Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 20th November 2024 Lords Chamber

Commons Reasons

16:05

Motion A

Moved by

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill]

That this House do not insist on its Amendment 1, to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason 1A.

1A: Because the proposed purpose clause is unnecessary.

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

My Lords, in moving Motion A I will speak also to Motion B. I am grateful for the collaboration and engagement up to this point on the Bill, which is a critical step towards our manifesto commitment of reforming our fragmented railway system. This system has cost taxpayers and passengers dearly in huge fees paid to private operators and in the delays, cancellations, overcrowding and poor service that passengers have endured for far too long. There is a strong public desire for public ownership. In September, a YouGov survey found that 66% of people nationally agreed that railway operations should be run by the public sector and only 12% favoured private operation. I hope that the House can agree that we need to pass this Bill and move on to the critical work of the next one.

Motion A is about the purpose clause proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Gascoigne and Lord Moylan. I completely agree that public ownership and wider reform should be guided by a clear purpose, with users of the railway placed at the heart of that purpose. Turning specifically to Motion A1, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, I was disappointed to see that the noble Lords were insisting on this, despite the overwhelming majority against it in the other place. This is not in keeping with the collaborative approach that I hoped we were taking to the Bill in this House—and quite an unusual approach for this House to take as well.

The Government have already set out the purpose of public ownership and wider reform in our policy document Getting Britain Moving. This identified six objectives. People can see what they are and can hold the Government to account on delivering against them. These objectives are already at the heart of our decision-making. For example, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and I have met the worst-performing train operating companies and their Network Rail counterparts and have demanded that they do better for passengers, right now. We have brought to an end long-running industrial disputes that inflicted misery on passengers. We have convened Network Rail and train operators to work together to tackle overcrowding at Euston and provide a better service for passengers. We have made new commitments about accessibility, following debates in this House, and we have pledged to increase transparency by publishing train performance data at stations. So there is no need to place a purpose on the face of the Bill—especially one that tells only part of the story.

I also remind noble Lords that during the previous Government’s 14 years in office, they never felt the need to legislate to impose this new statutory purpose on the Secretary of State, either in relation to the privatised railway or to the train operations that they chose to keep in public ownership for years—one now for six years—with no sign of a plan to return them to the private sector. However, I agree with noble Lords on all sides of the House that we must ensure that the future Great British Railways will have a clear purpose. In consulting on our wider reform plans, we will restate our objectives for the railway and its purpose. I assure noble Lords that delivering a reliable, punctual train services will be a prominent part of that purpose, as it already is.

I urge the House to support Motion A for two reasons. First, the purpose clause is unnecessary: we have already set out our objectives for the railway; we are already acting to achieve those objectives; and we are ready to be held to account for whether or not we deliver against them. Secondly, we will ensure that we set out a similarly clear purpose for Great British Railways in the forthcoming consultation.

Regarding Motion B, this House will be aware that Amendment 2 was rejected in the other place on the grounds of financial privilege. The Government understand the calls for the worst-performing services to be brought into public ownership first. But Amendment 2 was not the right approach. Its effect would be to delay the transfer of services into public ownership and so require taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for millions of pounds in fees for longer than necessary. Instead, the Government’s approach is the right one, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and her noble friends for recognising this in previous debates.

We have made it clear that where the contracts we have inherited from the previous Government allow it, we will bring failing operators’ services into public ownership as soon as we can. There is sufficient flexibility in the existing contract expiry dates to allow us to do that without overwhelming the public sector operator. Beyond that, we will bring services in-house as existing contracts end. This will avoid paying compensation for early termination and will avoid delaying the benefits of public ownership, as Amendment 2 would have done.

I urge the House to support Motion B so that the Government can get on with delivering the benefits of public ownership in accordance with the very clear mandate on which they were elected. I beg to move.

Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A)

Moved by

[Lord Gascoigne]

Leave out from “House” to end and insert “do insist on its Amendment 1”

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

Despite what the Minister just said at the Dispatch Box, I genuinely thank him for the collaborative approach with which I thought we had been dealing with each other. I thank all those who supported this amendment previously. I am also grateful to the Minister’s officials for the advice they have given and for all the words the Minister has just said. I thank the Liberal Democrats for their consistent support for the amendments throughout the Bill’s passage so far.

