, the Bill already does what the noble Lord is trying to achieve. Much of the substance of this amendment is already enabled by the process created by Schedule 2. GBR is already required to produce a business plan containing all its activity and how its costs will be met, which will be reviewed annually, as we have discussed, to ensure it is up to date. The plan will be published, which will allow Parliament and the public to hold GBR to account. The ORR will monitor GBR’s delivery of its business plan. I agree with the noble Lord that transparency is important, but we do not need to hardwire in excessive bureaucracy, as this amendment would.

On Amendments 59, 60, 62 and 64A, I can understand the desire to codify the contents of the statement of objectives, but this legislation needs to be drafted to last as long as the last Railways Act has and therefore needs to be open to future Governments to suggest their own objectives for the funding period. The Bill provides a suggested list of what could be included, setting a strong precedent for future government but leaving options open for Secretaries of State. This is a tried and tested method, being the same approach that underpins the periodic review of funding today. The periodic review is widely considered one of the most successful parts of the current regime, which is why the Bill replicates the five-year length of it. Similarly, the statement has to be capable of accommodating different approaches based on wider environmental and socioeconomic circumstances. That is why the current list of potential topics to be covered by the statement serves as a guide for future drafters but does not constrain the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

On consulting industry on the statement of objectives, as in Amendment 64A, the Bill proposes, and I agree, that the better place for industry engagement is on GBR’s business plan. I absolutely expect both GBR and the Office of Rail and Road to engage with industry on the development of the business plan. This allows industry’s view to be fed into the product that is produced in response to the Secretary of State’s objectives.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, the Bill should be amended to say that the business plan is annual, especially as that is the Government’s clear intention. The Minister has just said the business plan is going to be annual and it was precisely to get stakeholder engagement with business away from the annual cycle that the amendment was tabled. Can the Minister take account of that? It is not good enough to turn up once a year and have a word with the industry about what your plans are. That is what we are trying to get away from.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I think I understand what the noble Lord is saying. I am expecting an organisation, as GBR will be, to be constantly in discussion with the wider railway industry and the supply industry, and indeed its customers, simply because, as we have discussed, the market will change over time. I do not see that there is any confusion between an annual exercise of producing a business plan and the sort of engagement over a prolonged period that will confirm and vary industry’s advice over time about what should be in it. That is a perfectly natural way of doing business. If I refer, as I probably do too often, to Transport for London, that is precisely the way in which Transport for London did it. The business planning cycle was an annual cycle, but the engagement with those parties who had an interest in both the inputs and results was an activity throughout the year.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

The Minister has just changed the story. A moment ago, he was saying that engagement with business stakeholders would be through the business plan. Now he is saying that it is not actually through the business plan once a year—because anyway, we do not know it is going to be once a year, but it is likely to be once a year—but it will be a continuous process. Of course, it can in a sense be both, and other things, but that is not giving us the level of assurance and precision that I think noble Lords are looking for. This is one of our big opportunities to speak up in Committee for the interests of the supply chain—there may be other opportunities coming in later groups. This is the chance for the Government to nail down our interests. We are interested in passengers and freight, but we are also interested in the supply chain, and trying to secure for it a degree of visibility about the future is important. What we are getting is not very clear, I am afraid.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I agree with the noble Lord that the supply chain is crucial. Actually, for much of the supply chain, what really makes a difference is the five-year periodic settlement. That highlights the need for this engagement to go on, both at the time when the five-year plan is formed and the rest of the time. I do not see any contradiction in those two things happening. The five-year settlement for infrastructure could not possibly be done properly without the involvement of the supply chain, but they do not go away for the next four years until the next one. The dialogue with them is constant—and so it should be. I had better make progress, if I may.

I turn to Amendment 82, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. I do not often completely disagree with the noble Baroness, but I do here, I am afraid, because her amendment would fundamentally blur accountability for the railway system and undermine the clear responsibilities in the Bill. I do not think that interposing another board between the Secretary of State and the board of GBR would be right. However, the Bill contains a number of provisions such that both the Office of Rail and Road and the passenger watchdog will have many opportunities to provide the Secretary of State with advice before she takes decisions. The reality is that she will most likely have taken advice from either, or both, of them before any performance matters should escalate to the point of requiring a direction.

