Railways Bill

Debate between Lord Redwood and Lord Lansley

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will principally refer to my Amendment 19 in this group. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, that I am not really in a position to comment on the points he makes, but I think the discussion we had previously about the corporate and organisational structure of Great British Railways gives force to his points about how the employment of the railways will be structured in future, so I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on that.

I want to make a quick point on the amendment from my noble friend Lord Moylan about creating a purpose clause for the Bill. Generally speaking, I am in favour of purpose clauses where we are not principally legislating in order to change existing legislation where the purposes are already set out. This Bill will effectively get rid of the purpose set out at the front of the Railways Act 1993 and therefore I think it is a pity that there is no purpose clause at the front of this legislation to tell us what we are trying to achieve. In my view, that is distinct, as I think my noble friend was saying, from simply a description of what Great British Railways is going to do and what it should think about.

Paragraph 13 of the Explanatory Notes sets out the view that the purpose can be defined simply by what the functions of Great British Railways are and what it must have regard to under the general duties. But functions and duties are not in themselves sufficient to constitute purpose. For my money, I would have been in favour of drafting a purpose clause up front as Clause 1 that would have told us what we are trying to achieve. I think that makes for rather good drafting these days.

I will get down into the nitty-gritty now with Amendment 19 in my name. It relates to Clause 3 where, just as the functions have been set out for Great British Railways, there is an interesting moment where the functions are replaced by a little subsection that tells us what the “statutory functions” are to be. These are all the functions that we have just been told about and the ones that the Secretary of State might give Great British Railways at any time in the future, but not anything relating to service facilities or the supply of services under the 2016 regulations. That sent me off to look at the 2016 regulations to see what the service facilities and the supply of services are. I will minimise it for the purposes of this debate; essentially, on the one hand it is provision of access to freight and international traffic by an infrastructure manager under the access rights, and then supply of service facilities is essentially service providers giving, again, freight, other railway undertakings and international access to services—things from stations, depots and so on.

Interestingly, as far as I can see, those bits relating to access to the infrastructure and the provision of services in the 2016 regulations are intended to be substantially replaced by the access policies set out in Clause 59. But Regulations 5 and 6 and Schedule 2, I think, of the 2016 regulations are not to be repealed. The interesting thing is that Great British Railways will be expressly taken out of the definition of an infrastructure manager, so it will not have the requirements to provide access to infrastructure or to provide services implied by Regulations 5 and 6, even though they remain in place.

In a sense, this is a probing issue. Who will take the responsibility for the provision of infrastructure to freight and international if it is not Great British Railways? With supply of services, for things such as stations and depots, if it is not Great British Railways which has a responsibility for providing those services and the minimum access package specified in Regulation 6 of the 2016 regulations, whose responsibility is it? It is not set out in this Bill. All we know from this Bill, as a result of Clause 70, is that it is not Great British Railways. Then who is it? Who will do those things?

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome these probing amendments and look forward to the Minister’s response to some very important general issues. It is right that the staff in all the operating companies that will be affected by this should have an early idea from the Government about what is planned for their future employment.

I am one of those who welcome the idea that we want a well-paid profession serving on the railways, but for the sake of taxpayers, who are putting in substantial grant in aid and capital money, and of fare-paying passengers, who often have to pay very high fares, we need a system for negotiation between staff and Great British Railways which is more likely to achieve the increase in productivity that could justify the higher pay for staff without imposing an ever-higher charge on the taxpayer and fare-paying passengers. This is more than a detail that can be left open; we need to know who the employer will be, what the status of the current contracts is and how they will be put into transition to new contracts for the staff when their employment changes.

Is there anything the Government can tell us about how they might—they hope—have better relations with the unions in future so that we can look forward to a better experience in getting that balance of better pay for better delivery, smarter working, adopting work practices and being willing to operate new capital investment in a way that delivers higher productivity and higher quality of service?

I also welcome my noble friend Lord Moylan’s draft of what the purposes should and could be, which may not entirely match all the Government’s aims. It would be interesting to hear from the Government which of his suggestions are intended or implied in the current legislation, so that we can have some early indication of what the mission statement of the new railway might be.

I think taxpayers and railway users are expecting more services, not fewer. That has not been the early experience of the last two years. They are expecting better punctuality and timeliness, which would also be welcome. What the new railway will definitely require is more feel for where more passenger movements are required or possible. As in the early days of privatisation, surely the early days of full nationalisation might want to achieve a trend of rising passenger numbers, which privatisation achieved very well, and the ability of companies to develop timetables and services more suited to modern travel needs and therefore fuel the continuing progress of providing more growth in passengers and revenue.

If a new railway management—the controlling mind of GBR—knows how to do that, it will make everything a lot easier if the background of the completion of these arrangements is rising passenger use, rising revenues, greater flexibility over timetables and thinking about growth rather than cost cutting and the elimination of less profitable routes. That can easily get you into a spiral of downturn, as with the nationalised railway experience for most of its time post war, until privatisation reversed those difficult trends.

I hope that the Minister will not rule out one of the modest successes of recent years, which is the ability to have a competitive challenge to the monopolist. There are times when people outside will see ways of harnessing people, talent and capital to provide additional and better service using the existing track, and for that they will clearly need fair terms for access, and that will provide an innovative stimulus to the nationalised monopoly. However, I fear that the Government will not want to do that, and so I think they will find it that much more difficult to innovate and improve the timetables without that stimulus or spur from others generating such ideas and providing such a challenge and opportunity for the growth of the railway.