Railways Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Olly Glover and Rebecca Smith

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Olly Glover]

We have reached a rather long group of amendments at this point in the afternoon. I would generally have liked to have used that as an opportunity to be concise. However—[Laughter.] No, no, the substance is too severe for that to be the case.

Let me start off on a positive note: this rail strategy is perhaps the strongest element of the Bill. It is absolutely what our railways need to hopefully get us out of the endless cycle of decision, indecision, dither and delay: “Yes, we’re doing it,” then, “No, we’re not,” or committing to things that are undeliverable before they have been properly planned, thought through, funded and so on.

In this part of the Bill, we even have the potential to put ourselves on as glorious a footing as Switzerland and its approach to its rail network. Somehow, I have managed to avoid talking about Switzerland so far in this Bill Committee—

[Rebecca Smith]

No you haven’t!

[Olly Glover]

Oh right—okay. I seemingly stand corrected. Well, there we go; this probably will not be the last mention either.

It is good that an element of the Bill enables us to have some hope of reaching the glory of the marvellous rail network in Switzerland, which genuinely merits admiration. We so often assume, lazily, that railways in Europe are better than those here. Some of them are in some respects; others are not. However, Switzerland’s railway is pretty much better than ours all over.

I turn to our amendments. Generally speaking, the intention behind them is either to strengthen or enhance what is already in clause 15 regarding the rail strategy. New clause 2 proposes to expand the number of factors that should be considered in developing the strategy, to ensure that critical elements that have not necessarily been well-planned or managed on our network hitherto are better stewarded in the future.

I turn first to amendment 134. It would very simply put what is currently in an accompanying piece of commentary on the Bill into the Bill itself, including the clarification that by “long-term” we mean “30 years”. The problem is that at the moment “long-term” can mean many things to many people, depending on their own particular agenda. We could include in clause 15 the words “for the next 30 years”. That would make it very clear what the rail strategy was focused on, but would not preclude its being changed in the future. That is important, because any strategy should be regularly reviewed and refreshed in the light of changing circumstances. However, the amendment would enshrine the idea that the strategy is intended to get GBR to engage in long-term thinking in its future planning of our network.

Amendment 137 would add a couple of elements to clause 15. First, it would ensure that the long-term rail strategy considered the support that rural communities need to access rail travel and the need for

“co-operation with relevant local and regional transport authorities”

and GBR. That is so we can have a real focus on

“greater integration between trains, buses, trams, cycling, walking and other active travel options.”

I hope that is welcomed by the Government, given their own commitment to introduce an integrated transport strategy at some point in the future.

Amendment 207 intends to ensure that the rail strategy considers the rail network as a whole and the relationship between the integrated timetables that we need to move to and the infrastructure enhancements necessary to enable those timetables. Let me explain that a little further. The historic focus of development on our rail network has been, with some exceptions, an obsession with reducing journey times to and from London on major inter-city routes. In and of itself, that is not a flawed goal. However, tens of millions of pounds will often be spent on cutting a couple of minutes from journey times.

A particular example of that was removing an avoiding line at Stoke-on-Trent as part of the modernisation of the west coast route. It was for the 7 am Manchester to London inter-city train, which has been the subject of so much controversy recently in relation to ORR decisions. That passing loop was taken out just to save 30 seconds from the journey time for one train a day, which does not even stop at Stoke-on-Trent. That shows the extent of the obsession with reducing journey times to London, which I have just alluded to.

What there has not been is an accompanying focus on trying to improve connection times between trains at Birmingham New Street, for example, or at Manchester Piccadilly or in Leeds. That is important, because there is very little point in cutting some time off inter-city routes if that time saving is negated by having a longer connection and waiting time at a regional hub. What puts a lot of people off using trains is the lack of decent connections and having to wait for their next train at stations that might not have particularly amenable environments.

By contrast, that is what has been done so well in Switzerland. It began in 1987, when a national referendum approved what was a 20-plus-year plan, to upgrade the country’s rail network around connections. That led to a nationwide investment in infrastructure improvements designed to enable a nationwide inter-city timetable, so that at all the key hubs—such as Zurich, Berne or Basel—trains would arrive within a 10 or 15-minute window and passengers could easily change from inter-city train to inter-city train, or from a local train to an inter-city train. Such integration is not just limited to the rail network; it is applies to other public transport. Anybody who has travelled extensively in Switzerland by public transport knows that the same level of timetable integration exists for buses, cable cars, mountain railways and so on.

Amendment 207 would create the framework for that kind of thinking: we would have to think hard, in the long-term strategy, about what sort of timetabling we want to see on our network in the future and what infrastructure enhancements are needed to get end-to-end journey times down.

Our amendment 135 would ensure that the rail strategy considers international rail. For the purposes of the Bill, that is not the Dublin to Belfast Enterprise service, which is of course the subject of entirely different legislation—a very good train it is, too, and not just because it is named after that series of wonderful flagships from “Star Trek”—but international rail through the channel tunnel. The amendment would simply require that the rail strategy includes an international rail strategy to support the development of international routes and consider some of the key challenges in increasing capacity, particularly rail depot capacity, to the channel tunnel and beyond, as well as options for upgrading the existing rail network so that we can get far more rail freight directly through the channel tunnel, which is currently not possible because of limited gauge clearance on the existing network.

Our amendment 136 would require the rail strategy to include a network electrification strategy, which another amendment alluded to. Something that has so far been absent from this Government’s thinking, as it was from that of most previous ones, is clear criteria for electrification, of whatever type—including the current fetish for discontinuous electrification with batteries. The amendment would create a framework for us to be very clear about the criteria that will be used for each electrification type, including maximum operating speeds, which lend themselves far more to full electrification than to batteries, the intensity of traffic, whether there is freight, and so on. It is a very strategic amendment that would help to focus the output of the long-term strategy on things that need to be addressed.

