Railways Bill
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill ExcerptsWednesday 16th September 2026
(2Â weeks, 5Â days ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Railways Bill 2024-26 View all Railways Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 25-III(b) Amendments for Grand Committee (Supplementary to the Third Marshalled List) - (16 Sep 2026)
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I apologise to the Committee and in particular to the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, I should first say that I am not buying any more cushions—I have bought enough cushions. Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, referred to a discussion yesterday about the functions of Great British Railways. I will write to him with the views that I conveyed in a speech yesterday and to other Members, and place a copy in the Library, so that we are all clear about what the Government believe to be the case. Thirdly, today the Government published a paper on the long-term rail strategy, which will be particularly beneficial for this Committee. It was published this morning.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I will interrupt the Minister, if I may. Of course, it is welcome that a paper has been published today, but I had no idea about this. In an hour or so, this Committee will be debating the long-term rail strategy, completely blind to this new paper. The Government’s timetable for approaching this, which I complained about strongly at Second Reading, is of trying to push through the legislation when Parliament is blind to so many of the policy documents. Many are due in the spring of next year, even after we have enacted the legislation. The Government should think about the extent to which they are abusing parliamentary process and Members of this House.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The publication today is designed to be helpful and I will refer to it in today’s discussion. Since it was only published today, my remarks will include those elements of it that otherwise might not have been available, had it not been published today.
Lord Harper (Con)
Before the Minister moves on, I will add to my noble friend’s point—and this is also aimed at the Whip. The danger for the Minister is that if we debate the amendments on the long-term rail strategy, as we will today, and then we study the document published today and decide that there are matters that we wish to raise, all the Minister is going to discover is that further amendments will be put down. Then, we will have a rather repetitive debate about the long-term rail strategy, when we could have had a single debate about it. This will elongate the length of the Committee and we will end up sitting for longer, which is not enormously in our interest, if it is something that we could have dealt with earlier, and I am sure will not be welcome to the Whip. I put that on the record and we will hold that in our back pocket, if required.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
To which I respond to the noble Lord that I believe that the publication is helpful and that the remarks that I am going to make in respect of the debate on the group today—and indeed others—will help in any event and will replicate what noble Lords will find in the document from today.
Amendments 63A, 91A, 116A and 130 relate to innovation. I agree completely with the important role that technology and innovation can play in improving passenger experiences and railway operations. From digitalisation supporting simplifications in fares and ticketing to AI enabling more efficient and safer monitoring of the network, technological innovation will present new opportunities for GBR across all its functions. That is why the Bill already includes a function for GBR to carry out research and development and to support innovation in relation to railways in Clause 3(1)(f). That means that a core responsibility for GBR will be to support and promote innovation on the railways, including the potential development and adoption of new technologies across infrastructure and passenger services.
Lord Reay (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Willis, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for their amendments. There are parts of the railway that are vulnerable to flooding, extreme weather and other climate risks. GBR clearly needs to understand those vulnerabilities and ensure that the network is resilient. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and my noble friend Lord Harper say, we need to take into consideration the administrative burdens and obligations that many of these amendments would likely engender.
There is also an important point to be made about electrification. We should recognise the contribution already made by open access operators. Lumo’s east coast fleet is entirely electric, while Hull Trains has invested in modern bi-mode trains that operate electrically wherever the infrastructure allows. Open access operators and private investment have become even more important given that, just last year, the Secretary of State for Transport, Heidi Alexander, said that any further electrification of the lines is “not affordable right now”. This demonstrates that private operators and private investment is the best way to achieve the Government’s environmental objectives.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I start by responding to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, who is not in his place at the moment, on Amendment 89A. I will write to noble Lords with the information I have about the likely future origin of steel for UK Railways.
On these amendments, I hope that all noble Lords will note that rail makes up only 1.4% of overall transport greenhouse gas emissions, and rail freight emits 76% less carbon per tonne than road transport; and there are even lower emissions using electric traction or low-carbon fuels. Rail is therefore already one of the cleanest ways to travel, which is something we should be proud of. Of course, there is always more to be done, and because of the duty in Clause 18 requiring GBR to act in the public interest, including by considering the environment, it will be subject to more requirements than Network Rail, the current infrastructure provider.
Amendment 93 touches on a critical issue for the railway. Noble Lords referred to the impacts of extreme weather on the network that we have all recently seen and experienced, particularly this summer. That is exactly why one of the five strategic objectives in the long-term rail strategy is environmental sustainability, which will include protecting transport links by focusing on climate adaptation. The long-term rail strategy discussion document published today refers to the critical importance of this issue and commits that the strategy will suggest prioritisation of climate resilience works based on the areas at greatest risk.
However, I agree about not waiting for the strategy to act. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, both said that more action is needed now. Indeed, Network Rail is already developing adaptation pathways that will, on a region-by-region basis, set out the organisation’s approach to responding to environmental challenges, focusing on the high-priority parts of the network. This has already led to meaningful improvements and, particularly in respect of the events of this summer, widely significant works to alleviate extreme temperatures and soil moisture deficit all over southern and eastern England. This will of course be continued by GBR once it is established.
On Amendments 111 and 130B, I am happy to reassure noble Lords that the environment and the protection of nature will form a vital part of decision-making on the railway, just as the amendments seek. All relevant environmental legislation and targets will apply to GBR in full and, as I said, GBR will be subject to existing environmental requirements at both the national and devolved level. As discussed with the noble Earl, I can confirm today that targets in existing legislation are referenced in the long-term rail strategy, to demonstrate the importance that the Government place on this. I hope that noble Lords will see this reference in the discussion document.
I turn to Amendment 330J. The Government are working to develop a long-term strategic approach to decarbonising and adapting our railways, and GBR will be vital in progressing this. That is why the long-term rail strategy also contains a strategic objective on environmental sustainability, which includes protecting transport links by focusing on climate adaptation and delivering rail decarbonisation. As I said, GBR has a duty under Clause 18 to act in the public interest. GBR will discharge this duty when it develops its business plan, where it must set out the activities that it will undertake to meet its duties and its long-term rail strategy, both of which clearly have environmental considerations.
On Amendment 78A, it might be helpful to confirm that, where subsidy control rules apply, that is to ensure proper management of public money and transparency. Subsidy control is not intended to—and will not—prevent the Government from spending money on their priorities. It would certainly not prevent the Government from spending money on the environment or on accessibility. When funding the railway, the Secretary of State will also be under duties to consider the environment and the interests and needs of disabled people, which will inform her funding decisions. In summary, GBR must consider the environment and environmental targets, which will be embedded in key strategic decisions on the railway.
Regarding Amendment 313, as I am sure the noble Earl is aware, the Climate Change Act 2008 already requires the Government to prepare policies and proposals to meet the UK’s carbon budgets. The most recent plan was published in October last year. It includes policies to decarbonise transport, including the railway. It supports vital infrastructure improvements such as the further electrification of the network and rolling stock and recognises the importance of shifting passenger and freight journeys from more carbon-intensive transport modes to rail. As I outlined earlier, this can make a huge difference to carbon outputs.
The forthcoming rolling stock and infrastructure strategy will set out, for the first time in 30 years, an integrated plan to take this forward. Noble Lords referred to modern technology, including the use of battery technology and discontinuous electrification. They also referred to the recently announced train order for TransPennine, which includes trains that run on electric wires and have batteries where the wires are absent.
Given these existing provisions, it would be duplicative to impose an additional requirement on the Secretary of State to produce a plan to reduce the carbon footprint of the railway network. The Government are already working on this across departments so that we have a joined-up response to climate change.
“ScheduleDirect enforcement of consumer protection legislation by the ORRDigital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024
1 Part 3 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (enforcement of consumer protection law) is amended as follows.2 In section 150 (specified prohibition condition)—(a) in subsection (2)—(i) in the opening words, for “both” substitute “more”;(ii) after paragraph (b) insert—“(c) the practice—(i) relates to railways or the provision of railway services, and(ii) is in breach of an enactment listed in Schedule 16B (to the extent specified).”;(b) after subsection (2A) insert—“(2B) In subsection (2)(c) “railway” and “railway services” have the same meanings as in Part 1 of the Railways Act 1993.”3 In section 179A(1) (meaning of “direct enforcement authority”), after paragraph (b) insert—“(c) in the case of a commercial practice that meets the specified prohibition condition because paragraph (c) of section 150(2) applies, the Office of Rail and Road.”4 In section 209 (powers to amend)—(a) in subsection (1), after paragraph (f) insert—“(g) Schedule 16B so as to add, remove or vary an entry for an enactment.”; (b) in subsection (2), for “or (f)” substitute “, (f) or (g)”;(c) in the heading, for “and 16A” substitute “, 16A and 16B”.5 After Schedule 16A insert—“Schedule 16B Enactments directly enforceable by the Office of Rail and Road
Enactment | Extent |
1. Acts of Parliament | |
Consumer Rights Act 2015 | Chapter 4 of Part 1 Consumer Rights Act 2015 Part 2 Part 3 of Schedule 5 |
Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 | Chapter 1 of Part 4 |
2. Secondary legislation and assimilated direct legislation | |
Regulation (EC) No 1371/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2007 on rail passengers’ rights and obligations | All articles except article 26 |
Rail Passengers’ Rights and Obligations Regulations 2010 | All regulations |
Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012 | All regulations |
Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 | All regulations |
3. Other subordinate legislation | |
Any other subordinate legislation (not otherwise listed in this Schedule) so far as made under an enactment so listed | The entirety of the legislation” |
6 In paragraph 8 of Schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (investigatory powers etc), in the definition of “direct enforcement authority”, after paragraph (b) insert—“(c) the Office of Rail and Road.””Member’s explanatory statement
The Schedule would amend the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 and the Consumer Rights Act 2015, in order to provide the ORR with direct enforcement powers in specified circumstances relating to railways. It would build on provision in clause 5 of and Schedule 1 to the Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 79, I will also speak to Amendment 293 tabled in my name. As many noble Lords are aware, consumer protections, such as ensuring transparency of fees, safeguard customer interests and drive economic growth by promoting trust and confidence. To bolster consumer protection, the Competition and Markets Authority was awarded direct consumer enforcement powers in 2024. This meant that the CMA could determine breaches of consumer law directly and take action to rectify them, rather than having to apply to the courts if it saw a problem.
The new Government’s general approach will be to award these same direct enforcement powers to sector regulators as well, which will be able to undertake the same enforcement activity as the CMA, but with additional sectoral expertise. The Government are beginning this process by awarding the Civil Aviation Authority these powers via the civil aviation Bill, and today I propose that this Bill does the same for the Office of Rail and Road.
A live example of consumer protection activity is currently under way. The CMA has launched an investigation into drip pricing, a practice where the total fee is not revealed until late into the purchase process, luring consumers into falsely believing a product to be cheaper than it is. With these amendments, in future the ORR could undertake this kind of investigation in relation to the rail industry, utilising sector expertise to seek swift redress for customers should a breach of consumer law be found.
This Bill seeks to put passengers at the heart of decision-making. Having the sector regulator able to take swift and decisive corrective action on breaches of consumer law is an important and sensible amendment that will boost customer confidence in railway travel. I therefore urge noble Lords to support these amendments. If the Committee is content, I will put them to a decision at the end of this group. If not, I can discuss them before Report and table them again then. I beg to move.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I thank Peers for the Planet, which alerted me to the fact that I had an amendment today, because I got missed off the distribution list from the Government Whips’ Office. I am afraid that I have not had the opportunity to explore other people’s amendments in this group and I hope that they will not think me rude in covering some of these points.
I am slightly disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has left, because I thought that he might like part of my speech. My amendment may make it seem like we are going back to the 1980s or the 1990s, and in some ways it does. There is a twofold approach to what I have tried to do. I was told that it was not in scope to remove functions from the ORR but that I could create a new one instead, so I have created the one that was originally created back in the 1990s. That is basically to go back to having a simpler body that looks after rail. Ideally, roads would be dealt with elsewhere, if at all.
Let us follow a bit of the logic here. Great British Railways will basically be taxpayer owned—government owned—and there is now no need whatever to have a non-ministerial department as a regulator. This will be run by the Government. I am more than happy to sit down with the Minister another time to go through how he could get some brownie points or gold stars with the First Secretary of State in helping to rewire the state, given the discussion that has been going on within the Government about how to get back more control. The control is not just about owning the railways; it is about how people are accountable. A non-ministerial department is accountable not to Ministers but to Parliament. That does not mean that there are no discussions and the like but, if the Government are going to own the railways, I think people would rather them to be in charge, to be accountable and to look into how they operate.
I appreciate that there is an element here about safety, and there are currently two functions of that. The Railway Accident Investigation Branch is not part of the ORR; it is a body that reports directly to the Secretary of State. The ORR has other functions to do with safety, which it took on in 2006 instead of the Health and Safety Executive. It is perfectly acceptable for there be a much closer relationship, in thinking about how safety is applied on government-owned railways, than through some other third-party body.
There is another example. The Health and Safety Executive is a NDPB, but the Defence Safety Authority is in the Ministry of Defence. It has a different way of having accountability: to avoid it going straight to the Secretary of State, it goes through a Permanent Secretary.
I see that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, is back, and I hope that he might enjoy part of my speech on helping to rewire the state and have fewer of these non-ministerial departments. The reason why I am focusing on this is that, if the whole point is to have much more control of railways by Ministers, there is a sense of starting to strip away other unnecessary aspects of the state to make sure that that can get done efficiently and effectively.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I first turn to government Amendments 79 and 293, in response to the noble Lords, Lord Grayling and Lord Moylan, who have just spoken about them. These amendments are just giving the ORR the same powers as the CMA now has in consumer law to enforce directly—for example, on drip-pricing and other issues which negatively affect consumers. It does not change the law. It just enables the ORR to directly enforce the law, as the CMA can.
Lord Grayling (Con)
The Minister will remember the debates we had on civil aviation legislation and the powers provided to enter homes and office buildings and to read documents, and so forth. I do not understand why in the rail industry—which will be dominated by a single national body, answerable to the Secretary of State—we need exactly the same powers. I do not feel that this can be pushed through in Committee. I suggest that the Minister might keep this in abeyance until Report and provide a much more detailed letter to us all to explain this.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill
I am grateful to the noble Lord. If he is concerned about Amendments 79 and 293, not only will I withdraw them but I will invite him to discuss them further on Report.
I turn to Amendments 134, 135, 137, 138 and 140 and the opposition to Clause 20 standing part. This Government recognise that there are many circumstances in which competition brings benefits to the users of railway services. Noble Lords have mentioned the supply chain, where competition drives innovation and efficiency, and the online retail market, where competition provides choice and drives up the quality of passenger experience. However, there are other railway functions where the promotion of competition in the new circumstances is not appropriate and will be counterproductive.