So that everyone is aware, this amendment is to set out at the outset a clear explanation of what the Bill does: putting passengers front and centre and improving rail services. As I have said previously, this is not a trap, it does not cost anything, and it does not kill the Bill nor tie it down in bureaucracy. It is what the Labour Party itself has said, both in opposition and in government, the Bill will do. It is, as the Minister says, what the people want and expect. This has been said at the Dispatch Box in both Houses.

Omitting the purpose clause makes one question what the Bill is for. After all, some have said that the Bill as a whole is merely about the delivery of nationalisation for purely ideological reasons, with no drive for further reform until the further legislation appears. I am saddened that, purely for cost reasons, we seem to be allowing the continuation of the worst-performing services. This purpose clause makes it clear that the Bill is not being driven by ideological reasons and brings it back to focus everyone’s minds on what it is for—the passengers.

When we replace one franchise with another, who or what is holding the successor to account? What does that entity do with this new-found power? Surely there needs to be something that says that the country expects things to get better or, at the very least, to not get any worse. As I said before, it is needed because under the Bill a Secretary of State has to make a judgment on whether or not to extend an existing franchise. We need a purpose clause to be clear about what the Secretary of State’s overriding desire should be.

I have sought at various stages to set out why this clause is needed, and will briefly respond to the Government’s arguments against this. Yesterday in the other place, the Secretary of State said that the Government are already improving the railways, or that there has been “progress”, as she described it, saying:

“I am more than happy to reassure the House that improving the performance of the railways is at the top of my priority list”.


However, she immediately went on to say that this amendment was

“misleading and potentially harmful, because it picks out improving the performance of passenger rail services as the sole purpose of the Bill”.

How on earth can you say that the Government are already delivering the purpose clause and then immediately go on to say that it is harmful? If that was not enough, the Secretary of State then deployed the age-old ripcord language, saying:

“Improving performance is of course a vital objective, but it is certainly not the only one”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/11/24; col. 181.]


So in one statement alone, over the course of literally minutes, the Secretary of State said that the Government are improving the service but that it is misleading and harmful to say that they are doing so; despite that, though, they are doing it and a bunch of other things too, but they cannot support the amendment. It feels a bit like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. What is the Government’s position? Are they improving the service or are they against it? Are they delivering the clause already or is it misleading? Is it harmful, yet the Government are doing it? I could ask much else besides.

16:15

I am not doing this to score cheap political points and I do want the Government to succeed. If they genuinely believe that the Bill will succeed in its mission, they should back the amendment. If the Bill really is about an improvement in the service, they should keep the amendment in. Despite what the Minister said, I have enormous faith, and this Minister is far more suited than anyone else to make the trains work, to fix the problems and to deliver reform, but no man is an island. Without the purpose clause, what are we doing this for? There needs to be a reminder—a guiding light—to show what should be the Bill’s ultimate mission. I beg to move.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I do not follow the Government’s logic so far. They accepted our amendment, in the names of my noble friend Lady Brinton and others across the House, on disability access and the equality issue. That was and is a hugely challenging issue for the railway and for the Government, and a very expensive one to fulfil. Yet they reject this simple statement, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, just pointed out, is simply a statement of purpose.

We are very grateful to the Minister for the discussions and for the way he has moved to address our concerns. But, as the Government have said, nationalisation is not a silver bullet. Across the world, there are examples of both publicly and privately owned railways that provide an excellent service. Unlike both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, we on these Benches judge a railway not by its ownership but by its efficiency: how good a service provided to passengers is and putting passengers at the heart of things, always. Incidentally, we welcome the Conservative Party’s new-found enthusiasm for passenger efficiency.

This amendment would make it clear that the primary —but not the only—purpose of the Bill is to improve passenger railway services. This should be a statement of the obvious, so I am mystified as to why there is any debate about incorporating it in the Bill. I am also concerned about the points the Secretary of State made in the other place yesterday. It is unrealistic to assert that you can interpret the amendment, specifically the words

“improve the performance of passenger railway services”,

as meaning that the Secretary of State could decide to run fewer services on time, which is, in essence, what she said. I add that if the Government are not happy with the precise wording, because they believe it could be misinterpreted and misused, they could, of course, have offered to amend it.

