Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Lansley

Report stage
Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend on his Amendment 1 and will speak to Amendment 14 in my name. My noble friend very kindly referred to our debate on the same amendment in Committee. I note the reference in the Railways Act 1993 and that I see two merits in my noble friend’s amendment.

First, it is always a good thing for Bills to be clear about their purpose. Unless I am mistaking something, this amendment accurately reflects the Government’s purpose in this legislation. We may debate whether it will be successful or otherwise, but the purpose seems to be straightforward, and to have that in legislation is always helpful.

Secondly, because this Bill is essentially about amending parts of the Railways Act 1993 and nothing else, it is clearly subsidiary to the existing provisions of that Act, as amended. There are 10 general duties in that Act. The first is in Section 4(1)(zb),

“to promote improvements in railway service performance”.

My noble friend has accurately reflected the first of those 10 general duties, one of which we will come to debate in a subsequent group in relation to my amendment.

It seems to me that one of the abiding issues for public agencies, often including government departments, is the multiplicity of duties that are imposed upon them and the risk of conflict between those duties. Here, for these purposes, that would be clarified if it were made very clear that this important change to the way in which the provisions of the Railways Act are structured and to be used is to improve railway service performance. To raise that general duty in importance above the others would be helpful in clarifying the balance which the Government and the other agencies should take. I support Amendment 1 for that reason.

Amendment 14 refers to the new subsection of Section 30 of the Railways Act, inserted by the Bill, which provides that the provision of railway services can be made only via

“a direct award of a public service contract to a public sector company in accordance with regulation 17 … of the 2023 Regulations”.

Noble Lords will be aware of those regulations. Subsequently, the requirement for pre-award publication is disapplied by this legislation. However, paragraph (2) of Regulation 17 states:

“Where a competent authority makes a direct award of a public service contract under this regulation, the competent authority must, within one year of granting the award, and while ensuring the protection of commercially sensitive information and commercial interests, publish a notice on its website”.


The information required about the contract and the contractor is then listed in the regulation. Is one year right? Is it desirable that we should, in any circumstances, wait so long to be given information about the direct award of these contracts, given that they are instrumental to an understanding of whose responsibility it is to provide passenger railway services?

I have discussed my amendments with the Minister, and I am grateful for his time and that of his officials. I hope he has had a chance to think about my amendment and that, if he will not accept it, he will at least be able to tell us that it will be the Government’s intention to make new regulations quite soon, and in those new regulations to reduce to as little as three months after the granting of an award of a contract of this kind the publication of the notice and details. To assist later consideration, I say that it is certainly not my intention to press Amendment 14 when it is reached.

[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.

Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Lansley

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 36 in this group, which has exactly the same purpose as the amendments from my noble friend on the Front Bench and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who has just spoken. All their points and those made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, demonstrate the potential value and benefit of having the legislative opportunity for publicly owned companies responsible to devolved authorities to be able to run rail services. If we do not have this, it can be only a public sector company owned by the Secretary of State. I was going to instance examples, but I think we have had so many that it is very clear.

The only difference between my amendment and others is the kind of authority appropriate to own a company which runs rail services. I fixed on mayoral combined authorities simply because of the relative capacity and their importance in the Government’s devolution agenda, and because it might commend that thought to the Government.

From my own experience, not least from being a Member of Parliament in a mayoral combined authority, I think it is increasingly important for the Government to recognise—which clearly they have put at the front of their argument—that the co-ordination of the railways is of the first importance, including ticketing, timetabling, provision of services and so on. In many of these places, as was amply demonstrated by earlier speeches, the co-ordination of transport services and of transport with planning and spatial development is equally important. If the Government go down the path of central control by the Secretary of State for every aspect of rail services, I am afraid that they will severely impede, in many significant areas of the country, transport and spatial development being conducted in the way that we would prefer it to be.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Snape’s Amendment 43 and will speak to many of the other amendments in this group. I support most of the statements that have been made from all parts of the Committee in this debate.