We have deliberately specified in Clause 20 when this competition duty should apply. I will set out our approach here. Competition should be focused on where it delivers the outcomes that we are seeking, as set out in the duties. In other words, competition is a tool that can be used to achieve better passenger outcomes, or more freight services, or economic benefits. When competition supports those aims then we agree that it should be promoted. For example, competition in retail online markets supports better outcomes for passengers because it gives them more choice. We know from the debates in your Lordships’ House that lots of disabled passengers are looking forward to the GBR app, which will allow them to book all tickets and passenger assistance in one place. Other disabled passengers, such as passengers with vision impairments, prefer a wider choice of apps so that they can select which ones integrate best with their support systems. This is a perfect example of the competition that the railway genuinely needs, which is why the ORR’s competition duty will apply when it writes the code of practice.
On access, in comparison, the best outcome for passengers is the service which most meets their needs. That often means a frequent, reliable service, with stops in the right places, and a regular, coherent pattern of services. Competition does not necessarily achieve that. In the past, competition has resulted in operators making timetable changes that seek to maximise their own revenue share, not designing an overall timetable that makes sense to passengers.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased that there is so much agreement that we need a genuine long-term plan for the railway. Indeed, the counterpart of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, in the other place called it the strongest element of the Bill. I believe we share the same vision for the genuine change that a long-term rail strategy can provide for the industry and the country.
I am sorry that noble Lords have not received the consultation document—for that is what it is. It is not the strategy itself but a document about the strategy. To the extent to which noble Lords have not received it at all, I will make sure that they have a copy in a form that can be read, either this evening or tomorrow morning. I am sorry about the timing.
Amendment 90 is on heritage rail. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, and other noble Lords here know that I am a strong supporter of these services, but the strategy is not the right place for consideration of heritage rail. The strategy is intended to be where the Secretary of State sets out the strategic objectives, priorities and challenges of the railway over the next 30 years. These are very much at the macro level, such as societal, technological and environmental trends over the coming decades. The strategy will help GBR make choices that have a fundamental impact on the British economy and society for future generations.
While I absolutely agree with the noble Lord about the past informing the future, I hope he will agree that heritage services are more appropriately dealt with at the next level of operational detail down. Rather than being included in the strategy, heritage services are better considered as part of, for example, the access and use policy. That is where GBR can effectively safeguard the provision of those services and ensure that they have enough access to continue providing the benefits that they do. I hope the noble Lord is as pleased as I am to see that the draft access and use policy published last week included mention of heritage services, showing that they are considered at the heart of GBR’s access decision-making, alongside freight and other non-GBR passenger services.
I would want to avoid too hasty a consideration of heritage railway routes as part of the national network, where, at least at present, that poses significant challenges to some of their finances and existence. I will return to this subject in group seven, and Amendment 118, which will deal also with points that my noble friend Lord Berkeley raised.
Lord Harper (Con)
Before the Minister moves on, perhaps I may raise one point and then the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, will respond at the end. I follow the Minister’s argument about whether the strategy is the right place. The only thing I would be concerned about is whether achieving things in the strategy means GBR taking decisions that have not the intended consequence but the consequence that they impact heritage railways, without GBR having thought about that or taken it into account at that stage.
It may be that it is not right to include full consideration of heritage railways in the strategy document. What I would not want is to have it done at a level down, and then decisions be taken about the overall network that impact it. I will throw that one out there, and the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, can no doubt respond when he sums up at the end.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill
I thank the noble Lord. I was looking at what I might say in group 7 about Amendment 118, which might well deal with that. Clearly, the access sought on the national network is access for specific trains at specific times, and therefore it is in the access and use arrangements that that is formalised. Of course, those services pay track access charges, so on the whole it is in GBR’s interest to want to run the services, providing that it is capable of finding the paths. We will come to that in Amendment 118.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
Will a definition of what a heritage railway service is be included?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I will think about that, if I may. There are various phrases, such as “tourist”, “charter” and “heritage”—I was replicating the use by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, of “heritage” to embrace all three. That is probably the best way of doing that. Some of the heritage seems questionable, as it seems to have occurred during my recent life—but I am quite old now. We are talking about heritage including both charter and tourist trains; the noble Lord nods, so I feel confident about that.
I turn to Amendments 92, 95, 96A, 97A, 101, 98, 99 and 100. While I appreciate the intent of Amendment 92, it is not clear to me that the Bill needs to set out that the strategy will be 30 years’ long in legislation. We have stated a clear intent for the strategy to cover 30 years in multiple locations, including in the strategy’s factsheet, in the Bill’s explanatory notes, and at the Dispatch Box in the other place, and I confirm it again today. I also confirm that it will feature in the discussion document on the long-term rail strategy, which we have referred to. Although nothing in the Bill requires the Strategy to be 30 years’ long, I remind the noble Baroness that precedent plays a strong role in government.
On amendments 95, 101 and 96A, the Bill already requires the strategy to be published, and we have also committed to the Transport Select Committee to place copies in both Houses’ Libraries and to publish a Written Ministerial Statement alongside the strategy publication, so that the contents are immediately brought to the attention of the House. Our intention is that that should also apply to any changes in the strategy. I am confident that if the strategy were to fall short of its 30-year goal or if Members of your Lordships’ House took issue with its contents, there would be many, including the noble Baroness and noble Lords present in the Committee, ready and willing to hold the Government to account, including by requesting a debate, without needing to say that in legislation.
I do not agree with amendments 97A, 98, 99 and 100. One of the Government’s key ambitions is to grow passenger numbers and encourage modal shift. The passenger watchdog is valuable in recognising barriers to passenger growth, enabling the Secretary of State to prioritise tackling obstacles to it in the strategy. Wales is included as a statutory consultee because, as we discussed previously, the devolution position in Wales is different and the strategy will cover England and Wales in full. Mentioning Wales on the face of the Bill therefore demonstrates the Government’s commitment to ensuring that the Welsh Government’s views are represented. Meanwhile, our memorandum of understanding with the Scottish Government already sets out that Scotland will be engaged on the strategy, to ensure that our respective strategies are aligned, but the Bill reflects the different devolution settlements in rail. I add that the Scottish Government have consented to this Bill as drafted. While I agree that mayors play an important role in local transport planning and economic development, it is not necessary to name every single one of them as consultees on the strategy. I assure noble Lords that engagement with mayors is planned as part of the strategy’s development, and that engagement will inform the final strategy. That is made clear in the document we published today.
On Amendment 98, the role of the ORR is that of a regulator and adviser. It is not for the ORR to set out priorities for the railway for 30 years; that is clearly for the Government of the day to do, and it is for the ORR to provide advice about how that vision is actioned. That is exactly what the ORR will do by providing advice on the funding and business planning processes for GBR, which will include advice on how GBR should go about achieving the wider priorities set out in the long-term strategy. The Government will engage with the ORR in the development of the strategy, as we do in the development of almost all railway publications, but this is regular business and does not require a statutory footing.
On Amendment 99, the strategy is about setting out a vision for rail, including the long-term outcomes that need to be delivered to support the Government’s broader social, economic and environmental policy ambitions—for example, growing housing or improving access to jobs. Rail operators can help to deliver that vision, and they will of course be involved. As a routine matter of business, the Government engage with freight and passenger operators regularly, and we have had multiple discussions on the development of the strategy already. This has allowed them to feed in without the requirement for them to be formally consulted. They will of course also be consulted on GBR’s business plan, which will explain how the rail industry will achieve the Secretary of State’s objectives. The access and use policy deals with consultation on access decisions and service frequency.
On Amendment 100 and consulting the British Transport Police, although I agree that safety and security are key for users of the railways and that the British Transport Police are critical to supporting this, the strategy will not set out operational decisions which will be more relevant to the transport police. The strategy will set out what the Secretary of State wants to achieve and GBR’s business planning will work out how to achieve her goals. That is when the engagement with the BTP will take place.
On Amendment 102, the existing duties in Clause 16 already ensure that ministerial strategies will be prioritised. GBR and the ORR will be expected to demonstrate how they have considered the strategies and how their activities align with the objectives set over time. As already mentioned, GBR’s business plan will work towards delivering the long-term rail strategy and the Scottish Minister’s strategy, and will set measurable KPI targets to help it achieve the overarching long-term goals. The Secretary of State will sign off the business plan only after the ORR has confirmed that the plans align with these strategies and GBR’s other duties.
I propose not to talk to Amendments 103 and 104 as I note that the noble Lord, Lansley, who is not in his place today, and I agreed last week not to repeat the debate. As I said then, I will reflect on the valuable points he has made.
On Amendments 105 and 128, I briefly address the Moreton-in-Marsh transport hub collaboration that the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, raised. I am a great supporter of projects such as this which seamlessly link rail and bus services, taxis, pedestrians and cyclists to reduce road traffic and congestion and, while I cannot pre-empt the community infrastructure levy process, I encourage the town council and the Great Western Railway to continue their engagement with it. I look forward to hearing more about this in the future. I hope that will do him.
The Government agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beith, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about the importance of integrating rail passenger services with other public transport modes, which is why we published a strategy for integrated transport in April this year that set out our ambition to create a simpler, more connected and people-focused network across England.
In addition, I have also committed to the long-term rail strategy including objectives to improve the integration of railway passenger services with other modes of transport. The discussion document discusses the importance of meeting multimodal expectations and reducing end-to-end journey times and this will be a key long-term priority. We are absolutely committed to improving connectivity across the country. When noble Lords read the Secretary of State’s introduction, they will see commitment to integration set out there too.
The Bill also includes practical measures to make integrated transport a reality. Both GBR and the Secretary of State will be required to promote the interests of passengers and to act in the public interest, which would absolutely include working with the providers of other transport modes to improve connectivity. In addition, as we have already discussed, GBR will have regard to local transport plans, which will naturally lead to improvements in connectivity by encouraging collaboration with mayoral strategic authorities that have responsibility for wider local transport services.
The Bill also continues to enable the local devolution of railways, and the Government have published guidance to support this, creating more opportunities for integration of train and bus services. If the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is talking about the commitment in the 1993 Act, I am firmly convinced that the commitments to the mayoral combined authorities in this Bill and the other commitments that I have discussed equally meet that commitment.
I will just say in passing to the noble Lord, Lord Harper, that he can have his own views about British Rail and integration but, in fact, it used to be quite good and it is the deregulation of buses outside London in 1985 that destroyed a lot of the integration over much of England. For example, railway tickets were interoperable with bus services, but that Act finished that one.
I turn to Amendment 101A, from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. It was a pleasure to discuss all the issues that she spoke about today, and more, with her and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, when we met this week. Our overarching plan for the framework is that the Secretary of State sets objectives in the long-term rail strategy and GBR delivers them through an integrated plan. It is our strong view that accessibility should not be considered in isolation. Decisions about stations, rolling stock, passenger assistance, information and investment are most effective when planned together. Embedding accessibility within the long-term rail strategy rather than a separate document ensures that it informs every major decision GBR takes, rather than being treated as a stand-alone issue.
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Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts(3Â weeks ago)
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Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, last week was a catastrophe for many families and businesspeople trying to go about their business, sleeping in airports and barely recovering, even days later, back on to the routes that they wanted to pursue. The day before this calamitous event, the noble Lord’s colleague in the other place, Keir Mather, said in response to a Written Question that all 34 recommendations from the inquiry into the previous NATS calamity in 2023 had been implemented. The very next day, it happened again. Do the Government still have confidence in the management of NATS? When are they going to get a grip?
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, I first make it clear that this was an unacceptable event, and I apologise to passengers and others affected. The event was less than a week ago, last Tuesday afternoon, and the Secretary of State, the Aviation Minister and my department were all completely focused on alleviating the effects of this while it was going on—relaxing controls on night flights and so on—while of course making sure that safety was not compromised. The Secretary of State and the Aviation Minister met the chief executives of NATS and the Civil Aviation Authority the following morning, and the Secretary of State has commissioned a report into this event from NATS and asked it to report to her this Wednesday. The noble Lord should think this a very quick response, because the Government, as with everyone else, do not want these things to happen and regard it as unacceptable, but need to understand why it happened and what needs to be done to prevent it again.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, we have had three of these major events in a short period of time. When are we going to get a system to give some compensation to, or look after, those who have been inconvenienced? It is a great way to encourage people to get something right if they have to pay for it when it goes wrong.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I think the noble Lord was not intimately involved with the passage of the civil aviation Bill, which went through this House just a few short sitting weeks ago. On that Bill, there was a discussion, on an amendment principally proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Young, about whether there should be compensation. As the Minister handling the Bill in Committee and on Report, I took great succour from the statements of the noble Lord, Lord Harper, who was the Secretary of State during the last of those events. He said this:
“The conclusion that I came to was that, if you were to change the position so that NATS was responsible for paying compensation, almost half the bill would land on the taxpayer, just over 40% of it would effectively end up on a different group of airlines—not necessarily all the ones hit by it—and a little bit would effectively land on the staff. The conclusion that I reached was that that did not really get you to a significantly better place than the current position, accepting that the current position is suboptimal”.—[Official Report, 16/6/26; col. GC67.]
That is what he said at the time, and that is currently the view of the Government.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I have the deepest respect for my noble friend Lord Harper, but three former Secretaries of State for Transport took a different view from the one the noble Lord has just read out. When NATS makes mistakes, the airlines pick up the tab. Last week, the airlines had pilots in the wrong place, planes in the wrong place and pilots running out of hours. Is it not a manifest injustice that the airlines have to pick up the tab for the failures of NATS, which recently paid a dividend of ÂŁ171 million?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord is of course echoing the case he made during the passage of the civil aviation Bill, which the Government disagreed with. Of course the event is unacceptable and we need to get to the bottom of it. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said it was another event and of course it is, but it looks, certainly at the moment, as though it is not the same event as in 2023. The Secretary of State and the department are relentlessly focused on finding out what the cause was and on preventing it happening again, which is the way to avoid costs such as the ones the noble Lord referred to being incurred.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
In the absence of any back-up, as I understand it, is it sensible that eight airports were operated by only one system?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble and learned Baroness is certainly right that these systems have to be and should be more resilient than they are. The Secretary of State has recently written to the Civil Aviation Authority with its priorities for the next period of time, and top of the list of priorities for National Air Traffic Services is making it more resilient, for precisely that reason. How it is organised and how many airports it covers is a different question and relates to the geography of the United Kingdom. We have not heard it previously suggested that somehow the geography of what NATS covers ought to be different. It ought to be reliable.
