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.