I have a bit more to say; I am attempting to be concise, Mr Western, and I thank you for your forbearance, as I thank the rest of the Committee for theirs. Amendment 213 would require the Secretary of State to update Parliament annually on progress on the rail strategy. This is not intended to hamper the strategy or bog it down in bureaucracy; it would merely involve updating Parliament, from time to time, on the development and delivery of the rail strategy. The key purpose is to ensure that the Transport Committee can carry on the great review and scrutiny that it does of so many things—that is not a comment on my contribution, but on that of all Transport Committee members, past and present.

New clause 27 would require the strategy to incorporate a national rolling stock strategy. I understand from remarks made by the Minister and by the noble Lord Hendy in the other place that that is very much the intention anyway. Perhaps we will have another of those debates where they say that that is the intention anyway but for some reason we cannot possibly put it in the Bill. Nevertheless, I will press the new clause, because it is so important.

New clause 28 would require GBR to set out a cyber-security and technology strategy. Technology is changing all the time, and the railway has not always been the fastest at embracing it. There is a particular issue with cyber-security. A couple of months ago, I attended a forum in Parliament, which was well attended by representatives from the rail industry. There are real issues about how software on rolling stock is kept up to date, and the funding for that. The new clause is intended to ensure that proper thought is put into a framework for cyber-security.

New clause 29 would require GBR to publish a report on demand for railway services on Sundays and the current arrangements for staffing of the railway on Sundays, which in my opinion and that of many of my constituents simply does not align with the 21st century nature of the Sunday economy.

Finally, new clause 54 would require GBR, within 12 months of the passing of the Act and every subsequent 12 months, to publish a national signalling strategy. The reason this is so important is that we have been slow to embrace digital signalling and the European train control system in this country. That is starting to improve, with ETCS currently being introduced to the southernmost 100 miles of the east coast main line, but those in the industry are clear that the current fragmented structure makes it hard to introduce ETCS and digital signalling, because open access operators, particularly freight operators, are not necessarily incentivised to align their driver training and locomotive upgrades with the plans to introduce digital signalling.

Railways Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Olly Glover and Rebecca Smith

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd January 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Rebecca Smith]

Knowing the hon. Member’s enthusiasm for all forms of transport as I do, I would like to build on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham made about amendment 214 in respect of district councils, and ask whether it would have been better to use the term “a transport authority”, which may well have linked it more clearly to the Bus Services Act 2025. That new bus legislation allows council-led transport authorities to control bus services. Perhaps that would have been good, safe ground to be on, which might well have enabled us to be more supportive.

[Olly Glover]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. I think that absolutely was our intention. Perhaps the placement of commas, or semicolons or colons, or dashes if one prefers them—I cannot stand them personally, but some people love them—would have made that clear. The key thing that we are getting at, the thing that is critical, is the last five words of our amendment:

“authority with statutory transport responsibilities.”

We listed all the ones before that just because it is all so complicated and convoluted. But that was absolutely the intention. I think it is perfectly possible, if the Minister can offer an assurance that the intention is not to exclude any parts of the country that do not benefit from mayoral strategic authorities and can say a little about how he feels that the gap in clause 5 will be covered, that that will be enough to give us some assurance.

Railways Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Olly Glover and Rebecca Smith

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd January 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Olly Glover]

I have not made an assessment of it at this moment. But that is not unique: at this stage in the parliamentary cycle, the right hon. Member will find that a number of the Conservative proposals that are debated in this place have not yet been fully costed—

[Rebecca Smith]

I beg to differ: they are all costed, because we are the official Opposition.

[Olly Glover]

I look forward to hearing all the figures. The point is that it is not always about coming up with the exact cost for absolutely every measure. There are plenty of things that are the right thing to do, and that can earn a return on investment. The number of young people who are not in employment, education or training is a significant barrier to economic growth. This measure, by making it easier for young people to use the train to access jobs, is likely to earn a significant return by getting more people into employment and paying taxes.

Before I accepted the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention, I was saying that we want a tap-in, tap-out method of ticketing across England, Wales and Scotland. If that sounds absurd, the Netherlands has it at this exact moment—and there is much that we can learn from that example. We want a guarantee to be issued that whatever ticket passengers purchase, via any means, is the best value fare. There should be no inequality in fare for the same ticket purchased via different means, which can be the case now because of the proliferation of ticketing platforms.

We want a national railcard to be introduced across the country. Many other countries, including Germany and Switzerland, offer national discount cards, but it is a bit of a postcode lottery here, with the network railcard in the London and south-east England area and a number of other regional or local railcards. We want open-source access to Great British Railways’ ticketing systems and rate databases for third-party retailers. That would build on the useful example demonstrated by Network Rail about 15 years ago, when it made the data feeds for its performance and train running systems available for the public to use. That created a wonderful ecosystem of useful train running and disruption apps that were much better than the official ones provided by train operators.

We also want to see greater collaboration with local and regional transport authorities, so that we see much more multimodal ticketing between railway passenger services and local bus, light rail and other public transport networks. That would help us to get the integrated transport system we need to deal with the first and last-mile issues that are often a barrier to people deciding to take public transport over the car. Where a single journey involves travel on multiple rail services, or at least one rail service and another form of public transport, we want steps to be taken to simplify fares and remove barriers to travel.

We believe that our new clause makes a number of proposals that would put our fares and ticketing system on a much better footing. It would deliver value to the taxpayer as well as reduce cost, because it would stimulate many more people to use our railway and therefore increase revenue. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.