Lord Grayling (Con)
My Lords, the Minister knows that I was one of the former Secretaries of State sympathetic to my noble friend Lord Young, and I hope his point will be considered again by the Government. More seriously, has there been anything so far to suggest that the trouble last week could have been caused by an external influence? Even if that proves not to be the case, does the Minister agree that the resilience of our system is exceptionally important? We saw last week what happens if the system breaks down. Will the Government commit to reviewing exactly how resilient it is, in what are somewhat troubled times?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The Secretary of State and the department are assured that there is no evidence at the present time of external influences. Therefore, we are waiting for the immediate report from National Air Traffic Services and the independent review that the Secretary of State commissioned at the same time from the Civil Aviation Authority. For more or less precisely the reasons the noble Lord set out, we need to be assured that this system is absolutely resilient. He is right that we live in troubled times; one of the things that needs to be reviewed is not only the absolute resilience of the system but its resilience against unfriendly actors and third parties.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I used to be a government director of the PPP for NATS. In those days, the airlines made up 51% of the ownership of the operation. Has that changed? Do they still have an interest? Have they been canvassed on the views that have been expressed in the Chamber?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My noble friend is right that the ownership has changed. The airlines and one or two other institutions now account, I think, for around 40% of the shareholding. The work that the Secretary of State commissioned the morning following the incident originated because it was the right thing for a Secretary of State to do—both the immediate report from NATS, due on Wednesday, and the CAA report. I have no doubt that the board of NATS will consider this in due course, but it is right for public accountability that the Secretary of State decided to commission those two reports. I am sure the board and the shareholders of NATS know, but I do not think she asked permission and I do not think that is what the noble Lord is suggesting—but that would not have been right in any event.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
Given that this constituted a major incident, what provision was made to ensure that the airport was cleared of passengers by making transport available to move them out of the airport? Some passengers could not deplane for more than five hours because the airport was over-congested. In a major incident, the usual policy is partly to have the crowd dispersed.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right that, in these circumstances, people who are affected, particularly those waiting on planes, should be affected for the least amount of time and enabled to find the best possible care and assistance that they need. That is a responsibility of the airports concerned and of the airlines. Those entitlements are set out in UK law. During the civil aviation Bill, in this Chamber we discussed giving the Civil Aviation Authority stronger powers to take action to ensure that consumers are properly dealt with. I do not know the detail of what the noble Baroness has said, but I will go away and ask.
Railways Bill
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill ExcerptsThursday 10th September 2026
(3Â weeks, 4Â days ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Railways Bill 2024-26 View all Railways Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 25-II(a) Amendments for Grand Committee (Supplementary to the Second Marshalled List) - (10 Sep 2026)
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, before I turn to the substance of this group, I would like to say that I received this morning from the Minister, as I imagine other noble Lords have, a letter setting out certain corrections to statements that he made on Tuesday. I have not had the opportunity to study that, but I hope that there will be an opportunity at a later stage in Committee, if necessary, to come back and question the noble Lord on the points made in that letter.
However, I also yesterday received an email from a group calling itself the Association of British Commuters. It referred to the debate that we had on Tuesday concerning what constituted in this context a wholly owned subsidiary of GBR and whether that was consistent with some sort of public/private partnership for the purpose, for example, of developing land. This was not a strange email; it was very coherent, sensible and well written. The thrust of it was that not only did noble Lords on these Benches get it all wrong—if I may say so to my noble friend Lord Lansley; if he has not received the email, I will send it to him—but so did the Minister.
I have two questions before I start on this section. First, has the Minister received this email? If not, I am very happy to send it to him. Secondly, does he expect to return to the Committee at the earliest opportunity to make corrective statements? Clearly, if he has not seen the email, he will not be able to answer the second question, because his officials will not have had the chance to advise him, but he is under an obligation to return at the earliest opportunity if he has something to correct, as he has today—I am giving him that opportunity. When I sit down, I will send him the email. If he tells me at the end that he has not received it, I will very happily send it to him, as I will to my noble friend Lord Lansley.
I turn to the group of amendments that we have been debating. I shall speak to—I shall not read out the numbers—all the amendments that I have tabled in this group, which are quite a lot. I shall also speak briefly on Amendment 27 on behalf of my noble friend Lord Grayling.
These amendments go to the heart of the devolution agenda. None of us is satisfied with what the Bill contains on devolution to local authorities, strategic authorities, regional authorities—whatever they are called. I have been thinking about why none of us is satisfied and what the fundamental flaw of the Bill is in this regard. The answer is that there is no devolution in it. What the Bill does is give those authorities the right to request things from Great British Railways—as I said on Tuesday, I find the phrase “right to request” quite objectionable in a free country, because we all have a right to request things of Ministers as part of our democracy. In other words, they have the right to ask to become customers. If those things are granted to them, they will have those services provided by Great British Railways and they will make payments towards them, if necessary, to justify the carriage of passengers on that particular route. All they have, therefore, is the right to request to become customers. There are no devolved powers in any of this. There is no devolved running of railways, because that would be inconsistent, I suspect, in the Minister’s mind with the single directing brain that is going to be controlling the railways. So there is very little.
The amendments that I have tabled fall into two groups. Two of them relate to devolution in general, and the second group relates to TfL in particular. To start with TfL, I need to start by saying that although it is not a current interest, as many noble Lords in the Room will know, I used to be deputy chairman of TfL and indeed worked closely with the Minister during that time. The Mayor of London has made it clear that he wants further devolution of rail services to TfL. In fact, this is a process that started when I was deputy chairman of TfL and the Minister was commissioner, and very successful it has been. Lines that were, in effect, abandoned became busy commuter routes, with very little investment—just through good management, making the stations attractive and having some new trains. It has been a huge success. The London Overground is one of the huge rail successes that this country has achieved in the past few years—all of it run on a concession model, incidentally, involving the private sector or external train companies of one sort or another.
The Mayor of London wants more of that—that is understandable. I think Londoners want more of that. The Mayor of London now has a high-powered friend in Downing Street. The Prime Minister has said that power has been hoarded in SW1 for too long. He wants power carried to every postcode in the land—et cetera—and the Government will be redistributing power. This Bill does not redistribute power to anybody in local government. So I would hope that the Minister would have changed his mind in recent weeks and would be extremely sympathetic to these amendments.
Amendments 28 to 30 seek to ensure that the Secretary of State remains properly involved in arrangements between GBR and TfL, rather than allowing those relations to be determined solely within GBR. This is the bear in the room again. GBR is going to be so huge. It will make all the decisions. Everybody else is just a taker of decisions by GBR, they are not participating in them.
Amendment 159 seeks to protect existing TfL and London Underground arrangements and would ensure that they could not simply be displaced without proper process and consultation.
Amendment 301 makes the principle even simpler: where GBR is making a decision affecting TfL, it should inform TfL and allow TfL itself to determine whether the decision is sufficiently significant to require consultation. That seems entirely consistent with the Prime Minister’s philosophy. The same principle lies behind Amendments 23 to 25, 156 and 297 in relation to mayors and local government more widely, to which I now turn.
Amendments 23 and 24 would give greater flexibility for railway functions to be exercised locally and for the necessary financial arrangements to flow in either direction. At the moment the Bill allows GBR to collect money from local authorities. Why should it not be the other way round? What if GBR makes a profit on a line? Why should it not pay money to the local authority? Why is everything so one-sided in the Bill?
Amendment 25 would provide an independent route to the ORR where agreement cannot be reached. There is no way in the Bill of resolving disagreements. So let us provide one. Let us have an appeal to an independent ORR. It is not that I think the ORR is tremendous, but it is currently the only available appeal body. If the Minister says he is happy to have an appeal but would like a different structure, we would be open to discussing that, but let us have an appeal route so that disagreements can be resolved independently.
Amendment 156 would allow mayoral and combined authorities to procure local passenger services through concession agreements, including using private operators where that offers the best solution. Currently they are limited to using GBR to provide the services. What if GBR is no good? I know that GBR is going to be managed beautifully and nothing will ever go wrong in the utopian vision we are looking forward to, but what if it is not actually very good? What if people are constantly on strike? What if the management is sloppy? Why should you not be able to turn to a private train operator to manage your local service? This is not a question of track access or timetables, because they have been agreed, but why would you have to use GBR to provide these services if you are genuinely enjoying devolution?
Amendment 297 would require GBR to notify a mayoral combined authority before taking a relevant decision. I accept the point made by my noble friend Lord Lansley that that terminology might be improved, but I am not entering into that issue at the moment. That would allow the authority itself to judge whether the decision is sufficiently significant to require consultation. Why should GBR be the body to decide whether something should be consulted on, when it is the local authority that has the knowledge of how sensitive it might be with the local communities that could benefit from consultation?
These amendments test how far the Government intend to follow through on the Prime Minister’s policies. Do they genuinely trust mayors and local authorities to shape local services? Do they support further rail devolution to London where TfL can demonstrate that it would improve services? Will they ensure that GBR becomes a partner in genuine devolution—not simply acquiring local authority customers—rather than just a national body through which decisions are centralised? Given the new Prime Minister’s stated agenda, I hope we will see a different approach from the Minister for the first time.
The amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Berkeley, and my noble friends Lord Lansley and Lord Grayling are at the heart of many of the issues that I have raised in this group. They also sit squarely with what the Prime Minister himself advocated when he was Mayor of Greater Manchester—a song that he has continued to sing, on the whole, since he became Prime Minister, about the importance of devolving power, giving local leaders greater control over transport and allowing places to shape growth around their own priorities. It is time for the Minister to step up, get real and get with the swing of where, we are told, Burnham’s Britain is going.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, before we move on, I return briefly to a point raised in Committee on Tuesday on Amendment 146, regarding the long-term rail strategy and its relationship with devolved railway responsibilities. I was less than clear on this issue when we discussed it previously and thought it would be helpful to make a point of order to provide clarity and correct the record.
For clarity, the Government consider that Clause 15 is correctly drafted and accurately reflects the devolution settlement. The Secretary of State’s long-term rail strategy will cover Great Britain. It will cover all of England and Wales and will address the railway in Scotland with regard to reserved matters only. Reserved matters include issues such as cross-border services, technical standards and railway safety and security. Scottish Ministers have devolved responsibility for matters such as Scottish passenger services and Scottish funded infrastructure. Accordingly, Clause 15(3) prevents the long-term rail strategy making provisions about functions of the Scottish Ministers, who will cover those matters in their own strategy.
I hope that explanation is helpful. The key point is that there is no inconsistency between describing the strategy as Great Britain-wide and providing an appropriate carve-out for devolved Scottish functions. I also reassure noble Lords—
Lord Lansley (Con)
I have a quick question. Why, then, is there not a similar provision saying that the rail strategy may not make provision about the functions of Welsh Ministers?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The answer is that the infrastructure arrangements in Wales are significantly different and Wales does not have its own settlement in that respect. I reassure noble Lords that engagement between the Government and Scottish and Welsh Ministers on both strategies is productive and will continue until their publication. I am grateful to noble Lords who raised this issue, providing an opportunity to place my clarification on the record.
In respect of the second point made by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, about an email from—
Lord Harper (Con)
Before the Minister concludes, may I respond, since I was one of the Members who raised this issue? I thank him for what he has just said and for the very helpful letter that he sent, to which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, referred. I took the time to study it this morning, since I was the one who raised the issue, and I am grateful to him for making it clear that “strategy” means something slightly different north of the border, in Scotland, because of the role of Scottish Ministers. Again, it is an asymmetrical position with Wales, as my noble friend Lord Lansley, has just highlighted, because in Wales Welsh Ministers do not have the responsibility. That is very helpful, and I am grateful for the Minister’s clarification that the Government do not have to come back with amendments to fix the Bill.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord. We thought that we had been saved by the bell, but we were not, so I thought that it was right to put it right.
I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that to my knowledge I do not have an email from the Association of British Commuters, although I do get several emails a day. If he sends it to me, I shall talk to officials about what it suggests. I think that is the most I can say.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
On group 1, of course this matter is of significance to this Government, with a new Prime Minister, and I firmly believe that the Bill already empowers mayors in local areas. I am clear that Great British Railways will not work unless it works for and with mayors and local communities.
In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, who quoted me, I stand by what is said. This is absolutely not a tick-box exercise.
I turn to Amendment 22A in the name of my noble friend Lord Blunkett, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, has kindly spoken today. I absolutely agree with him and with the noble Baroness that the partnership approach that the Bill sets out must be effective. GBR must engage with partnership offers seriously, and the bar for GBR to reject a partnership must be exceptionally high. As we are aligned on the intent behind the amendment, which she described as the principal amendment in this group as it covers all circumstances, I commit to taking it away and I shall see what can be done after this debate.
I turn to Amendments 147 and 156. The Government absolutely support further rail devolution where it is in the interests of passengers and the wider rail network. That is why the Bill already provides a route for passenger rail services to be devolved through exemption from designation by the Secretary of State in Clause 28. Where services are devolved, mayors already have flexibility to choose their approach to securing passenger services and may secure them via a concession contract, including to the private sector, if they so wish. The Bill does not change that. TFL, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, describes, operates on precisely this basis. There is therefore no need to duplicate the existing devolution provision in the Bill, which already achieves that intent in full.
On Amendments 23 and 24, Clause 5 is already intended to support local commissioning arrangements: it enables mayors to contribute funding where they wish to secure services or improvements that reflect local priorities and go beyond the national railway offer. This gives local leaders a mechanism to invest in additional rail outcomes for their area where they choose to do so, providing the local input that we know is so important for enhancing our communities. The details of these arrangements, including revenue-sharing options, will be agreed separately from legislation via collaborative partnerships between GBR and mayors. Work on developing this model has already begun, using Greater Manchester as a pathfinder—I am going to meet the new mayor of Greater Manchester tomorrow.
The Government absolutely support greater local influence over rail services, but allowing mayors to run rail services is a financially significant decision, with safety and public interest impacts; that is why it is right that the current process in the Bill for devolving services to local leaders remains the route that is used for this. That route is well understood, familiar to industry and proven effective. Allowing mayors to run GBR services outside of the usual process is not necessary and does not better serve local communities.
I turn to Amendments 26, 64, 304 and 333. The Bill is focused on mayoral strategic authorities to reflect their growth across England and the role that mayors can play to convene local partners and tackle regional challenges. Mayors have the most far-reaching and flexible powers; therefore, this level of authority is of the appropriate scale and capability to integrate rail with wider public transport, enabling them to engage effectively with Great British Railways.
Furthermore, as outlined in the Cabinet statement Rewiring the State, published in July, the Government consider that mayors who are directly accountable to the residents who elect them can provide the best governance for their communities. As a result, the suite of powers available to areas with mayors will be commensurately greater, recognising the role that they play as leaders in their regions. However, this is not to say that other levels of local government will be excluded from engagement with Great British Railways, and I take the point that it is important that no local authority is left out, as indeed the Prime Minister said a few days ago. The plan is for all tiers of local government to benefit from local GBR business units, and some existing authorities have collaborated well with the existing structure, including Devon, with several new stations, and, recently, Cornwall, with the Mid Cornwall Metro.
Our approach does not intend to exclude anyone from working with the railway, but we think it is sensible to use mayors as a focal point for powers, responsibilities and representation in their local areas. That said, I am happy to see if there is anything we can do outside the Bill to reassure foundation authorities that their views will be properly considered, and I will reflect on that further.
Lord Lansley (Con)
I thank the Minister for his response to my amendments. To avoid us further returning to this issue, I should say that there are other amendments to exactly the same purpose that I did not notice had not been grouped together, in Clauses 16 and 83 and elsewhere in the Bill, so I hope we will treat this as the one debate about that issue.