We would have preferred the issues of ownership to be more closely linked with improvements, passenger standards and other key issues that need to change if we are to have a robust 21st-century rail service. The Government, in our view, have therefore put the vehicle ahead of the delivery. However, we accept that they have a mandate; we accept that there is more than one way to deliver these improvements. We will be listening carefully to the Minister’s response, and I hope that he will be able to be more persuasive than the Secretary of State, because his expertise and reputation are always taken very seriously in this House. If he is able, today, to commit the Government to improvements to passenger services at the core of future legislation, at the core of the responsibility of the Secretary of State, we will be able to support the Government. Passengers desperately need to see improvements, having had a decline in service for so many years under the previous Government. So let us get that commitment on the record; let us get it in legislation, if possible, as soon as possible, so that the work can start.

Very briefly on Motion B, we acknowledge the primacy of the other place on financial issues, but we hope that the Government will continue to apply the flexibility that current legislation affords them so that they will not, unnecessarily rapidly, bring to an end very successful franchises.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall endeavour to be brief. I repeat what other noble Lords have said in expressing my gratitude to the Minister, as I mentioned at Third Reading and when the Bill passed, for his courtesy and collaboration in our debates on the Bill.

The Government’s problem is this: they wish to reform the railways. There is a great deal of support in your Lordships’ House, across all parties, and generally among the public for a reform of the railways. We would like to discuss what the Government are going to do on a number of issues. Had they brought forward the measure in this Bill as part of a large and comprehensive Bill introducing those reforms to the railways, we would have had the opportunity to have those discussions. We would have been able to discuss, for example, the role of freight, and the tension between the priority given to passenger services and freight services that inevitably exists in a constrained system. We would have had the chance to discuss the continuation of open access and competition on the railways. We could have discussed the devolution of the operation of train services to regional and local authorities, such as exists in London and might exist in other parts of the country. We would have been able to do all those things as part of a comprehensive reform Bill.

But the Government have decided not to bring forward a comprehensive reform Bill, of which this is part; they have decided to take this step first—that is, to seize control of the train operating companies—and the great Bill of reform is promised for the future. The Government say that it will be brought forward within 12 to 18 months—that is a challenging target. As I have said, tediously, in the past, over and over again, even after that Bill has gone through its parliamentary process and passed, it will still take several years for it to be implemented.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree that there is a substantial degree of consensus on the need for reform, which the previous Conservative Government started five years ago with the Williams review. However, when we came into office, we found that a very partial Bill had been prepared which did not cover all of the issues that needed to be included in a railway reform Bill. It is the neglect of his previous Administration that has led to this situation.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am not here to defend the previous Government, and I was not making a tedious trivial party-political point when I said that. I will say that I suspect the previous Government were dilatory and slow in bringing forward a massive reform of the railways because it is a very complicated business, and that goes to my point: I doubt this Government will be able to bring forward a Bill within 12 to 18 months precisely because of that complexity. Because of this large gap in time, through the passage of this legislation we are creating a new situation for the railways that could endure for four to six years, with no sense of accountability or purpose that the Government have, because the answer on everything that we wish to discuss —freight, open access, devolution—has been, “We can’t discuss it now; we can’t tell you anything now; you have to trust us”, just like the Government said “Trust us” to the pensioners, to the farmers and to large businesses that are landed with business rates.

The truth of the matter is that we do not see why we should trust the Government. That is without any disrespect to the Minister, but he is just one person and, like all of us, fragile and frail. We cannot build an entire railway system and entrust it to the Government on the strength of one particular Minister because of his noted, genuine and respected skills. We need to know what the standard will be to which we can hold the Government accountable during this new and quite lengthy period.

The objective of the purpose clause is not to set an objective for the railway, as the Minister has sometimes said; it is to set an objective for this Bill, and the Bill is about seizing control of passenger railway services. All we are saying is that the standard we expect to be set is that the purpose is the improvement of passenger services. If we cannot see those improvements then at least we would have a standard to which we could hold the Government to account, and that should be in the Bill. Warm words butter no parsnips. They are nothing to which we can hold the Government accountable. So, if my noble friend Lord Gascoigne chooses to press his amendment to a Division, we on this side will support him.

