Railways Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Grayling

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 99 in my name. The reason for this amendment is that I am genuinely concerned that we are going to end up with a state monopoly which squeezes out the small amounts of competition that remain through open access, that perhaps even becomes more unfriendly in time to freight, and that takes a difficult approach to heritage usage of the network, because it is all a bit of a nuisance.

The Secretary of State needs to be talking to people who are offering alternatives and raising concerns about the way things were in the past and the way things could be in the future. We have to remember that a number of the issues with and constraints on the network today date back to the days of British Rail. Budgets are, I am afraid, going to be tight in the coming years. We know that subsidy levels have rocketed, revenues are falling and the Treasury has no money, so the railways are going to get squeezed in the way they were in the days of British Rail. And what happened then? We all know the British Rail approach was that if the budgets were tight, it cut services, closed routes or took out capacity. The single-track line from Soham to Ely is a case in point, where the implications for today’s railway are significant—but it was a useful closure at the time to save a bit of money.

So, what happens now? If the Bill goes through as it is, then as far as I can see in the legislation, there is no duty for the Secretary of State to consult those who could be doing things differently, like offering alternative services; those who are using the network for open access; those who are using it for heritage railways; and those who may want to, such as those who may be looking for capacity and looking to offer alternative services, as part of the formation of the long-term rail strategy. That feels to me like a major omission.

I will come back later in this Committee to the question of what happens if GBR objects to an open-access application and then does not launches the service itself; or if GBR just wants to stop somebody getting in the way and objects to an open-access operator; or if GBR pulls out of a service and somebody else wants and is willing to run that service; or if somebody comes along and tries to run a service GBR does not want ever to operate, but wants to be difficult. Ultimately, the duty of the Government in the Bill is surely to deliver the best possible, most comprehensive public transport system available. There will be times when the state cannot and will not do that, and there will be times when there is a demand that the state operator will not, cannot and does not want to meet.

Therefore, what is the mechanism, in producing the long-term rail strategy, for the Minister to say that they think they are going to leave that space for open access, that they are going to need that capacity for extra freight, or that they are going to need to make provision for tourism access to the network? If there is no duty to have those conversations—which there does not seem to be in the legislation—where is the requirement for those conversations to take place? How will they take place? Or, in the rush to get a document out, will they actually not take place at all? This is a simple amendment with the effect of ensuring that everybody should, would and does have a say in what the Secretary of State does, on a reasonable basis, within a reasonable scope—but the requirement is there, and that is why this amendment is necessary.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly, first to Amendment 101A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. She is absolutely right about quite a long list of things that need doing. The timescale she sets out in the amendment is probably quite challenging, because trains probably last for 30 or 40 years, and the track for quite a long time as well. The platform heights are of course the biggest problem. There was a very interesting article in the latest Rail magazine about platform heights. I have studied this over the years because of the issue of getting container trains through; it is very difficult, and there is no easy solution. She is absolutely right to table the amendment, and I certainly support it.

The other issue I will briefly speak on is that of heritage, which the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, spoke on initially. I like his amendments; on the other hand, the text of the Bill in Clause 15, line 8, is slightly odd:

“the railway services that the Secretary of State wishes to see provided in Great Britain.”

What happens if the Secretary of State does not wish it? It is a pretty stupid question to ask, but the word “wish” to me seems possibly to be the wrong one. Heritage, I assume, covers any type of non-timetabled service. I do not know if that is true or not—there might be occasional commercial services or local train movements. Does heritage include the smart restaurant cars on the main lines, or the branch lines which occasionally have it?

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Grayling

Report stage
Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to my Amendment 16, which is in this group. I am, as ever, grateful to my noble friend for sparing the time to talk about this. My amendment is designed to be helpful. It is designed from experience of previous railway legislation, in which we got bogged down in massive detail, with hundreds of amendments; we may get somewhere, but it takes longer.

Given the discussion that we had on a large number of subjects in Committee, and will probably have today on Report, I thought it would be useful to probe the Minister’s view of how long it will be before what I call the definitive Bill is published. If that is going to take until spring, as some of us have been told, it might be useful to publish a draft Bill or a draft Command Paper that we could read several months before and have the opportunity to debate. That might help us resolve what the real problems are and how to deal with them, rather than on the Floor of the House for many days in Committee and on Report.

That is the purpose of my amendment, and I look forward to my noble friend’s response. I am not going to press this amendment, but it will be interesting to hear what he has to say.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on some of the themes that my noble friend Lord Gascoigne has been pursuing around reporting on performance. The Government seem to be a little reticent about being willing to accept amendments which increase reporting requirements. However, there is an important issue here: will public ownership do what the Government have promised it will and improve performance on the railways? I have my doubts about that. I think the challenges of the railways are much more complex and not about ownership but the complexity of our system.

I have a very simple question for the Minister. When you arrive in this House as a new Member, one thing that is very noticeable is the extraordinary level of expertise that exists on Benches on all sides. He brings a very considerable degree of expertise in this House after a long and distinguished career in the rail and transport sector. Can he set aside for a moment his ministerial hat and give us a professional judgment about the likely performance? To take a comparison, can he reassure us that the London Overground, for example, would perform better if run directly as a public body by Transport for London rather than being contracted out to a private operator as it is at the moment? Can he reassure us on that, for the precedents that will exist elsewhere?