The route ahead, if I may say so to the Minister, is a very straightforward one: relevant local government bodies—for the purpose of information sharing, taking advice and co-ordinating with transport strategies—should be England wide, and therefore it should be all strategic authorities. If the Minister and the Government, understandably, want to go further and have a category of strategic authorities with mayors which have the ability to go further in terms of working with GBR and taking responsibilities, the route would be to put in something for that purpose in relation to established mayoral strategic authorities, which clearly have the financial basis on which to do that. Distinguishing between those two would make this work much more effectively.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord. I am particularly grateful for his suggestion that we debate this only once. I have listened carefully to what he has just said and I will reflect on it, as I said I would do on the rest of the subject. I am grateful to him for that, and indeed the Hansard record is useful in being able to cross-reference it further to this Committee session.
I turn to the proposals on Transport for London. Amendment 27 seeks to provide all mayoral authorities with the same powers as TfL. Of course, the Government support rail devolution where it can deliver better outcomes for passengers and local communities, but those arrangements should reflect the circumstances, capabilities and aspirations of individual areas rather than applying a single model everywhere. The TfL model has a distinct legislative and governance framework developed over many years, and it would not be appropriate to automatically confer all existing or future TfL powers on every mayoral combined authority. The other point worth noting is that the geography of London includes several complete railway services, unlike much of the geography of the rest of the combined authorities in England.
The Government have already published guidance on applications for rail devolution and, as I have already said, the Bill includes a route to devolved rail services for those seeking that in Clause 28. Therefore, should mayoral authorities want to pursue full devolution of certain services, as TfL has, they are welcome to use those established routes to seek it. Devolution arrangements should be considered on their merits, taking account of local circumstances and the outcome sought for passengers. A one-size-fits-all approach will not serve all local communities.
On Amendments 28 to 30, Clause 6 of the Bill requires GBR and TfL to co-operate on railway matters, including co-ordinating passenger services and sharing relevant information to help to integrate rail with the wider London network. As the directing mind for the railway, GBR will be responsible for those operational matters and how they will be discharged when collaborating with TfL. I do not believe that expanding the Secretary of State’s role further would reflect that clear division of responsibilities, but I can reassure the noble Lord that, via amendments that the Government brought in on Report in the Commons, the Secretary of State is still enabled to enter into arrangements with TfL to support the future devolution of rail services where that is needed. The Government believe that this approach is sufficient to support TfL to integrate and co-operate with the wider rail network.
On Amendment 159, I reassure the noble Lord that the Government are supportive of the success TfL has made of rail devolution, and existing devolved arrangements will continue. To that end, existing exemption orders in relation to TfL concession services do not have an expiry date. The Bill also contains safeguards governing access decisions, including duties on GBR, a requirement to have regard to the Mayor of London’s transport strategy, a requirement for GBR and TfL to co-operate in relation to all services, and an independent route of appeal to the ORR.
Likewise, Amendment 25 seeks to enable mayors to appeal access decisions if they affect services in their area. Clauses 83 to 86 already allow GBR to request advice from mayoral authorities about services in their area, require it to consult them if a decision will significantly affect their area and, if a decision will affect the local area, GBR will work with local partners weighing up trade-offs between local and national network priorities. This enables issues to be resolved through collaboration rather than requiring relevant local government bodies to challenge GBR through the access appeals regime. Despite this, all local authorities are able to appeal an access decision they are aggrieved by, under provisions already in the Bill.
On Amendments 297 to 301, Clause 83 already requires GBR to consult mayoral authorities where a relevant decision would significantly affect their local area, including the interests of the local economy or of people living in, working in or visiting the area. The amendments would therefore add little practical benefit beyond further bureaucracy, slowing down decision-making, while mayors would have to review hundreds of decisions, often irrelevant to them, before any progress can be made.
On Amendments 298 to 301, I reassure my noble friend that the Bill is already clear, through Clause 83, that GBR will have to consult mayoral authorities on its access and charging decisions where these relate to a GBR railway passenger service in the area and would significantly affect the local region.
Alongside these legislative commitments, it is the Government’s clear intention for GBR to work in partnership with mayoral authorities. I am determined that GBR will absolutely be a proactive partner of those authorities, maximising the benefits that the Bill can bring to local areas. As a result, I hope noble Lords are reassured that the Government share their ambitions on local devolution and I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, before the Minister sits down, I am very grateful for his response to my amendments, but on the relationships between local authorities and central government, we already have an example in the south-west—and, I think, in south Wales—where the train operators and the local authorities have come together and developed a new wifi system so that you can get wifi on the trains, which is quite important these days. They installed it in one train and it worked beautifully, and many of us have tried it. They asked the Department for Transport whether they, as the regional authority, could take over the procurement of improved wifi on all the trains on the GWR network and have it done more quickly. This was refused by the Department for Transport, which said that only it is capable of doing a procurement exercise on something as important as wifi on trains. Now, I hope that is just a one-off—my noble friend is aware of it—and that in the new GBR set-up, there will be more flexibility as to who does what.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
In quick answer to my noble friend, the only reason it should be procured centrally is because improved wifi is needed on every railway service in Britain. Therefore, the department is determined to deliver it on all those services, and fragmenting the procurement would lead only to increased cost and probably significant delay elsewhere. I have absolutely no intention of getting in the way of wifi for the south-west, I would just like it to be delivered in other parts of Britain at the same time.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I think that illustrates a point. The Minister talks of devolution, but everything is flowing one way, so I will come back to this point. It arose in relation to Scotland—and, I think, also Wales—on Tuesday. GBR will be obliged to consult with local authorities on matters of significance. Significant is the word. But GBR will decide what is significant. Amendments I tabled that would allow the local area, or, in the case of Scotland, Scottish Ministers, to decide what is significant for them were brushed aside on the grounds that it would be far too difficult, they would have to review hundreds of decisions and could not possibly do that.
Of course, GBR has to review hundreds of decisions to decide whether they are significant. In local authority terms, one picks out very quickly what the significant decisions are because one has the local knowledge of what will cause a terrible fuss, which GBR does not have. Does the Minister see that the Bill cannot survive claiming a devolution mandate on the basis of this mentality, which keeps coming back? The Minister wants to be a proactive partner but, given GBR, I find that a rather terrifying thing, because it suggests that the other partner will be managed the whole time by GBR; then, at the end of the process, it will think it had a successful partnership. It is the wrong mentality, and it has to change.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I think the noble Lord is in a different place in his imagination of this. These proposals will generally originate with GBR. Its structure, which I described on the first day in Committee, will be organised locally and regionally and so it will know how those proposals are going to affect local communities.
There will be timetable changes, station improvements and infrastructure improvements. It is much easier for GBR to identify those in relation to the local and combined authorities that it deals with than it would be for them to sift through what, sadly in many cases, is railwayese in describing what is going on. I do not agree with the noble Lord. I believe this will work and that it will be a genuine partnership with those authorities.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 37 in my name, which is a probing amendment. It would limit the power of the Scottish Ministers to issue directions to GBR to circumstances where a KPI has been missed or performance has not been up to snuff.
I do not advance that because I think it is an appropriate thing to put in the Bill; it is a question of probing when the Government think the powers should be used, because it is not clear. We are meant to have a single directing mind—GBR is meant to be the single directing mind—but, as I said on Tuesday, we have several other directing minds here, too. One of them is the Secretary of State, who can issue directions—after all, directions are exactly what a directing mind would be expected to produce—but, now, we also have the Scottish Ministers issuing directions, and it is not absolutely clear that they cannot overturn the directions of the Secretary of State. I want to know what the powers can be used for, how clashes and contradictions can be avoided, and how all this is coherent with the Minister’s claim that he is creating a single directing mind in the shape of Great British Railways.
I wish to comment briefly on the other amendments in this group. My noble friend Lord Grayling has tabled Amendments 34 to 36, to which I have added my name. It is an important constitutional principle that directions issued by the Secretary of State are not only published but laid before Parliament. The Minister will say, “You can’t possibly expect MPs to read these things. They haven’t got time. They might be full of railwayese. What is the possible advantage of putting them in front of MPs?”, but I think that MPs and Peers would value having these important directions put before them so that the Secretary of State can be held accountable for his or her actions in the management of the railways.
My noble friend Lord Lansley’s Amendments 32 and 33 are also entirely reasonable. Where relevant functions have been delegated and the Secretary of State proposes to give GBR directions affecting infrastructure, capacity, timetables, charging or performance in Scotland or Wales, surely it is right that the Scottish or Welsh Ministers are consulted.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions to this group.
On Amendments 32 and 33, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, access to railway infrastructure is a reserved matter. It is important that access and timetabling decisions make sense across the entire rail network; therefore, there must be one central decision-maker, to avoid fragmented and disparate decision-making, which increases delays, cancellations and disruption. However, GBR must consult Scottish and Welsh Ministers before issuing, revising or replacing its access and use policy. It must consult them on other decisions if those decisions may affect their interests, and must take into account their transport plans when making access decisions. There are therefore already adequate safeguards for devolved Governments in relation to the access regime.
Lord Moylan (Con)
On my Amendment 37, if the Minister insists on responding solely in the literal sense to explicitly probing amendments—seeking in this case to work out how a conflict in directions between Scottish Ministers and the Secretary of State, for example, might be addressed—all he does is encourage further amendments to be tabled to the Bill to bring the subject back so that it can be debated. One has to keep finding wording that will make that happen. I genuinely would like to know how he sees these multiple direct laws, producing directions, operating together. Do they collaborate, what happens in the case of contradictions, and so forth? These are questions to which Parliament is entitled to an answer.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I believe I did answer the noble Lord: the memoranda of understanding between Scottish Ministers and this Government, and between Welsh Ministers and this Government, set out the processes by which these things will be co-ordinated. Were there to be any real difficulty in the circumstances he is describing, we would not have been able to get as far as we did in drafting the MoUs, which we have done, and in the agreement of Scottish and Welsh Ministers to the provisions of it.
Lord Lansley (Con)
We are grateful to the Minister for his explanations—for my part, on Amendments 32 and 33. The Minister explained why the Bill says that, for reason of reserve powers, the consent of Scottish or Welsh Ministers is not required. This is an opportunity to make it clear that, if we were in the exceptional situation of the Secretary of State issuing directions that impacted in Scotland or Wales, it might be reasonable that the Secretary of State would consult Scottish or Welsh Ministers. I did not hear the Minister say that such a consultation would not take place so, on that basis, I am happy to withdraw Amendment 32.
Lord Reay (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friends Lord Evans of Guisborough, Lord Lansley and Lord Grayling for their amendments in this group. I will address Amendments 41, 42 and 44 first.
The Government have repeatedly emphasised the importance of independent regulation under the new system. They tell us that the ORR will remain an independent and expert regulator, while describing the new Passengers’ Council as a powerful new voice for passengers. These amendments ask how much power these bodies will actually have. Under the Bill, the Secretary of State may modify GBR’s licence after consulting the ORR and, where the changes concern its functions, the Passengers’ Council.
However, consultation is not agreement. The licence is fundamental to how GBR operates and to the conditions against which the ORR will ultimately regulate and enforce its performance. If the ORR is to be the robust and independent regulator that the Government say it will be, why can the Secretary of State alter that licence without its agreement?
The same question applies to the Passengers’ Council. The Government describe it as a powerful new voice, but the Bill requires only consultation. There is no express requirement in this provision for the Secretary of State to have regard to the council’s consultation response. The Secretary of State must subsequently consider representations or objections made during the formal notice period, but that is not the same as giving the passenger watchdog a meaningful role in agreeing changes that may directly affect passenger interests.
I turn to Amendment 46, tabled by my noble friend Lord Grayling. Under the Bill, the ORR may grant a licence to a non-GBR operator only if the Secretary of State consents or if the licence falls within a general authority previously given by the Secretary of State. As my noble friend Lord Harper asks, why is that ministerial veto necessary? If the ORR—the independent regulator that the Government repeatedly tell us will remain robust and expert—has considered an application and concluded that a non-GBR operator satisfies the relevant requirements, why should the Secretary of State have the final trump card?
If the Government genuinely want an independent regulator and less day-to-day political interference in the operation of the railway, surely licensing decisions of this kind should rest with the regulator. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister could explain in what circumstances the Government envisage the Secretary of State refusing consent to a licence that the ORR considers should be granted and why that power remains necessary.
Amendment 45, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley, seems entirely reasonable. Where a GBR licence concerns railway assets located in Scotland or Wales, I see no good reason why the relevant Scottish or Welsh Ministers should not be consulted.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to hear from noble Lords on this group, and it is a special pleasure to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Reay.
Amendments 38 and 39 would undermine one of the fundamental principles that the Bill seeks to establish. The Secretary of State will set the overall strategic direction for GBR, and the Bill provides her with the sole ability to issue GBR’s licence. This reflects that it is the Secretary of State, not the ORR or the passenger watchdog, who is ultimately accountable for GBR both to Parliament and to the wider public. This aligns with the wider programme of regulatory reform that this Government are undertaking, where Ministers set the strategic direction and regulators are empowered to enforce against that. Regulators should not be making key strategic or political decisions for fundamentally important sectors.
However, regardless of who issues the licence, the ORR will enforce GBR’s compliance with it exactly as it does today. It has strong enforcement powers to ensure that GBR does not contravene the terms of its licence, including mandatory, legally binding directions requiring GBR to change its behaviour. It would not be appropriate to provide the ORR or the passenger watchdog with the power to veto the licence. The Secretary of State will, however, consult both those bodies and consider their views before issuing the licence.
On Amendment 38 specifically, I reassure noble Lords that safety remains fundamental to the operation of our railways and that the Bill does not weaken or alter the existing railway safety regime, nor the ORR’s role within it. No licence will be issued that is not fully compliant with safety regulations and safety law. Furthermore, we expect that GBR will have a licence condition to support the continuity of the current industry safety and standards framework to preserve our world-leading culture of rail safety. The Secretary of State will consult the ORR on the licence precisely to ensure that these kinds of conditions are fit for purpose.
I turn to Amendments 41 to 46. Currently, the Secretary of State is the ultimate licensing authority for the railways under the Railways Act 1993, and the current Bill does not change that. As it does now, the ORR will continue to issue all non-GBR licences under the general authority given to it by the Secretary of State. Not only would removing the Secretary of State from the process or requiring the ORR to consent undermine continuity and stability for the industry but it would be superfluous in practice, as the ORR already issues these licences on behalf of the Secretary of State.
Let me also clarify that railway licensing is, and will remain, a reserved matter. Scottish and Welsh Ministers are not licensing authorities under the current system, and the Bill will not change this. However, that does not mean that Scottish and Welsh Ministers are prevented from making their views known. The ORR is required under the Bill to provide notice prior to any licence being issued and to consider any representations, including any by Scottish and Welsh Ministers. We therefore do not consider it necessary to create an additional consultation requirement specifically for Scottish and Welsh Ministers.