On Amendment 84, as we discussed in earlier groups, the Government are dedicated to providing a steady drum beat of publications that will inform the House—and, indeed, this Committee—on progress in establishing GBR. I encourage the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, to look at the Government’s policy publication timetable on GOV.UK; indeed, I have just written to noble Lords about the publication of the draft access and use policy by Network Rail. Given the ambitious timeline that we are working to on this, it would not seem to make much sense to divert resources away from the business of establishing GBR in order to write progress reports that would largely duplicate existing information that the Government are already making available.

Given what I have said, I encourage noble Lords and the noble Baroness not to press their amendments.

Railways Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th September 2026 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Moylan]

63A: Schedule 2, page 70, line 30, at end insert—
“(f) innovation and the adoption of new and improved technology in relation to railways and railway services.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would allow the Secretary of State’s funding objectives for Great British Railways to include objectives relating to innovation and the adoption of new technology.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, I should first say that I am not buying any more cushions—I have bought enough cushions. Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, referred to a discussion yesterday about the functions of Great British Railways. I will write to him with the views that I conveyed in a speech yesterday and to other Members, and place a copy in the Library, so that we are all clear about what the Government believe to be the case. Thirdly, today the Government published a paper on the long-term rail strategy, which will be particularly beneficial for this Committee. It was published this morning.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I will interrupt the Minister, if I may. Of course, it is welcome that a paper has been published today, but I had no idea about this. In an hour or so, this Committee will be debating the long-term rail strategy, completely blind to this new paper. The Government’s timetable for approaching this, which I complained about strongly at Second Reading, is of trying to push through the legislation when Parliament is blind to so many of the policy documents. Many are due in the spring of next year, even after we have enacted the legislation. The Government should think about the extent to which they are abusing parliamentary process and Members of this House.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The publication today is designed to be helpful and I will refer to it in today’s discussion. Since it was only published today, my remarks will include those elements of it that otherwise might not have been available, had it not been published today.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope I have answered noble Lords’ points. I encourage them not to press their amendments.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, on the question of steel, the Minister said that the amount of steel that is going to be subject to tariffs is relatively small—I think that was the expression he used. Is he willing, after this meeting of the Committee, to put in writing to members of the Committee some assessment of the cost to Great Britain over the next, say, four or five years of the tariffs on steel? In other words, how much of the steel expected to be imported from abroad falls under the tariff-free quota and what value does not and therefore attracts a tariff of 50%? If the Minister is willing to put that in writing, it would be extremely helpful to Members of the Committee.

On the other amendments, it is marvellous that there is such unanimity across the Committee about the importance of all these issues: technological innovation, cyber security and the sharing of data and the advantages that flow from that. The pity is only that the Government believe that we can rely on their assurances in this regard rather than having matters specified in the Bill. It is not that I do not believe the Minister and the assurances he gives, and indeed the assurances he gives at the Dispatch Box have a certain value. However, in the case of creating a hugely powerful monopoly with interests of its own and the most exiguous accountability to the Secretary of State and Parliament, the bar is higher for accepting assurances that everything is going to be fine when it is implemented and for the years that follow. Therefore, I think it may well be the case that noble Lords, when we return to this question on Report, will wish to retable some, at least, of these amendments, if the Government have not found it possible in the interim to give way on some of them and offer written assurances in the Bill, such as we are looking for. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 63A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken and the Minister and his team for their response. I will just make a comment or two. I am in such awe of the Minister’s extensive knowledge of railways that I always find his replies in these meetings very comforting. It is only when I walk away and start rereading them that I think, “Hold on”. I will be coming back to these issues on Report. That is a warning, not a threat.

The noble Earl, Lord Russell, used a word that I had not used but will incorporate into my thinking: “vulnerability”. I think that that is what we are talking about with all these things. He is so environmentally aware that it is fantastic. It was good to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, said about corridors in other countries. It comes back to what the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, said, that none of this is new. We can do this. We have examples that we can take from other countries and even other railways.