We have been talking about devolution for years. It started off as levelling up—and we can debate whether it was levelling up or levelling down—with the last Government. But the Labour Party has been very keen on what I would call devolution for a long time and has supported the mayors of Manchester, Leeds and the West Midlands in trying to get control of their transport services, as the noble Lord just said. It is equally important to be able to decide what services are provided and who pays for them.

One of the key things which we have been debating for some time is these so-called regional authorities being given a lump sum, if one likes, and told that they can spend it on transport and then be allowed to get on with it—let them decide, on the basis of local elections and local politics, what they want to provide. Everybody’s objective would probably be to see in the north and the Midlands a general quality of service compatible with and just as good as that provided in the south-east, around London. It is not all provided by TfL—although much of it is—and I think most noble Lords would say that it is very good. I do not understand why the Government do not go the whole hog and say that they will give these regions a lump sum, to be negotiated, and let them get on with it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, asked whether Manchester could deliver. The answer is that it cannot deliver if Whitehall is in control. We have quite a serious problem here and I do not know what the answer is, except to say that I am convinced that some of the clauses we are debating tonight are counterproductive to what I thought the Government were trying to achieve.

What is the point of taking certain rail franchises into the public sector and turning them into something else if, next year, a Bill will give them a new franchise or concession? The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has not mentioned the word “concession” yet today, but I expect he will. Concessions are very good in some places, but the key is this: what is the point in making this massive change now and then coming back in a year or two to say that we will let the West Midlands run all local services—it can put them out to tender, and have the money to provide the service with the frequency and fares that it wants—and ditto in the north west and north-east?

We really need to know the final outcome planned by the Government before we can know whether the Bill will be helpful or not. If we make a change now and then another change in two years, the people who will be damaged are the passengers on the railway.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Lansley

Report stage
Tuesday 11th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Prompted by the noble Lord’s intervention, I do not think that Amendment 1 is consistent with the Bill as it stands, because Part 1 comes into force, according to the commencement provision, two months after enactment, whereas Amendment 1 requires the statement to be laid one month after enactment—so the two are inconsistent, and Amendment 1 is probably not effective.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, before the Minister sits down, I thank her for what she said about the Isles of Scilly and my Amendment 11. I am grateful that she is happy to arrange a meeting with colleagues in the Department for Transport but, if it seems appropriate to have an amendment to the levelling-up Bill, would that be possible at Third Reading if she and the other Minister agree?

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Lansley

Committee stage
Thursday 20th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend Lady Hayman, who performed an excellent destruction of this clause. Other noble Lords have said much the same thing. I have one question for the Minister, because this is all about the Crown, but I cannot see any definition in the clause of who “the Crown” is. There are other definitions in other parts of the Bill, which include the Duchy of Cornwall, which I shall come on to in the next amendment, the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Crown Estate. It makes me think that what we are really trying to do is to go back to a time when we had “the Crown” in the shape of Henry VIII, who could do more or less what he wanted. This seems a very good start to the Government’s plan to give Henry VIII, in the shape of whoever is in charge at the time, carte blanche to do what they want.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Before we hear from my noble friend, I want to say that Section 293 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 defines what is Crown land and goes on to make it clear what is an appropriate authority for the purposes of what is being introduced in Section 293B, down to and including,

“in relation to Westminster Hall and the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft … the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Speakers of the House of Lords and the House of Commons acting jointly”

being the appropriate authority.

I want to ask my noble friend about something because I simply do not understand it. There is an existing Section 293A, which as it stands is called “Urgent Crown development: application”; it has almost the same name as new Section 293B. I completely understand that the existing legislation does not appear to include all the provisions relating to how the Secretary of State deals with such an application and how the Secretary of State might give permission, so it is probably defective. But then I do not understand why all this is being added in and Section 293A is not being repealed. Perhaps my noble friend can explain that to me.