Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Holden Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

We still do not know how or what the Government want to achieve with state control of the railways. They say that there will be simpler fares, but the public are seeing simply more expensive fares. They say that passenger growth is necessary, but there is no target for that growth in the Railways Bill. They say they want to reduce the taxpayer subsidy, but in written answer after written answer, the Minister refuses to say how they hope to achieve that. Is this lack of a plan why the Secretary of State has been reduced to trying to claim credit for the work of others? She has been left red-faced and community noted after posting on X about the phasing out of the old class 455 trains on South Western Railway. She said it was down to the

“progress...on your publicly owned railway”,

when it was actually delivered under a Conservative Government and by a private company.

[Keir Mather]

I encourage the shadow Secretary of State actually to read the Railways Bill, which his party has consistently voted against, where the reason we are pursuing nationalisation is laid out in black and white. It is for one thing and one thing only: to deliver better services for passengers, to ensure that the railway is run in the public interest and not for profit, and to leave behind the decades of misery and delay under the privatised system, which did not serve any of the travelling public across the United Kingdom.

[Mr Holden]

It is clear that the Minister is not prepared to agree with the Secretary of State, so I ask him whether he agrees with himself. In an answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) on 23 March, he said that

“public ownership is expected to save taxpayers up to...£110-150 million every year...This is several orders of magnitude less than the costs of scaling up DfTO staffing in anticipation of establishing GBR”.

[Keir Mather]

The shadow Secretary of State talks about value for money for the British taxpayer. The national rail strikes under the last Government cost the taxpayer £850 million in lost revenue between June 2022 and August 2024. I ask him how that compares with the operational savings that will be achieved by the nationalised railways. They are an order of magnitude smaller than the cost of establishing Great British Railways, which unlocks all these benefits for the travelling public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

In September last year, the Secretary of State told the House:

“I know the importance of the fuel duty freeze”.—[Official Report, 11 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 1031.]

That was when diesel and petrol were significantly cheaper than they are today. Why is Labour hiking fuel duty by 5p a litre this September?

[Heidi Alexander]

We have extended the fuel duty cut, which was due to end this month, until September, and we have launched the fuel finder tool. Together, they will save motorists £129 compared with previous plans.