I turn to Motion B. I do not think the Government realise how helpful Motion B was intended to be to them. It is after all one of those rules in life that, if something is doing well today, it is likely that tomorrow it will not be doing so well, and vice versa. What are the Government now holding out as a practical prospect? They are going to move ahead, and one of the first franchises they are going to take control of is Greater Anglia, one of the best performing and most popular. What is likely to happen to Greater Anglia? Just by random chance, it will start to deteriorate and the Government’s programme of nationalisation will be damaged in the public eye as a result, whereas if they had seized control of Avanti, which is what we were guiding them towards through Motion B, then some improvement would have carried them forward and shown how well nationalisation was working. So we were trying to be helpful to the Government, but the Commons has claimed financial privilege on this issue and, as far as we are concerned, we give way.

On Motion A, I am sorry to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, say she is going to trust the Government. She will be joining a long queue of people who have trusted the Government, but I fear she will be disappointed. But that is enough for now.

16:30

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and I congratulate him on another polished speech. It ought to be well polished—he has made it at least four times during the passage of this particular legislation. He has not said anything new; we have cantered around the same course about Avanti trains and the future of the railway system.

This is a small Bill designed to create an overall body to be responsible for running the railway system. It was an idea conceived by the party opposite.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

With respect, this Bill does not do that. If this Bill created Great British Railways, that would be another story altogether. This Bill does not create a body; it simply is the Government seizing control of existing railway companies.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

That is absolute nonsense. This Bill is designed to implement a body, as a result of an inquiry into the railway system set up by the party opposite. Indeed, that party was so impressed when in government by the Williams report that the then Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, added his name to it. He did not actually do anything about implementing it because the backwoodsmen opposite felt it was a bit too much like nationalisation to have an overarching body responsible for the railway system.

We could have disposed of this particular amendment late at night during the course of the Committee stage of the Bill, but the noble Lord who leads for the Opposition refused to sit after 10 pm. There might have been a good reason for it—perhaps it was past the bedtime of the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, or the equivalent, but he and his party were not prepared for a proper debate on this issue, and they still are not.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment which we did not debate late at night was about the management of the railways in London; it had nothing whatever to do with what the noble Lord says. I see him giggle in the corner now; he knows he is having fun at the House’s expense.

The fact is that this Bill does not do what the noble Lord says it does. The other fact is that the Williams review did not envisage the nationalisation of train operating services in this country but rather the use of the private sector on what is referred to as a concession basis, rather than a franchise basis, the technical differences between which I shall not bore the House with now.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, I am neither giggling, nor am I in a corner. I find the noble Lord’s contribution to be as specious and inaccurate as most of the contributions he has made during the course of this debate. He keeps repeating the same tedious stuff.

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

If the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, who I have clashed with a couple of times in this Chamber, wishes to intervene, he should indicate and of course I will give way to him. It seems he does not wish to indicate. In that case, I would be obliged if he sat down and listened just for once.

[A noble Lord]

And learned.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

And perhaps learned; that is another point.

The fact is that these are delaying tactics by the party opposite. I am amazed that the Liberal Party should want to be associated with this amendment. It is contrary to custom and practice in this place—not that I am a great one for adhering to the rules, necessarily.

This is a meaningless amendment, putting a duty on the Secretary of State which he already has. What Secretary of State wants to do anything other than improve the railway system? I mean, he did not always succeed, though it might have been well-meant during the time of the party opposite, but certainly the Secretary of State’s intention at that time—at any time—would be to improve the railway system. It really is not necessary to add such a clause to this Bill. I would be grateful if my noble friend treated it with the contempt it deserved.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I will address just a few points.

I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and his description of the previous Government as being dilatory. It is six and half years since the timetable went wrong in the north-west of England and on Thameslink, in May 2018, and nothing really has been done. The railway is suffering and its passengers are suffering, and something needs to be done about it. I have referred to this before but, at some speed, we will be consulting shortly about the content of the wider Bill to reform the railway. I think that differentiates this Government and the speed at which they choose to operate.