Prince Philip once said to me—quite unkindly, I thought—that the problem with us Greens was that we never gave anyone else any credit for what they did. I took that to heart, because we do not. We think that other people never go far enough. It is never enough. We always want more. The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, was absolutely right to say that Network Rail has been doing stuff—I really should accept that. The fire risks and the flooding are things that we really need to keep down.

To the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, of course this all should have started 10 years ago—or 20, or 30, or 40. We have known about the climate crisis and its approach for well over 50 years. We should have been thinking ahead then, but we were not. This goes back to what the noble Lord, Lord Harper, was saying. Yes, the Tories were better in some ways, but they are regressing now. Had they listened to the Green Party, HS2 would not have started where it started and we would not have had the bat tunnel fiasco. Please remember that the Greens were right back then and we are right now.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

Briefly, although I was not here for most of—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

No, you did not hear—oh, you did.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I did hear the noble Baroness’s opening speech, actually, and I just heard her remarks. Briefly, one of the reasons why we were not concerned about the climate crisis 50 years ago was that we were being told by scientists then—and it was on the front page of the Economist, which I used to read assiduously every week—that we were about to enter a new ice age. That was the consensus then and that was the Green Party’s view of what we should be worrying about. The noble Baroness should not rewrite history to claim omniscience and always being right. What happened to the ice age, by the way?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I disagree very strongly with the noble Lord. If he had been listening to me back then, he would have heard me, and I did not talk about an incipient ice age.

Let me get back to my comments. To the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, of course the welded rails are part of the problem and I am absolutely delighted that she does not have a lot of noise from the railway going past her house. The fact is that we need to reduce diesel. I was disappointed that she could not fully support what I was saying, but I thank her anyway.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, this is not about putting everything in the Bill; this is about thinking about a future for humankind. This is directed to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, as well, with whom I will have a word later. I am not trying to save nature for nature’s sake; it is because we rely on nature for our human existence. I do not understand why people just do not get that connection: no bees, no food, no humans. I am not saying that nature is more important than humans; I am saying that it is important for humans. I was surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, supported anything I said. That is rather nice.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak to my stand part notice opposing Clause 20. A duty is being placed on the Office of Rail and Road that I do not understand, which is about promoting competition. I am trying to probe exactly what the Government mean by the ORR’s duty to “promote competition”. I am concerned that there is a lack of clarity here between promoting competition and regulating competition. The ORR already has a role in regulating competition under the Railways Act 1993, but Clause 20 appears to give it a separate duty to promote competition. I would like to understand what exactly that means in practice and why it is necessary.

This is not an issue that I will bring back on Report, because I cannot quite put enough passion into it, but we see that there is potential tension here because the ORR has a number of other responsibilities, including safety, access and economic regulation. The areas in which it is required to promote competition include important parts of the railway’s network services. I would like the Minister to explain how this new duty will interact with those other responsibilities. In particular, if there is a conflict between promoting competition and another statutory duty or the Government’s rail strategy, which takes precedence? I am not convinced that we need a general duty on the regulator to promote competition in the Bill.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

If I may help the noble Baroness—of course, I might be as lost as she is—the effect of Clause 20 is in fact to remove the competition duty of the ORR from everything in subsection 1, paragraphs (a) to (g), which is basically everything, more or less.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for explaining that to me. I would like to hear that corroborated by the Minister, if he would. This one obviously needs safeguards and so on.

My Amendment 331 is quite specific, but it raises two important questions about what we consider to be competitive parts of the railway. The first is rolling stock. We discussed on the first day the question of bringing rolling stock into public ownership. The Office for National Statistics is also considering the accounting treatment of rolling stock companies, including whether their leases should ultimately appear on the public sector balance sheet. I do not want to rehearse that whole debate here, but it is worth asking whether treating rolling stock as a competitive market should simply be taken for granted.

If the Government’s ambition is to create a genuinely integrated railway, which I hope it is, there may be circumstances where intervention in the rolling stock market is necessary. Removing rolling stock from this particular competition provision would at least allow that policy question to be considered without assuming that competition must always be the organising principle.

The second issue is passenger information systems. I would like the Minister to explain exactly what is meant by these systems in this legislation—if not, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, could help me out. This provision dates back to the Railways Act 1993, when the technology and structure of the railway were very different. If we are talking about the digital systems that allow information to be shared across the rail network, there is a strong argument for treating them as essential railway infrastructure. That would not necessarily prevent competition in ticket retailing or other services, but the underlying information infrastructure needs to work across the network. Can the Minister therefore clarify what systems are covered by this provision and why they need to be treated as a competitive market?