I also note that the Government have spent long and productive hours discussing the provisions of the Bill with Scottish and Welsh Ministers and, in both cases, they are content with the licensing provisions as drafted. In fact, Scotland has already published its legislative consent Motion. I therefore ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Lansley (Con)
Can I ask the Minister why, if it is not necessary to create a statutory consultation requirement, it is necessary to have a consultation requirement in relation to the Passengers’ Council? Can it not respond to the consultation on a licence in the same way as Scottish or Welsh Ministers could?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am sure it could, but it is desirable to mention the Passengers’ Council, since we are setting it up and it is an important body. The distinction I am seeking to draw is leaving the Passengers’ Council as a consultee, rather than requiring its permission.
Lord Harper (Con)
Can I press the Minister on the question I asked? As he said, the Secretary of State is the holder of the licensing power, but the Office of Rail and Road is given a general authority to issue licences for non-GBR operators, but I still do not understand what the purpose is, in new Section 8(6)(a) inserted by Schedule 1, of the requirement for the Secretary of State to consent to the grant. In what circumstances would the Office of Rail and Road be operating outside its general authority? It would be helpful if the Minister could give an example of where that Secretary of State veto would kick in, because I do not quite understand the point of it.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I think we are leaving things as they are, but if the noble Lord would like a specific example, I will have to write to him because I do not have such an example immediately in my mind.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The broad principle is that we are leaving licensing in the position it is in at the moment.
Lord Evans of Guisborough (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate, which have been very helpful and largely supportive across parties. I am grateful to the Minister for his response. He has dealt with questions from some of my noble friends to their satisfaction. I am not sure he has dealt with the issue which I originally raised to my satisfaction, but for now I am happy to withdraw Amendment 38.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, when I was deputy chairman of Transport for London, I found London TravelWatch a rather annoying body. I suspect that when the Minister was the transport commissioner he found it even more annoying than I did, because of course it was there to complain as well as to make suggestions for improvements, so I can understand that there may well be a level of resistance to the suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. However, I have added my name to her amendments because, objectively speaking, she is absolutely right: this is a very important statutory body. It should be treated on a level footing with other transport users’ committees. I can see no possible grounds for objection that the Minister may have. I suspect this will be one of the concessions he makes on Report and, if he does not, it will be inserted in the Bill whether he likes it or not. I look forward to hearing him say that the noble Baroness is spot on about this and that he willing be able to accept, if not her amendments as drafted today, at least amendments in lieu to the same effect that he might produce in the near future.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, for these amendments. I should directly contradict the noble Lord, Lord Moylan: as the commissioner of transport for Transport for London, I found London TravelWatch a very constructive body. I enjoyed dealing with it; there were other people we dealt with who were far more difficult.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Some of the board.
As the noble Baroness says, London TravelWatch plays a vital role as the statutory watchdog for London, championing the interests of people who travel across all modes of the city’s integrated transport network. That is precisely why the Bill will strengthen its rail powers to ensure there is consistent passenger advocacy across Great Britain.
However, the passenger watchdog will have a new role in the reformed railways which will be different to the role of London TravelWatch. It will go beyond being solely a watchdog and passenger champion. It will have a central role in holding rail operators, including GBR, to account by setting consumer standards for the industry and monitoring operator compliance with them. It would not be appropriate to have two different bodies setting standards, which is why the watchdog will work closely with London TravelWatch to ensure that standards applied across all operators reflect its expertise. That is why London TravelWatch is treated differently in the Bill and why GBR, the Secretary of State and the Office of Rail and Road must consult only the watchdog on certain matters such as the licence, the long-term rail strategy and GBR’s business plan. London TravelWatch is not expected, for example, to have any role on the licence.
That said, I can reassure the noble Baroness that I absolutely agree that London TravelWatch must continue to have a voice on matters that impact the London transport network, and indeed the wider scope of London TravelWatch that she referred to. I understand that Transport Focus, the future passenger watchdog and London TravelWatch will update their existing collaboration agreement to reflect changes in roles. I expect this will include additional expectations around consultation and engagement where matters will affect London and the other services which London TravelWatch oversees. For these reasons, I urge her now to withdraw her amendment, though I am happy to discuss this with her further after Committee.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
I thank the Committee for this debate; I would say “short debate”, but I spoke quite extensively and maybe comprehensively on this matter. I understand what the Minister is saying, but it would be helpful, even if he has to define it differently, to put London TravelWatch, where appropriate, on the same footing as the Passengers’ Council for certain areas of consultation. A collaboration agreement between two organisations would be between them, but I would like to see something on the statute that makes it clear in which areas we would expect London TravelWatch to have a role. I would be happy to meet the Minister outside to see whether the Government can come up with some wording that would deliver that and ensure London’s voice is not lost in this. On that basis, I am happy at this moment to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, briefly, the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, on producing a business plan are absolutely essential because, as he noted, the railways need long-term investment. It is not just trains which need to somehow be ordered 10 or 20 years before they are needed but things such as HS2, which we have no budget for at the moment. We have no real knowledge of how much is going to be spent each year and when it is going to open, so there needs to be much greater discipline on this. I fully support these probing amendments to see what my noble friend is able to tell us.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for this debate on group 5 and will echo the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon: it is a delight to see the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, in his place this afternoon. I am sure that the rest of the Grand Committee wishes him, as I do, a very happy significant birthday for yesterday. I have also read and heard what he has argued carefully and, as he is a man of huge experience in the railway, I will reflect on what he said.
The Committee will be relieved to know that I am not going to redebate the status of GBR companies and subsidiaries. I thought I would leave it to the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Moylan, to fight that out. I think I had the same clarity as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, at the end of that debate.
I think noble Lords’ amendments are, collectively seeking, first, that the Secretary of State considers GBR’s duties, her long-term rail strategy and the wider planning considerations when determining GBR’s funding settlement; secondly, that that funding settlement is transparent; and thirdly, that it is protected. Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, seeks to ensure that it is in place two years before the next financial period.
I start by providing some explanation of the provisions. The Bill already establishes a comprehensive funding framework. Schedule 2 sets out that the Secretary of State must publish a statement of objectives for the railway. In doing so, she is absolutely bound to consider her duties and her own strategy, and she will, of course, consider wider planning and the impact of the network. Following the statement of objectives, the Secretary of State must then publish a statement of funds available, so that GBR can understand its funding parameters and produce a high-quality business plan.
Schedule 2 then provides that GBR must produce, publish and keep up to date the five-year integrated business plan across both infrastructure and passenger services. The Office of Rail and Road will advise the Secretary of State on the effectiveness of the business plan, including whether it represents good value for money. If it does, the Secretary of State will then approve the plan and issue a five-year settlement.
Under paragraph 7 of Schedule 2, as in the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, the Secretary of State is required to publish details of the five-year funding settlement she gives to GBR, including the funds agreed. She will absolutely ensure that that these published details are clear enough to allow stakeholders to understand the settlement, meeting the noble Lord’s request for transparency, while protecting key commercially sensitive information.
GBR’s business plan will also contain all its planned activities, costs and how it plans to meet those costs. This plan will be updated and published annually after the initial settlement. A clear summary of ORR’s advice through the funding process will also be published, as set out in paragraph 4(6), which means that the desires of the noble Lord for an annual report on GBR’s financial performance will be delivered. Other further reporting requirements are duplicative and unnecessary, and all this amendment would do is increase the time GBR spends on bureaucracy instead of getting on with its job of delivering.
On protecting the funding settlement, which the noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Moylan, spoke about, I agree that when maintaining and renewing long-term railway assets, certainty of funding is critical. It provides a stable basis of planning, supports efficient delivery and helps build investor confidence throughout the supply chain. I repeat that the intention behind setting a five-year settlement is that it should endure for the full five-year period.
On the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, I can assure him that the Secretary of State must publish any updates to the settlement that are likely to have a material impact. If she wishes to make a material change to the settlement, she must also notify the ORR, which will advise on the likely impact on the railway, and that is one of its important and critical roles. This will ensure that there is transparency around any funding changes and that there will be scrutiny if material changes are proposed that will not support an effective railway.
On Amendment 55 from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, I do not agree that the Secretary of State should be restricted to changing the funding settlement only in emergencies. As the noble Lord, Lord Harper, says, the Government have a lot of priorities to deliver across healthcare, housing, transport and public safety, which all require funding. While, of course, in my mind, the railway is absolutely the most important of those priorities, I recognise that the Government and Ministers need to be able to move money in response to changing circumstances, because choices about funding priorities are ultimately for the Government of the day.
On the details of Amendments 74 to 77 from the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, the first key point is the question of which funding changes the ORR should get involved in. The Bill already requires that the ORR is notified when changes to the funding settlement are material enough to affect delivery, but not in every circumstance. This approach is proportionate. There may well be some smaller accounting-type changes to funding needed, which will not affect delivery and do not require a true statutory formal change process. This could, for example, include GBR offering to return small underspends back to the Government where efficiencies have been found but, of course, material changes, as I have said, should be notified to the ORR. This process ensures that they will be.
The Bill currently requires that the Secretary of State notifies ORR before a material funding reduction is made to the five-year infrastructure settlement. This allows ORR to exercise its independent and expert judgement when it receives notice of a potential change. I can reassure noble Lords that the ORR would absolutely act if significant funding were taken out of the railways, including by advising the Secretary of State and publishing that advice. This approach is most practical, rather than requiring ORR to respond to each change in funding in a set way. To summarise this point, certainty is crucial for the railways, the Government and the wider supply chain, but it must be proportionate and balanced against the ability of Ministers to allocate public resources.
The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, raised the question of rolling stock manufacturers and the Government’s answer to this is to construct and publish in due course a rolling stock and infrastructure strategy, the first for more than 30 years, in order to give that part of this market the long-term certainty it craves and which will keep the production facilities and jobs going.
Finally, I agree that, given the amount of investment on the line, it is important that funding is in place in good time to allow GBR and industry to prepare for the next settlement. Although I do not think this should be in primary legislation, because requiring funding levels to be confirmed two years before the start of a funding period would reduce flexibility and risk settlements becoming outdated before they can even take effect, I reassure the noble Lord that details of the timing will be managed by the ORR, as they have been in successive control periods, to ensure that the financial settlement is never at risk.
Schedule 2 sets out that the statement of funds available must be published early in the process and created to timelines determined by the ORR. I can confirm that in practice, as seen under the periodic review process, this information will be published significantly in advance and has to be more than a year ahead of the final settlement to work. I understand that the ORR will ensure that the process concludes fully with time for industry to prepare. I hope this is a reassurance.
I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, that the Bill leaves flexibility to fund more of GBR’s activity through the five-year settlement, once this becomes once this becomes practical and Ministers are more comfortable funding an integrated entity. If Ministers fund passenger services through the five-year settlement using the route in the Bill, all the protections we just discussed would already apply.
Turning to a related issue, on Amendment 65, I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that we are in agreement, and the outcome of Amendment 65 is already achieved by the Bill’s provisions. Under paragraph 4(3) of Schedule 2, GBR will be required through its business plan to set out its activities, the costs of those activities, and how it proposes that those costs are met. In practice, this means that the business plan must cover everything that GBR does, through its subsidiaries as well as the parent company, and must cover its revenue sources across all its subsidiaries.
I turn to Amendment 70—and once again I confirm for the Committee that the Bill already requires the full business plan to be published and kept up to date, in paragraph 4(7), and there is a commitment to update it in paragraph 5(3) of Schedule 2. However, the Bill contains slightly more discretion for GBR to redact sections of the business plan than this amendment proposes. This is because it is important that all types of sensitive data, not just commercially sensitive, are able to be protected. Personal data, security-sensitive information about stations and public places, or anything legally privileged are all examples of content which may need redaction from the final plan, and a flexible requirement can be better used to navigate these nuances. That flexibility is important, but I should be clear that GBR cannot withhold information simply to avoid scrutiny. The ORR will assess and advise the Secretary of State on the unredacted version of the business plan, and GBR’s public law duties and wider accountabilities framework will ensure that GBR will not be able to hide important information relevant to public scrutiny.
I understand that the intention of Amendment 73 is to prevent the Secretary of State circumventing the process as set out through the Bill, by restricting access to the broader funding powers in the Railways Act 2005. The purpose of paragraph 6(7) is to make it clear to Parliament that the Secretary of State can use her other funding power in the 2005 Act. This will be necessary when funding activity outside the five-year settlement, such as individual enhancement projects or one-off funding packages, are needed following a natural disaster, for example. I assure the noble Lord that this does not reduce transparency over GBR’s funded activities. GBR’s business plan, covering all GBR’s activity, will be costed, updated and published as GBR’s outputs change. The business plan will include enhancement projects and will show clearly where the funding for them has come from, therefore transparently identifying the use of the 2005 power for Parliament and others to scrutinise. I therefore hope that the noble Lord can see that the inclusion of paragraph 6(7), to allow the Secretary of State to use other funding powers, is purely practical.
Finally, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for Amendment 78. For clarity, relevant subsidy control law does not apply to infrastructure funding. However, it applies in full to passenger services funding, as we discussed in the ticket retailing debate on Tuesday. Railway infrastructure being exempted from subsidy control rules is something that happens on the current railway; railway infrastructure funding provided to Network Rail today is not subject to subsidy control law. The Bill does not change this principle but simply enshrines it for clarity and transparency.
Over many years, funding provided for the operation and management of the main national railway infrastructure has not been treated as subsidy as this market has been effectively closed for competition, because there are not multiple infrastructure managers operating on the same infrastructure. That position has underpinned the funding arrangements for Network Rail and continues to be appropriate for GBR as its successor. Removing this provision would not change the way that the railway is subsidised; it would just mean continuing to rely on previous legal interpretations, rather than the additional transparency provided by this clause.
Part 3 in Schedule 2 therefore provides clarity and legal certainty, and it makes sense for this stance to continue as there is no competitive market for the railway infrastructure that GBR will be responsible for, so there is no need to waste resources administering this funding as if there is. I therefore urge noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, it is difficult to follow my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham because his expositions of difficult issues are always so clear and compelling. There is a movement on the left wing of the Labour Party—which is well represented in your Lordships’ House—to nationalise the roscos so that we can have a full sweep of nationalisation. To date, nationalisation of the railways has cost the Government nothing because, of course, they already owned nearly everything. All it has done is allowed certain franchises to expire at no cost to the taxpayer.
But the cost to the taxpayer of nationalising the roscos would be absolutely enormous, which is one of the reasons why the Government have resisted pressure from the more Corbynite wing of their party to proceed on that basis. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham is suggesting that, at the stroke of some scribal pen in the Office for National Statistics, at least the financial consequences, if not the legal consequences, of nationalising the roscos would land on the Government’s plate as a result of the Bill—in other words, as a result of eliminating the relative multiplicity of buyers of rolling stock that exists at the moment and replacing it with a single buyer: a state-owned entity. As I understand it, that is the gravamen of what my noble friend is saying.
The amendment is almost too gentle for the circumstances because this is something that we would need to know in advance of the passage of the Bill. It is dilatory of the Office for National Statistics to say that it would review this matter only after the Bill has passed because it is of such consequence that legislators should know before they pass the Bill whether it will ensue as a consequence of their doing so. This is a matter of considerable importance. I do not know whether the officials advising the Minister perceived the full complexity of the noble Lord’s amendment in advance. They may not have given him a full response to the points made by my noble friend—although they may have done so, of course—so he may wish to follow up in writing. That may be acceptable to my noble friend—I do not know—but this is an extremely important matter that we really need to know about.