On Motion A, I want there to be no doubt that this Government will undertake reform with a clear purpose and direction. As published in Getting Britain Moving, our objectives are set and are more ambitious and wide-ranging than the proposed purpose clause. We want to see reliability, affordability, efficiency, quality, accessibility and safe travel as the DNA of our railways—the foundational values that drive reform and deliver on what passengers expect. Public ownership will be the first step in ensuring better services, by placing the passenger front and centre as we rebuild public confidence, trust and pride in our railway.

I listened carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on the commitment that passengers should be at the core of the future of the railway. In that respect, the wider railways Bill is a different matter. It will establish Great British Railways as a new body at arm’s length from government, which will not be directly accountable to the electorate in the same way as the Government are. In that context, it is essential that the railways Bill should clearly set out two things.

The first of those is the functions of Great British Railways—what it is actually going to do. The second is what Great British Railways is supposed to achieve by exercising those functions—in other words, its purpose. I can absolutely confirm to your Lordships’ House today that the forthcoming railways Bill will set out both of those things, and that delivering improvements for passengers and maintaining high standards of performance will be a crucial part of its purpose. I will be more than happy to engage with the noble Baroness on how we express that in the Bill.

I urge your Lordships’ House to support the Government’s Motion A and to reject the amendment in Motion A1, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, for two reasons. First, it is unnecessary, because the Government have already set out our objectives for the railway, we are already acting to achieve those objectives, and we are ready to be held to account on whether we deliver against them as we transfer the services to public ownership under this Bill. Secondly, as I have just assured the House, we will ensure that the railways Bill sets out a clear purpose for Great British Railways.

With regard to Motion B, the Government simply cannot accept an amendment that would delay reform, therefore going against the wishes of the electorate, and which would place additional cost on the taxpayer. We will use every tool at our disposal to resolve poor performance, including contractual termination rights, where they are triggered.

On the Bill itself, public ownership is not only the will of the voters but the right step towards bringing an end to years of fragmentation. Tens of millions of pounds in fees will be saved each year due to public ownership and, with the new direction and focus that this Government are now providing, current in-house operations are already seeing a reduction in cancellations. The evidence that public ownership is the way forward is clear.

On top of this, poorly performing train operators are being held to account, as I described earlier, and with Great British Railways coming further down the line, this Government have shown that we are serious about reform. None the less, improvements are needed now, and the Bill starts that process.

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

My Lords, I thank everyone who spoke in this brief debate, particularly the two Opposition Front-Benchers. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for Lib Dem support up to now; I hope that will continue. I am especially grateful to my very good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Snape. It is always a pleasure to hear from him. Before I came into this House, I was told repeatedly that everyone is very friendly, very compassionate, very polite and respectful. Yet, there we are.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

No, I am okay, thank you.

This debate is about the Bill; it is not about an individual on the Front Bench, in the form of the Minister, whom I still consider to be a very good friend and who, I can confess, drove his own bus at my wedding—our history goes back a long way and I hope our friendship will continue after today. This is not about an individual and it is not even about trust. I do not think we should be trusting people to do something when we now have an opportunity to put it in the Bill. The Minister just repeated the line, “We are already doing this”, so I ask the question: why not put it in?

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, I cede the ground to my noble friend on the Front Bench. This is not about my party in government either. Trust me, I could wax lyrical—I say this to my boss on the Front Bench, the Opposition Chief Whip—about all the things I wish that my party had done in government, but it is not about that either. It is not about what we did; it is about what this Bill is going to do. It is Labour’s own language, and in the absence of anything more, I do not believe, despite what the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, thinks, that we should be in a situation just of trust: there needs to be accountability. For that, I would like to test the opinion of the House.

16:41

Division 1

Ayes: 210

Noes: 213

16:53

Motion A agreed.

Motion B

Moved by

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill]

That this House do not insist on its Amendment 2, to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason 2A.

2A: Because it would alter the financial arrangements made by the Commons, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason, trusting that this Reason may be deemed sufficient.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I have already spoken to Motion B. I beg to move.

Motion B agreed.