My Amendment 332 raises a broader question about the position of competition regulation within the new railway. As I understand it, the effect of this provision is that the ORR’s competition functions under Section 67 of the Railways Act 1993 will continue to apply to Chapter 2 of Part 1 of this Bill. However, the Bill also establishes a rail strategy and a set of general duties for Great British Railways, so I want to understand how these things fit together. If the ORR is applying competition regulation to the new strategy framework, could that regulation prevent GBR implementing something that is otherwise consistent with the rail strategy and its general duties, and, if so, which takes priority?

We have heard arguments that the ORR’s role is being reduced under this Bill, but this provision seems to leave it with significant powers in relation to competition. I would like us to be clear about where the balance lies. Are we creating a new railway strategy, which GBR is expected to deliver, while simultaneously giving the regulator the ability to intervene where it considers competition requirements have not been met? If that is the intention, the Government should explain how conflicts between those objectives will be resolved. I am not arguing against regulation where it is needed, but I question the idea that competition should be an end in itself. The purpose of the railway should be to serve the public, and competition should support that purpose rather than take priority over it.

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[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

If he can bear it—exactly. It is a joy to have him here, but it really is interesting hearing him describe the Docklands Light Railway and Crossrail, and the economic growth those railways brought to those parts of London and further afield. It is a really interesting point: the Office of Rail and Road should recognise the economic geography of the country, as well as the economics of the railway. His point about the impact of High Speed 1 and the fiasco in parts of Kent explains this issue really well. I hope the Minister might be sympathetic to that point. Although there may be issues in finding a way to develop that, it is a really important area that this whole new Great British Railways should look at as we go forward. I look forward to the Minister’s reflections on these points.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group dealing with different matters. I may take slightly longer than my customary brevity, because I also wish to speak to some amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley, to which I have put my name. They are not those to which my noble friend Lord Harper has spoken, because there is no need for me to repeat what he has said, but there are others that have not been addressed.

Before I come to those, I turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng. I understand very much what he is saying. During the 2012 Games, I was chairman of the Olympic park, and it was a great ambition and hope of mine that we could, at some stage, get Eurostar trains to stop at Stratford International station, which is on the line and was available to do that, in the interests of promoting growth and regeneration in Newham and that Olympic park area. It was hopeless: there was never any chance of doing it and no interest whatever on the part of Eurostar, which was a great disappointment and an opportunity missed. To be frank, there is little point in that station if those trains do not stop; I know that the Javelin trains stop, but it is a bit pointless in a way. We need the Eurostar to stop.

Then I moved on and, later, I was a member of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation for three or four years, and we did have trains that stopped. That was absolutely marvellous. We had not only the Javelins, so that you could get to Ebbsfleet in 19 minutes from St Pancras—as I used to do to go to board meetings—but the Eurostar trains. I think they did not stop at Ashford, which is what the noble Lord mentioned, but they stopped at Ebbsfleet until Covid came along. Without a doubt, Covid was why they stopped stopping at Ebbsfleet, but Eurostar took that opportunity never to resume.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, suggests that this is inevitably all driven by commercial considerations and a railway company’s choice of where to stop its trains to maximise its revenue. The implication is that if the Government want to do something and make use of these stations, to get the sort of advantages that the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, referred to, they need to provide some subsidy or something of that sort.

Actually, the new competitor, whoever it may be, who wants to provide a service, needs a depot in London. The only person who is working hard—I know this for a number of reasons—to secure that depot in the Walthamstow area is the Minister. I do not think he needs to supply subsidy to achieve his aims; he has leverage, and we should use that leverage to secure the economic and connectivity benefits we have built the stations to secure. So, I have considerable sympathy with the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, said. If the Minister does not accept this precise amendment, I hope he will show some gumption about this and try to get something done.

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[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, is speaking to her amendment—and committing herself to hearing my speech and that of the Minister.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I will relax and take my time, then.