I do not propose to comment on the other amendments in this group so I turn to my own amendments, which were slightly mocked by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. We have been told—I accept that this is probably the case—that, should the Bill pass into law, it is likely to set a framework that will last for many years. People say that it is often 20 or 30 years before you get round to restructuring the railways; that is roughly the cycle on which it happens. I think, therefore, that it is very disappointing that the Government are seeking to restrict the debate to very narrow issues around the structure of the railway, which is the main basis of the Bill, when noble Lords want to debate other matters.
For example, in our debate on the previous group, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who is sadly not in his place any more, wanted to discuss the whole structure of funding the railways—not the amounts of funding but the mechanism by which it is done—in order to avoid crashing from one decision to another and to make it possible for both the railway and suppliers to plan what they will do with some knowledge that the funding will continue for at least a period into the future. Essentially, the Government want to escape having that debate and say, “Everything’s fine as it is so we’ll carry on as before”.
Through my amendments here, I want to have what I think is a very important political discussion about the Government’s vision for the level of subsidy that should go to the railway and for the balance between fares and taxpayer funding to support it. We have in this country a particular balance that is different from what exists in many European countries, and we have held on to it, but where do we want to go with it? The noble Baroness says that the railways will always require funding but, for their first 100 years, they did not require any public subsidy at all, and they provided the most comprehensive, intense and innovative transport system you could imagine, reaching to nearly all parts of the country. Further, they did so at a time when there were practically no roads, and there was certainly no air travel. Yet they did this without subsidy. We really only talk of subsidies to the railways when you get to the 1920s and 1930s, when money started leaking out of government and into the railways. That was before we had the full subsidy regime that came in with the Second World War and what followed. So it is possible to think about it.
I am not saying that it is particularly realistic to think about it, because I accept what the noble Baroness says: there is likely to be an element of subsidy all the way through. But what is the Government’s plan and what is the direction of travel on this? Would the Government not like to set out their policy and vision? If they do not want to do so today, then where in this process is it going to appear? Is the noble Lord going to tell us that it will all be in the long-term rail strategy, so that we can have a debate then about what is the appropriate level between taxpayer and fare payer? Remember that only 10% of the population makes regular use of the railways; the rest of the population is expected to subsidise it through their taxes, but only 10% actually use it. Is that a fair and sensible balance in an allocation of subsidies? These are important issues.
Amendment 112 is closely related but not quite the same. It asks for the railways to publish annual savings targets. Why should they not have such targets? There are great inefficiencies in every organisation. I do not say “in every public sector organisation”, although that is true, because there are inefficiencies in private sector organisations as well. When I was deputy chairman of Transport for London, we had a process for trying to reduce, with an annual savings target of 3% per annum. We took out that amount of cost year after year, bringing it down because we could find those efficiencies. I had learned from local government officers that they could do exactly that, because they knew where the inefficiencies were. In fact, they built them in a little, to give themselves some fat, but if they were required to reduce them under pressure, they could do it. Why should Great British Railways not have a similar discipline imposed on it? Where is the sense of financial discipline that we are looking for?
These are times when the Government have very little money; I think we know that. The tax burden is higher than ever, yet public expenditure is under huge pressure. Choices about defence and so forth cannot be made sensibly because of commitments elsewhere. I am not disagreeing with or criticising the noble Baroness. It is all very well to say that railways will always require subsidies, but the fact of the matter is—I believe this firmly, and I am a believer in the railways—that a railway that relies consistently and heavily on subsidy, in the current and foreseeable fiscal circumstances of this country, is a railway that will come under huge pressure and will be cut. It is not sustainable unless it can show that it is contributing from its own efficiencies and through generating higher fare income, which does not necessarily mean through higher fares but can be a combination of fares and passenger numbers. It needs a plan to show that it is doing that. These amendments ask the Government to set out that plan or tell us when they are going to do so, in the interests of Great British Railways itself.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, Amendments 57, 58 and 61 are about the funding of passenger services. In principle, I support the intentions of these amendments and acknowledge the benefits to business planning that aligning the funding cycles could bring. However, the reality of passenger services funding is that it is inextricably tied to passenger revenue, which changes in response to a number of factors that are difficult to predict, particularly over longer time spans.
Certain factors, such as wider economic conditions and the weather, are outside both GBR and government’s control, so it is quite difficult for any Government to commit passenger services funding in fixed five-year periods, given the revenue-forecasting challenges. It will, however, be a goal to work towards, and in particular it cannot be achieved before GBR’s funding settlement processes have bedded in and Ministers have confidence in how the settlements operate.
I recognise how important it is that GBR has the confidence to plan across track and train to make the most of integration. That is why it will be required to produce and publish a business plan covering all its activity, including on passenger services, and this plan will span the duration of the five-year funding period, regardless of changes to passenger funding. In addition, once Ministers have more experience of funding an integrated body and GBR has demonstrated that it is fiscally responsible, the Bill will provide a route to include passenger services in the five-year funding settlement in future, via statutory instrument. That will allow passenger services funding to join the five-year settlement. I hope the noble Baroness sees that we are as aligned as we can be on this amendment and that she can therefore support the Bill as drafted.
Lord Moylan (Con)
Is the noble Lord’s position that one of the consequences of this Bill, if enacted—we will not know for some months until after it is enacted—is that roughly £25 billion-worth of rolling stock could be added to government debt? I do not want to argue about the figure, but I believe that is roughly right. We are going into this in the dark, not knowing whether that will be the case. What soundings has the Minister taken with Treasury colleagues about this interesting possibility?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Since it is independent, nobody can predict the consequences of an Office for National Statistics examination until it concludes one. I said that the Secretary of State will work with it, because it will also need to consider the recent past. The Bill is in Parliament because it has cross-government agreement from all the departments of government. We cannot contemplate what the future might hold in respect of the decisions of the ONS.
Lord Moylan (Con)
I am sorry to press the noble Lord. I agree that if the ONS is independent he cannot say what its decision will be, but he could secure that decision before the passage of the legislation. That cannot be too difficult. Given the consequence, it must be possible to secure the decision first. Nobody, I think, is suggesting that you would try to manipulate the decision; that is not my objective. Could the Government not take that approach? These are very significant sums, and to hold one’s nose and just jump into the dark seems reckless.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I already said that one thing the Secretary of State will do is to help the ONS with its understanding of both the recent past and what will happen as a consequence of the Bill. In the recent past, the Government have specified, to the most extraordinarily detailed degree, all the rolling stock used in all franchises for probably the past 10 or 12 years. They have also determined how long it runs for and how long it lasts. In those circumstances, we are very content to wait for the ONS to do its work when it chooses to do it.
Lord Lansley (Con)
I have a question pursuant to the debate about the powers to fund the GBR business plan. I understand from the Minister’s reply, and it is a reasonable proposition, that the Secretary of State should provide financial assistance in relation to activities set out by GBR in its business plan. Indeed, paragraph 3 says that the Secretary of State should do exactly that and say what financial assistance is expected to be provided. But would it not be logical, therefore, that the powers to provide financial assistance that are specified subsequently should extend to those activities within the business plan, rather than having only infrastructure being capable of being funded by the Secretary of State using the powers? We would end up with something much more visible: specific powers to provide financial assistance in relation to the business plan over this funding period.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord. Since I managed in the end to have to correct myself after the last session on Tuesday, I would rather take some advice and write to him about this. I understand his point, but I am not sure I am capable of expressing an answer in language that will be clear enough for him, so I will drop him a line, if I may.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and the fact that, in principle, he supports my amendments in this group as a goal to work towards. It is reassuring that he pointed out—if I understood him—that, within this legislation, there is the potential for a statutory instrument to include passenger services in the future within the five-year settlement. I welcome that and, on that basis, I withdraw my amendment.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, let me turn to Amendments 94, 124, 125 and 291. I am pleased to say that I agree with many of the performance indicators set out in the noble Lord’s amendments, which will be important in GBR delivering the service the public expect. I also agree with the concept of an annual report. I reassure the Committee that, on both counts, such a thing already exists.
The Bill requires GBR to produce an annual business plan and we have already confirmed that this will include meaningful KPIs around performance. For example, the business plan will clearly have to include GBR’s progress towards reaching its statutory freight growth target and I happily confirm today that it will. The 2050 target is a long way out, but progress against it should be measured in the business plan in 2040 and in 2050. By keeping these KPIs in the business plan, we ensure that a reflection of GBR’s activities, the cost of those activities and its performance against those activities and costs are always transparent and available for scrutiny.
GBR will publish annual updates to this plan which can, and should be, scrutinised by Parliament in the usual way. GBR will need to consult with the ORR and the passenger watchdog when creating these updates, ensuring expert and independent advice. As the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, proposes, the ORR will monitor GBR’s performance against the KPIs in its business plan as part of its monitoring function. An important distinction, however, is that the ORR’s role under the Bill as drafted is not confined to looking backwards at whether a target has been met. The ORR can also recommend to the Secretary of State whether GBR’s commitment and performance measures are realistic and measurable—something not factored in to the amendment.
Linking KPIs to the long-term rail strategy, rather than the business plan, would undermine the purpose of the strategy. The rail strategy is designed to provide ministerial direction on the long-term trends that will affect the railways and, at a high level, what they expect GBR to do about them. But GBR must be independent enough to respond to the rail strategy with a self-developed, proactive and detailed activity plan covering the next five—
Lord Lansley (Con)
Forgive me for interrupting. I cannot find where it is required that there be an annual business plan. I can see there is a provision for the business plan to be kept up to date, but nothing that says this has to be done at any specific time or on an annual basis.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Let me come to that point. I believe that there is a provision, but before I say so, let me check.
The long-term rail strategy is designed to provide ministerial direction on the long-term trends that will affect the railways and, at a high level, what they expect GBR to do about them. The business plan is clearly the right place for short and medium-term targets to be included, which GBR should set for itself and which the ORR should review and comment on.
Lord Moylan (Con)
Can I be absolutely clear about that? The Minister is saying that GBR should set its own KPIs. The ORR may look at them and comment but, having heard the comments, GBR will set its own KPIs and amend them, or not, as it sees fit. That is the plan.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The long-term rail strategy will set out the Secretary of State’s expectations. The business plan will set out what GBR believes it can achieve to move towards the long-term rail strategy. The business plan has to be agreed with the Secretary of State, who might well disagree with some of its targets. In the end, GBR has to satisfy the Secretary of State about the progress that it proposes to make. I do not think that is much different, as the noble Lord will recall, to the Transport for London business plan, which translated the mayor’s transport strategy into targets related to the budget of the organisation and which were agreed by the mayor.
Lord Lansley (Con)
Surely there is, between the long-term rail strategy and the business plan, the statement of objectives. Surely the question, which I think my noble friend through his amendments has explored quite positively, is that the statement of objectives needs to be quite specific. Some of them need to be performance indicators in themselves, because the business plan is GBR explaining how it is proposing, through its activities and funding, to meet, or to contribute to meeting, what is set out in the statement of objectives.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I have to say to the noble Lord that I do not see the difference, in the sense that the long-term rail strategy must express the Secretary of State’s desire, for example, for a reliable railway in terms that enable the business plan to set out the measures that would be used to decide whether it is reliable. Indeed, in the recent past, one of the things that has had to be done since this Government took office was to agree, for the first time, what the measurements are and what the target should be for expressing the performance of the railway. I do not see that conflict in the way that the noble Lord does.
Lord Lansley (Con)
Forgive me, but I do not see it as a conflict at all. I am expressing, as I think the Minister has done on a previous occasion, that there is a difference between what is long term and what needs to happen this year, next year and indeed, for the purposes of the funding period, in the next five years. The statement of objectives is specifically about the next five years. The long-term rail strategy is on a different timeframe.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord is right, actually: I am beginning to confuse myself about this. There is a danger of getting into too great a specificity. He is right that the statement of objectives will include specific standards, but that translates into the business plan.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, referring to the discussion we have had on KPIs, it occurs to me that there needs to be some differentiation between the list—whether it is the list produced by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, the list in the Bill or another one—of issues which are basically in the total control of Great British Railways and those which are not. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, mentioned freight. Freight is not in the control of GBR, in respect of how many trains run and how much money GBR makes from them directly. Of course it can fiddle around with the access, the signalling and everything else, but it is dependent upon many other people delivering the KPI, which I think is supposed to be the KPI of Great British Railways. It would be interesting to hear from my noble friend how the two different criteria are set when coming up with the calculation of who does the KPI and what it covers.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My noble friend is right that some of these KPIs relate to wider economic circumstances than the railway currently has, but we discussed on the first day in Committee the fact that the need for a long-term freight target is so that GBR focuses on its own part in growing freight. Clearly, it is much subject to what shippers want to send, how they want to send it, where they want to send it and so forth, but I do not see any conflict in GBR having a long-term freight target. It may have to take different action if the economy or the things which are transported by rail change over time. There has been no greater case of that than the case of coal and steel, which were once a significant part of railway freight but which today are virtually nothing. On the other hand, intermodal traffic and construction materials have vastly increased, and there is no doubt in my mind that the railway could contribute more than perhaps it has done in the recent past to growing those particular categories if it were minded to do so, and the freight target is designed to make it think about how it could do it.
I do not see any contradiction in that; it will be like running any other business. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, referred to his experience at Transport for London and it is, of course, exactly the same. It is a large organisation which is contributing to, but to some extent dependent on, the economy of London; that will be true of the railways as a whole. I agree with noble Lords that there should be KPIs for GBR, and it should be held to account for meeting them. The reason we are discussing these now is because there is no doubt that, in the end, they should be in its business plan, set next to the costs that they incur and the revenue it will derive from them.
I should go back to what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said. Paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 says that GBR must keep the business plan up to date. We are pretty clear that that means annually; it could be more often if circumstances change. It is not unknown for businesses of this scale to have to change their business plan if the economic circumstances dictate, but I think annual is reasonable. I would not expect the Secretary of State or the board of GBR to tolerate any circumstances where it did not propose an annual business plan.
If I may, I will try to find my place regarding Amendment 66. I am glad that the noble Lord agrees that GBR’s business plan is where its KPIs should sit. However, these need to evolve over time while, by contrast, GBR’s duties are unchanging—a core list of ambitions guiding GBR over the next decades. While GBR’s business plan is where it will show both how it will discharge its duties and set out its KPIs, there is an important distinction between them. Duties and KPIs are not the same thing. KPIs need to be driven by the specific, often numerical, outcomes sought by the Government, whereas duties are behavioural expectations. Some of the duties would be impractical to even turn into measurable KPIs. How would GBR measure whether it has provided businesses with certainty or acted in the public interest? I believe it is right that the two should not be statutorily linked.