Passengers’ journeys are very rarely just a train journey—there might be a bus to a station, a train and then another bus, or tram, or whatever—and if those parts of the journey do not connect properly, the whole journey becomes more difficult. I know this from personal experience. A missed connection, a long wait, separate tickets or poor passenger information can all make public transport less attractive. The National Transport Survey found that for England in 2023, 50% of public transport trips were across more than one type of public transport. That is why integration is one of the strongest levers we have for getting more people to choose public transport.

The Railways Act 1993 included a duty on the Secretary of State and the regulator to contribute to the development of an integrated transport system, and that duty has now been dropped. Amendment 128 would put some of that principle back into the Bill, by requiring the Secretary of State and GBR

“to promote the integration of railway passenger services with—(a) bus and coach services, (b) tram and light rail, and (c) micromobility.”

I also support Amendment 105 from the noble Lord, Lord Beith, which approaches the same issue from within the railway strategy. It specifically talks about improving connections and co-ordinating timetables, ticketing and passenger information, and includes ferry services. The two amendments complement each other rather well. One establishes integration as a duty, while the other sets out some of the practical things integration should mean for passengers. This is not just about making journeys more convenient; if we want people to make more journeys by public transport, the whole journey needs to work.

I ask the Minister why this duty to integrate transport has been removed from the Bill, and what will replace it. Will GBR have a clear responsibility to work with local and regional transport authorities to improve connections between different modes? Will the Government consider putting some of the practical elements in Amendment 10 —timetables, ticketing and passenger information—into the statutory framework? We have an opportunity here to create a railway that works as part of a wider public transport network, rather than as a system operating on its own. That should be one of the purposes of GBR from the very start.

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[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, my Amendment 92 would require the rail strategy to cover a 30-year period. At the start of this session, the Minister talked about a paper published today on the strategy. I have not seen it or received any email about it, and I am completely up to date on my inbox. I would have hoped that officials could have sent that to us before we had come in today, so I would be grateful if that could be sent round to noble Lords who are working on this Bill so we can look at that.

So, without having seen what was published today, which may do exactly what I want, I say that this rail strategy should cover a 30-year period. I am sure that noble Lords will be only too aware that an organisation such as Great British Railways, with its vast infrastructure and multiple services to deliver—including the growth in rail freight and, we hope, in passengers—is complex. Different parts of the railway will have different needs for investment and decisions on rolling stock, electrification, station modernisation, workforce planning and passenger experience. They simply cannot be taken on short political cycles.

The rail strategy needs to ensure that it meets the needs of every part of the country. Rural communities are not always well served by the railway, and they need to be considered fully as part of a long-term 30-year strategy that will provide the vision and the clear steps to make that vision a reality. I hope the Minister will consider my amendment and its request carefully.

Other amendments in this group require consultation with lots of organisations as part of the strategy development. Surely, any good organisation will do that, and I would hope that the Minister can assure us of that.

As the discussion has shown, Amendment 105, from my noble friend Lord Beith, is very important. It highlights the importance of integrating the railway with other modes of transport and ensuring timetables align. If you want people to buy tickets, which then can move on to include bus travel and so on, the co-ordination infrastructure needs to make this easy. As we have heard, the bus, the ferry or whatever, should not be leaving three minutes before the train arrives. That, to me, is part of the added value of Great British Railways, whether it is the model I support or not. What difference are you making to people’s onward travel? What difference will this new structure make? That co-ordination is important. The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, makes a similar point and I hope we will hear something positive from the Minister on that.

The noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Faulkner, who have a special interest in heritage railways, made their points clearly, and I hope we can hear a positive response on that.

The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, supported by my noble friend Lady Brinton, is so important and would be part of this 30-year strategy as I see it. It should not be rocket science to be able to book the tickets and the support you need to use the railway in one simple way. This should be part of a programme and strategy. The debate about mobility aids is really important. E-scooters, as in the two-wheeler devices that many people use, were banned on buses in London. The very next day, I had people with mobility scooters who were unable to get on buses in Kingston because this rule had been interpreted wrongly. That was affecting disabled people’s ability to use public transport to get about their everyday business, so it is really important that this be looked at.

This has been a really good debate, and I know the Minister has a strong track record in some of this. I look forward to hearing his response and to whether he will support this 30-year strategy.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, has said, but I will go a great deal further. I am genuinely very angry. We are here today to discuss the long-term rail strategy. Looking at the groups coming up, I think I am right in saying that this is our only opportunity directly to discuss the long-term rail strategy, and yet the Minister has announced that a new document has appeared today setting out the parameters, I believe, and the instantiation of the long-term rail strategy. I am a little further advanced than the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, because I now have access to it on my iPhone. It is a lengthy PDF document which I find very difficult to read, with my eyesight, on my iPhone. It is worse than useless; none the less, I at least have a link to it now. We do not know what it says, and the Minister said during an earlier group that he hopes to give us, in the course of debate, an idea of what it contains, but he is speaking last. We will have the debate, and only then will we get the summary of what the document contains; and after that we will, over the next few days, have an opportunity to read it. This is completely contemptuous of the Committee, and I am genuinely very angry about it.

As far as the debate we have had is concerned, one is obviously very sympathetic to the horrendous stories told by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. One is supportive of the heritage rail industry in general, though I note that, unlike the long-term rail strategy, we will return to have another debate on heritage rail later on.

The speech by my noble friend Lord Grayling was also very wise. Are we moving to a monopoly? At the moment, 25% of rail movements will not be GBR. What is the target for that? What is the vision? Some 20 years from now, is GBR going to be doing 80% or 85%? Are the private sectors being squeezed out, as my noble friend said, or is the target for them to be doing less? What is it? We do not know what the future will hold. We are giving all these powers to Great British Railways with very few constraints and checks, and we do not know where they are taking us.

I refer briefly to the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley, to which the noble Lord, Lord Harper, spoke. I do not need therefore to say what it contains, but it essentially requires a form of parliamentary scrutiny of the long-term rail strategy before it is adopted. I want to particularly refer to that because my Amendments 96A and 97A have both been drafted in the light of recommendations of the Transport Select Committee in the other place; I have had an opportunity to discuss them with its chairman. The first amendment refers not to the parliamentary scrutiny of the long-term rail strategy, because that has been dealt with by my noble friend Lord Lansley’s amendment, but to what happens when changes are made to that strategy.

The thrust of the amendment, and very much the view of the Transport Select Committee, is that those changes should be subject to a similar form of parliamentary scrutiny as the original document. The fear that the Transport Select Committee has expressed is that the long-term rail strategy, because it can be changed by the Secretary of State, will become what it thinks of as a series of short-term rail strategies, which is of course no strategy at all; it is simply lurching from one plan to another in the light of the money made available by the Treasury. Putting some form of check on the Secretary of State, so that those changes have to be considered equally, is an important consideration in Amendment 96A.

Amendment 97A is again from the Transport Select Committee. The committee specifically recommended that mayoral strategic authorities

“should be statutory consultees on the Long Term Rail Strategy”.

Evidence to that committee described their absence as

“a little bit out of kilter”,

with the Government’s wider ambitions for devolution. Surely Scottish Ministers, the Mayor of London and mayors across England should have a formal opportunity to contribute when it is prepared, revised or replaced. The Government say they want greater devolution and these amendments would give effect to that.

Amendment 100 is similar. The British Transport Police has unique expertise in the safety and policing aspects of running the railway. There should surely be an obligation on the Government to formally consult the British Transport Police—and the chief constable, in fact—about the long-term rail strategy.

Amendment 98, which is not in my name but in that of my noble friend Lord Lansley, has a similar effect in relation to the Office of Rail and Road. Should not the Office of Rail and Road be consulted about the long-term rail strategy before it is prepared and published?

Amendment 102 would strengthen the obligation of GBR in relation to the long-term rail strategy. At the moment, GBR is required to “have regard to” the objectives set out in that strategy. My amendment would improve on that and require it to “seek to achieve” those objectives, so there is a strong sense of direction from the Secretary of State embodied in the long-term rail strategy.

Those are my amendments in relation to the long-term rail strategy. None of them is revolutionary. All of them make it more effective and more relevant and I hope the Government will be able to accept them, but I cannot sit down without repeating that there is something of a farce involved in having this discussion when the Minister is now going to explain what it is we have been discussing.