Amendment 87 proposes action about the chief executive. I hope the noble Lord understands that, primarily, the powers of the Secretary of State rest with the right, in the end, to dismiss the chair if that chair fails to do the job that the Secretary of State expects of the chair and the board. That might well be the case if the Secretary of State believed that the chair failed to challenge the executive and chief executive effectively. The Secretary of State will also have the right, as we discussed this afternoon, to issue legally binding directions to GBR, and those could be where remedial action is required. The Secretary of State could also remove accounting officer status from the CEO, effectively taking financial management of the company into the department.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
What I would say to the noble Lord about all these things is that we are setting this organisation up and, conventionally, it is the chair and the board that support, hire and fire the chief executive. I do not believe that his amendment is the right way of doing this. It should be done through the chair and the board, and the expectations of the Secretary of State should be conveyed to them. Whatever action might be necessary regarding the chief executive should be taken as a consequence of that relationship.
On Amendment 83, the Bill already does what the noble Lord is trying to achieve. Much of the substance of this amendment is already enabled by the process created by Schedule 2. GBR is already required to produce a business plan containing all its activity and how its costs will be met, which will be reviewed annually, as we have discussed, to ensure it is up to date. The plan will be published, which will allow Parliament and the public to hold GBR to account. The ORR will monitor GBR’s delivery of its business plan. I agree with the noble Lord that transparency is important, but we do not need to hardwire in excessive bureaucracy, as this amendment would.
On Amendments 59, 60, 62 and 64A, I can understand the desire to codify the contents of the statement of objectives, but this legislation needs to be drafted to last as long as the last Railways Act has and therefore needs to be open to future Governments to suggest their own objectives for the funding period. The Bill provides a suggested list of what could be included, setting a strong precedent for future government but leaving options open for Secretaries of State. This is a tried and tested method, being the same approach that underpins the periodic review of funding today. The periodic review is widely considered one of the most successful parts of the current regime, which is why the Bill replicates the five-year length of it. Similarly, the statement has to be capable of accommodating different approaches based on wider environmental and socioeconomic circumstances. That is why the current list of potential topics to be covered by the statement serves as a guide for future drafters but does not constrain the Government.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, the Bill should be amended to say that the business plan is annual, especially as that is the Government’s clear intention. The Minister has just said the business plan is going to be annual and it was precisely to get stakeholder engagement with business away from the annual cycle that the amendment was tabled. Can the Minister take account of that? It is not good enough to turn up once a year and have a word with the industry about what your plans are. That is what we are trying to get away from.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I think I understand what the noble Lord is saying. I am expecting an organisation, as GBR will be, to be constantly in discussion with the wider railway industry and the supply industry, and indeed its customers, simply because, as we have discussed, the market will change over time. I do not see that there is any confusion between an annual exercise of producing a business plan and the sort of engagement over a prolonged period that will confirm and vary industry’s advice over time about what should be in it. That is a perfectly natural way of doing business. If I refer, as I probably do too often, to Transport for London, that is precisely the way in which Transport for London did it. The business planning cycle was an annual cycle, but the engagement with those parties who had an interest in both the inputs and results was an activity throughout the year.
Lord Moylan (Con)
The Minister has just changed the story. A moment ago, he was saying that engagement with business stakeholders would be through the business plan. Now he is saying that it is not actually through the business plan once a year—because anyway, we do not know it is going to be once a year, but it is likely to be once a year—but it will be a continuous process. Of course, it can in a sense be both, and other things, but that is not giving us the level of assurance and precision that I think noble Lords are looking for. This is one of our big opportunities to speak up in Committee for the interests of the supply chain—there may be other opportunities coming in later groups. This is the chance for the Government to nail down our interests. We are interested in passengers and freight, but we are also interested in the supply chain, and trying to secure for it a degree of visibility about the future is important. What we are getting is not very clear, I am afraid.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I agree with the noble Lord that the supply chain is crucial. Actually, for much of the supply chain, what really makes a difference is the five-year periodic settlement. That highlights the need for this engagement to go on, both at the time when the five-year plan is formed and the rest of the time. I do not see any contradiction in those two things happening. The five-year settlement for infrastructure could not possibly be done properly without the involvement of the supply chain, but they do not go away for the next four years until the next one. The dialogue with them is constant—and so it should be. I had better make progress, if I may.
I turn to Amendment 82, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. I do not often completely disagree with the noble Baroness, but I do here, I am afraid, because her amendment would fundamentally blur accountability for the railway system and undermine the clear responsibilities in the Bill. I do not think that interposing another board between the Secretary of State and the board of GBR would be right. However, the Bill contains a number of provisions such that both the Office of Rail and Road and the passenger watchdog will have many opportunities to provide the Secretary of State with advice before she takes decisions. The reality is that she will most likely have taken advice from either, or both, of them before any performance matters should escalate to the point of requiring a direction.
On Amendment 84, as we discussed in earlier groups, the Government are dedicated to providing a steady drum beat of publications that will inform the House—and, indeed, this Committee—on progress in establishing GBR. I encourage the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, to look at the Government’s policy publication timetable on GOV.UK; indeed, I have just written to noble Lords about the publication of the draft access and use policy by Network Rail. Given the ambitious timeline that we are working to on this, it would not seem to make much sense to divert resources away from the business of establishing GBR in order to write progress reports that would largely duplicate existing information that the Government are already making available.
Given what I have said, I encourage noble Lords and the noble Baroness not to press their amendments.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who took part in this interesting debate. To my mind, we established one or two rather important propositions.
The first is that, when the Government are setting out their statement of objectives, in relation to which GBR writes its business plan, it would be helpful if it were as specific as possible about the performance indicators that are to be included in that; my noble friend made a lot of good points where that is concerned. I made, in effect, only one point: I accept that, on Amendment 62, relating it directly to the performance scheme may not be the way to do this, but, as with the question of how many trains arrive within 15 minutes of the timetable, there are standards that need to be included, and it is important that we have those standards in the statement of objectives.
The other thing that we have established is an interesting reflection on the relationship between the business plan and the funding arrangements. I draw noble Lords’ attention to paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 on funding. The ORR is setting a timetable, and we have four components to this. I do not envy the Office of Rail and Road’s process of trying to establish in precisely what relationship these four dates are, because it has to say to the Secretary of State, “You’ve got to tell us what your statement of objectives is”. Then it has to say to the Secretary of State, “You have to tell us what funding is available”, which is an interesting question because the answer might be “not much”. Thirdly, Great British Railways has to go off on a third element and give us the business plan. Lastly, the Secretary of State tells GBR and the ORR how much financial assistance is going to be provided.
I have two points to make. I am not at all sure why the fourth of those components is there in that form. There is nothing in the schedule saying that there is a requirement on the Secretary of State to provide such a notice. There is no notification requirement; it is simply that the power to provide financial assistance is there. So I would have thought that the Secretary of State might give notification of how much financial assistance there is, but looking across the whole funding period and having to notify them of what financial assistance is available seems a curious requirement to me.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
If I may intervene on the noble Lord, for once, I say to him: welcome to the five-year funding periods. We are now in control period 7, I think. The process that was described is complex, but it works remarkably well, which is why the industry and the Government are wholly aligned in wanting to carry on with it. I could discuss with him in more detail how it works, but it has generally been very effective. It relies on a lot of collaboration between the parties, which is why it has been successful.
Lord Lansley (Con)
I take that point, but, of course, that is if the financial assistance under this is restricted to infrastructure, which we debated a short while ago. If there is a requirement to notify of the financial assistance, I do not see it at the moment. The Minister might have a look at whether such a notification is required. That being the case, I have made my points.
Finally, I apologise in advance that I will not be here on Wednesday for the next day in Committee. I will endeavour to leave notes with colleagues about any amendments that are my responsibility; I will have the benefit of reading what is said. We might have the benefit of the presence of my noble friend Lord Grayling to speak to his amendments. With that, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 59.
Railways Bill
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill ExcerptsTuesday 8th September 2026
(3Â weeks, 6Â days ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Railways Bill 2024-26 View all Railways Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 25-II Second marshalled list for Grand Committee - (8 Sep 2026)
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister and his officials for numerous meetings with me and many of my colleagues over the last few months; they have been very helpful for discussing how we can improve the Bill before us.
The dislike for this Bill was very apparent in the opening words from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. The previous Government could have implemented the concession model that has been mentioned several times—it would be our preferred option—but they did not. The picture that we had painted by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, of the privatised railway does not reflect many passengers’ experience in recent years. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Harper, that I think the service started to decline before the pandemic, but the pandemic accelerated the fact that this model was not working.
The Government have a mandate for public ownership. In fact, two years ago, we debated the Act on it. I hope that we can focus in these seven days on getting the structure right and delivering for passengers, rather than revisiting the ideology behind what the Government are doing.
The amendments in this group are quite technical in some ways, and they are about the structure rather than focused on passengers. But it is important that we hear from the Government exactly why they have chosen the model that they have. The noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Lansley, in their amendments are seeking some clarity on the exact set up of Great British Railways and why this model has been chosen. It is really important to get some clarity over the status of Great British Railways’ companies, set out very clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in some of those examples. How will these partnerships work in practice? There is also the point around civil servants and their role. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, wants clarity on the subsidiaries of Great British Railways and their potential future ownership. Whatever happens in this Bill, there will still be a huge amount of private sector involvement, because the rolling stock will still be owned by private companies and there is no plan to change that. Even if everything else is fully publicly owned, there will still be a huge amount of private sector involvement through the rolling stock.
There are many ways that you could look at structuring Great British Railways. One could have been a co-operative model. An understanding from the Minister on why this was felt to be the best way to deliver the quality of the railway service that we all want to see would be helpful. I look forward to the Minister’s response and clarification on these structural amendments.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Lansley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for their amendments, and the noble Lords, Lord Harper and Berkeley, for their contributions.
I will begin with Amendments 1 and 6, which would specify that the company designated as Great British Railways must be established under existing company law. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that, as is the case with Network Rail and the train operating companies, GBR will be a private limited company under the Companies Act 2006. It will have its own articles of association. The Bill is constructed around this assumption. For example, Clause 3(6) makes it clear that GBR can carry out business activities by virtue of being a limited company under existing company law. If it were not a Companies Act company, this and other provisions of the Bill would not be appropriate. The alternative to a Companies Act company would be something like a royal charter corporation, such as the BBC, or a statutory corporation, such as the Advanced Research and Invention Agency. GBR is clearly neither of these, given that the Bill does not establish it as such. Body corporate is a general term under UK law, meaning an incorporated organisation, which is what GBR will be. Combined with the drafting in Clause 3(6), the Bill is clear that GBR will be a Companies Act company.
I turn to Amendments 2 and 3. Amendment 2 would remove from the Bill the requirement that GBR be wholly owned by the Crown. As the noble Lord will be aware, this Government were elected with a clear mandate to nationalise the railways, and that is exactly what we are doing. We are ensuring that GBR is owned by the British people and run in their interests—not in the interests of private profit. Public ownership is key to creating a more efficient railway and a better passenger experience. It shifts the focus from profit to passengers and freight, and begins to put an end to the fragmentation and waste of the franchising system, allowing the whole industry to work together in the interests of the passenger. This approach will save the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds in fees and allow taxpayers’ money to be spent on things that will benefit the passenger instead.
The requirement in the Bill that GBR must be publicly owned will ensure that any future Government wanting to privatise the railways would have to seek the consent of Parliament to do so. This will put the system on exactly the same footing as it was under privatisation since—as I am sure the noble Lord will acknowledge, given that he is trying to repeal it—an Act of Parliament was required to bring passenger rail services back into public hands. The latest YouGov poll shows that 76% of the public think that railways should be in the public sector and only 13% think they should be in the private sector. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, put it so well, previous Governments could have done something about it but they did not. The railway is an asset with significant financial, economic and safety implications, so it is right that Parliament scrutinises every major change to it.
Amendment 3 would ensure that GBR’s subsidiaries do not need to be wholly owned by the Crown. I will speak more about the Government’s policy on this in a moment when I address the amendments in this group from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, but I am pleased to confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that the drafting of Clause 1 already facilitates what he seeks to achieve. The requirement to be wholly owned by the Crown applies only to the parent company that is designated as GBR, not to any of its subsidiaries. For clarity, GBR subsidiaries come within the term “GBR companies”, as defined in the Bill. GBR companies are not subject to the “wholly owned” requirement, so I hope the noble Lord will see that his amendment is unnecessary.
Speaking of GBR’s subsidiaries, I will now address Amendments 5, 334, 335, 337 and 345 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. She has said that she is a passionate supporter of public ownership, as we are. Her amendments would mean that GBR must wholly own all its subsidiaries for them to be considered GBR companies. As I have said before, we are committed to the private sector continuing to play a key role in the future rail sector, and this includes within GBR where appropriate. After all, the private sector can bring advantages that the public sector cannot, including greater risk appetite and additional investment that reduces the burden on the taxpayer. GBR will therefore leverage the best of both the public and the private sectors, working in close partnership with private companies, from freight and rolling stock to ticket retailing and the rail supply chain, to unlock benefits and drive growth.
The advantages of this approach were referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Harper, and can already be seen in Network Rail’s successful joint ventures with the private sector, including through Platform4, a subsidiary of Network Rail which uses private sector investment to support community regeneration projects and is expected to deliver up to 40,000 new homes in the next decade through public/private joint ventures. For example, Platform4’s joint venture with Bloc Group has already secured 2,000 new rental homes near major city transport links. These types of investment would simply not be possible were I to accept the noble Baroness’s amendments. In addition, the amendments would prevent GBR from pursuing joint ventures with the devolved Governments, which I hope she agrees would not be the right outcome.
However, I can reassure the noble Baroness that, although the existing Companies Act definition of a subsidiary enables these public/private partnerships, importantly, it does not enable private sector control. Any private sector interest in a GBR company must be a minority shareholding, to ensure that the railway remains owned, controlled and operated by the public. The Government are also clear that certain aspects of the Bill, such as GBR’s access decision-making process and its ticket retailer, passenger services and vital cross-industry functions, will all remain part of the wholly publicly owned and controlled part of the business. This recognises that, while private sector investment is a great enabler of infrastructure development opportunities that can support our communities, it is not always suited to railway functions that must be run in the public interest.
Lord Harper (Con)
Before the Minister moves on, this might sound a very picky point, but it is quite important. On his point about joint ventures, he talked about the Government always having a majority stake and having control. Is a 50-50 joint venture possible? If you are a private company making an investment, there is a big difference between having a 50-50 equal partnership versus one where you are a minority shareholder. Would that be possible under the model that he set out and which is structured in the Bill?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention. I will write to him on that rather than say something I might regret.
Lord Lansley (Con)
Before we conclude, and relevant to the point that my noble friend Lord Harper was making, I am sure that the Minister will want to look at the whole structure of Platform4 and its relationship to Great British Railways, but the Mayfield Partnership, which is involved in the regeneration around Manchester Piccadilly, has one-third Network Rail or Platform4 participation in that joint venture. So, at the moment, it is not just 50:50; it can be below 50%. It would be of interest, not least to noble Lords considering the future structure of GBR, to understand precisely how some of these large-scale and really important property development issues are to be managed by GBR. The directing mind for the railways is one thing, but the directing mind for development purposes is not necessarily the same thing.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord. My experience of Network Rail’s property and Platform 4 is offset by increasing age and failure to remember the details. I will not only write to noble Lords about the 50:50 aspect, but about Mayfield, which I remember vaguely is of a different percentage, partially because much of the land is owned by somebody else rather than the railway. I will write on both those points, because I think they are germane. I appreciate the point that people need to understand how this will work in practice, particularly with those areas of activity of GBR that are not the provision of passenger railway services or the basic railway.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, before I start, may I add to the comment made by my noble friend Lord Lansley? My example is not a Network Rail example, but a TfL one, with which the Minister will be very familiar: the Earl’s Court development. The essential structure is that the initial ownership of the joint venture was based on the value of the land that each party was contributing, but that the TfL structure would fall well below 50% over the course of time, as more investment was added by the private sector partner. Structures such as that would simply not be possible for Great British Railways land under this Bill, because you could not go below the 50%. So, a site such as Earl’s Court, if it were a national Network Rail site— pari passu, mutatis mutandis—would of course remain undeveloped until the Government found the money to develop it. The Government will never find the money to develop these things.
Turning to the debate that we have just had, I must say that, whenever I speak in Committee, I always seem unwittingly and unintentionally to attract the disappointment of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. I am surprised about this, because the only reference I made to her in the course of my speech was to say something complimentary about amendments that she has tabled, which we will debate later in Committee and to which I have added my name. Obviously, I am at fault in some way, in that I am constantly giving her cause for complaint.
On the question of organisational structure, the Minister has read out some words about how Network Rail will be organised, but they do not provide a level of assurance or satisfaction that people are looking for. They are very woolly, but I will leave that and grant him that for the moment; he can stick with that level of woolliness. However, let us switch focus slightly and think about timing. When I spoke on the then passenger railway services Bill when it was in your Lordships’ House, I said that the Government were embarking on a very long multi-year transformation process. Here we are, two years later, and we still have not completed that. We are at least six months away, I should guess, from seeing the enactment of this necessary legislation. That is two and a half years on.
Transforming an organisation as complex as Network Rail and all the companies being brought into this group is something that is going to take years. So let me change the question: is the Minister able to say, before we conclude this debate, at what time he expects that structure to be in place, which he has described to us even in woolly terms?
Just to develop that a little further, it is said throughout the industry, although it is acknowledged that nobody has written this down, that the intended designation date for Great British Railways is October 2027, which is 12 months from now—say, six months after the enactment of the Bill, if it goes through in its current form, according to its current plans. Is that date valid? Does the Minister believe that the structure that he has described in whatever woolly terms will be in place in time for that designation date, or is it all going to muddle on for years afterwards, being put in place?
Finally, on the second important point that we have discussed in this short debate, I express my gratitude to—I am going to say this correctly now—the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. Kudos! But do not minute that in Hansard. I am very grateful to her because she put her finger on one of the key issues in this group, which is the question of the justification for private ownership. She has said, effectively, that it is party policy, in her case, and she is going to stick to it, for that reason if not for others as well. But we did not get a clear answer from the Minister to my question: what is his justification for wholesale nationalisation for the purpose of achieving his objectives, which could have been achieved by a Williams report approach? It is wholly irrelevant whether the last Government did anything about it, for heaven’s sake—what is the point of making a comment like that? The last Government were all over the place; that is why they lost the election. Is that the standard that the Minister is setting for the Government, that they are just about better than Sunak? Is that it? Is that the point of making that remark?
The Minister has one further opportunity to give us a clear explanation. The only explanation that he has given is that it is in the manifesto. If that is the sole explanation, that is very helpful to us, because knowing that there is no rational basis for the decision makes it very much easier for an incoming Government to advance the argument that the necessary measures should be taken at pace to reverse it.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, first, the operative date for Great British Railways will be sometime in 2027, but of course it depends on the passage of this Bill. Secondly, I can give a very sound explanation for being in favour of public ownership, which is that progressively, as we have taken recent train operating companies into public ownership, we have been able to put both the track and infrastructure and the operations into the management of the same person. That is delivering results that no previous arrangement for over 30 years has been able—
Lord Moylan (Con)
Why, if that is such a good thing, are there fewer and fewer services?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I shall continue with what I was saying. It has not been possible, in any previous iteration of the railways since the early 1990s, to have both under the same control. There was such an arrangement with South Western Railway in the 2010s, and it collapsed, because the commercial arrangements were incompatible. We are making steady progress in improving the railway in some pretty difficult circumstances, in companies that had not been particularly well managed, as a consequence of being able to manage them together. To my mind, that is a very good reason for public ownership.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, before we proceed, under the chairmanship now of the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, it probably behoves me to say that this is the first group in the first of seven days in Committee. There were six minutes’ worth of summation, and I point out to all Members of the Committee that the Companion is very clear about brevity being the quality we are looking for when Members who have lead amendments are summing up, whether they are pressing or whatever else. I urge Committee Members to bear that in mind for future groups.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for these amendments and the noble Lords, Lord Redwood and Lord Harper, for their contributions.
I start with Amendment 7, which would introduce a purpose for GBR into the Bill. The Bill already provides a purpose for GBR, just as we promised the Liberal Democrats it would during the passage of the public ownership Act. The Bill’s purpose is set out through its functions and duties. The functions tell us what GBR must do, and the duties tell us what GBR must consider and achieve while doing it. Much like the noble Lord’s amendment, the duties provide a list of objectives for GBR, which it must bear in mind when undertaking every decision and its railway activity.
I hope the noble Lord can see that the duties are in fact similar to the breadth of outcomes his amendment is seeking. The duties already require GBR to prioritise the needs of passengers and disabled passengers; to consider value for money, high standards of performance including reliability, social and economic benefits, and the environment; to grow freight; and to advance the public interest. We do not need a new purpose clause to provide GBR with these objectives: the Bill already does so.
Unlike the proposed purpose clause, the functions and duties are supported by the Secretary of State’s long-term rail strategy, which will also provide clear long-term objectives. That strategy is how Ministers will communicate to GBR what it should consider while planning, expanding and improving the network over the next 30 years, and GBR will develop its own pipeline of projects in response to that. Rather than a static requirement in the Bill which is not set in the context of wider priorities or funding expectations, we have a system that might actually work better to make our railway better. Instead of setting out a clear purpose, the proposed new clause duplicates many of the provisions already in the Bill, making outcomes less clear and, overall, less likely to be deliverable.
Amendment 9 is seeking clarification of what “general” means. A general function is an umbrella term for an activity which a body can undertake by doing lots of different things. For example, running passenger services involves a large number of intermediate actions such as procuring and operating rolling stock, employing train drivers and other staff, and selling tickets. The Bill requires GBR to run passenger services as a general function, and it therefore does not prescribe exactly what actions it should take in which order to do that.
In comparison, a specific function would be an individual action that the Bill requires GBR to do at a certain point or in a certain way. An example of this would be the requirement on GBR to draft and issue the access and use policy in Clause 59. This is a specific requirement to kick off the access process and not a general function.
The term “general” is therefore helpful in distinguishing between a specific activity that GBR is required to perform and the continuing business of GBR in running the railways. I assure the noble Lord that functions are a standard drafting approach, used also, for example, in the Communications Act 2009, the Climate Change Act and others. I hope that this explanation provides the clarity that the noble Lord seeks and that he can withdraw his amendment.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, if the Minister would be so good, this really is very important. I did not think he would adopt that approach, but it is one of the two approaches I offered him, and he has chosen to adopt that which says that this is essentially hierarchical, so that the general functions set out in the Bill subsume a whole load of subsidiary and ancillary functions. I am still not clear whether these functions are powers or duties. Does GBR have some choice over whether to carry out these functions—in which case, they would be akin to powers—or is it obliged to do so?
My key question, now that we have established that, is this: to carry out a general function, there are a whole load of subsidiary and ancillary functions you may have to carry out. I understand that completely, and the Minister did not have to give examples, but he did very helpfully. Is the functionality, so to speak, of Great British Railways therefore limited to the functions set out in this clause? In other words, can it do anything else or is it limited to doing the things that are general functions here? Does it have the power to carry out any other activity? These are really important questions, which may end up being tested in court. I know he has quoted some examples but, because generally unfamiliar language is being used, it is unclear to me whether we are talking about the general functions being the full scope of GBR’s activities or not.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that. I am at least clear about this. The functions are more like powers; the duties are the things that GBR must do when doing the functions, but it is not limited to those general functions. Indeed, we have already discussed quite extensively what it might do, for example, in property development and with third parties, which, because it is a Companies Act company, it can do. I think that is reasonably clear. I would be happy to discuss this with the noble Lord in more detail, because I think we are getting tied up in nomenclature. I think it is reasonably clear what GBR’s functions are, which are described in Clause 3; it describes running the railways. It is also clear that, in the process of running the railway and because of its activity, it is able to do a number of other things.
Let me carry on to Amendment 12, if I may. Amendment 12 would require GBR’s functions to facilitate the provision and use of railway services to be carried out in a fair and non-discriminatory manner. I absolutely agree that GBR should act fairly; however, the duties in the Bill already require GBR to act in the interest of the public, taxpayers, passengers and freight customers. GBR will act fairly in accordance with its duties, not only when exercising this function but across the full range of its statutory functions. We will no doubt discuss this more when we discuss ticket retailing and access. For now, suffice it to say, there are already protections in the Bill—and indeed in wider statutes, such as public law principles and the Competition Act, which applies in full to Great British Railways—that will require GBR to act in a manner that is fair, non-discriminatory and not anti-competitive. This additional requirement would duplicate only the Competition Act requirements, adding uncertainty and administrative burden without increasing protection for non-GBR operators.
Amendments 13 and 14 relate to the publishing of advice and standards for the railways. I thank the noble Lord for this probing amendment, and I reassure him that the ORR is the sole safety regulator for the railway. The Bill does not transfer the ORR’s safety regulatory functions to GBR, nor does it change the current railway safety regime at all. The ORR will continue to exercise its independent safety, regulatory and enforcement functions, including its ability to ensure that GBR and other operators comply fully with all safety legislation requirements.
Comparatively, GBR’s function to publish standards is a reference to technical standards, which GBR would publish and share with industry as a method of promoting best practice. This is similar to today; at present, Network Rail and the train operating companies develop and publish technical standards covering many aspects of their operation. These standards include operation and maintenance protocols, design specifications and engineering guidelines. This does not in any way prevent it adhering to the ORR’s safety regime, which it is required by law to comply with. This also does not give GBR any remit over safety regulation. The standards are non-binding and designed simply to support shared learning across the industry.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend is talking about standards created by GBR. Can he explain the relationship between what GBR does and the Rail Safety and Standards Board?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank my noble friend. I think I can. The RSSB, the Rail Safety and Standards Board, creates standards applicable across the railway generally on some subjects, whereas there are a number of more technical standards—for example, for pieces of machinery, trains and railway infrastructure—which GBR, as a successor to Network Rail, would publish. These are not subject to discussion at the RSSB. Train operating companies also do this with specific fleets of trains, so I think there is a difference. My noble friend is right to draw attention to the RSSB’s function to do that as well, but that does not exclude the current activities of Network Rail and train operating companies, which will translate into Great British Railways.
These standards include operation and maintenance protocols, design specifications and engineering guidelines. This does not in any way prevent it adhering to the ORR safety regime, which it is required by law to comply with. It also does not give GBR any remit over safety regulation. The standards are non-binding and designed simply to support shared learning across the industry.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I refute that comment, for the avoidance of doubt and for the record.
The noble Lord is correct. It is an important distinction. As I said, let me meet him on that. He referred to Clause 70. I am not equipped to go into that just now, as he will appreciate, so I will talk to him further about it.
Amendment 18 removes the delegated power to add to the list of functions for GBR. While the functions listed in Clause 3 cover the breadth of activities that we expect GBR to undertake as the directing mind for the railways, it is sensible to provide the flexibility to add functions should the railways change significantly enough to warrant a new function being added—for example, due to technological development, such as in the artificial intelligence space.
This power is not expected to be used frequently, if at all, but it future-proofs the Bill in the event that new activities need to be brought within the scope of the functions. Bringing an activity within the functions in the Bill has several benefits, including that the function then becomes subject to GBR’s duties and ORR’s monitoring. This legislation is expected to govern the railways for a long time, as the 1993 Act did, so this is a responsible and sensible power. This power was also reviewed by the Delegated Powers Committee, which deemed it acceptable and did not draw it to the attention of the House in its report on the Bill—I welcome the report and look forward to responding to it formally in due course. The power cannot be used to change or remove functions and is subject to the affirmative resolution. It is also not unprecedented: the National Health Service Act 2006 allows functions to be added to special health authorities via regulations. I therefore hope that the noble Lord will feel able not to press this amendment.
Amendments 20 and 110 from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, relate to passenger growth. I very much agree with her that growing passenger numbers on the railways is vital. It supports economic growth, jobs and homes, encourages modal shift and can reduce the level of taxpayer subsidy required for the railways. However, GBR’s general duties in Clause 18 already include a duty to promote not only the interests of passengers but potential passengers. This already requires GBR to consider how best to encourage new users on to the railways. GBR’s business plan will also reflect the Government’s ambitions for passenger growth, including measurable outcomes against which GBR can be held to account.
GBR’s other duties, including promoting high performance, such as reliability and punctuality, will also contribute to making the railways more appealing to passengers. Transport Focus recently found reliability to be the single most important issue for passengers. GBR will be able to improve reliability by making better, whole-system decisions on issues such as the choreography of maintenance works.
As a commercially minded organisation, GBR will also be naturally incentivised to attract more people to travel by rail, because increasing passenger numbers will increase its own revenue. By contrast, there is no intrinsic motivation for GBR to increase rail freight when there is limited network capacity and freight services are in the clear minority of services. That is why the Bill already includes a freight duty and a freight target, to ensure that freight is given equal weight to passengers in a system where passengers may have naturally taken priority otherwise. A stronger or additional passenger equivalent duty or target could actually undermine our ambitions on freight. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will agree that that would not be the right outcome.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
Before the noble Lord moves on, he has not really addressed the point that I made, which is that in Clause 18 there is a perverse incentive that somebody coming in with a different mindset from many of us in this Room could reduce the frequency of trains and hike up fares and still meet what is in this legislation. Even if the noble Lord does not agree with my amendment about a passenger target, and I accept the debate on that, can the Government agree to look at whether some other wording could be put in to strengthen this and make sure that this legislation does what we all want, which is to see more passengers on the railway?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The obligations placed on GBR by the long-term rail strategy, and the consequent approval by the Secretary of State of the business plan, should adequately deter Great British Railways from seeking to achieve that by diminishing services. Indeed, there was an example in the franchising era of the Government being loose with their definition of train services, only to discover that the franchisee had, remarkably, reduced the subsidy by withdrawing a number of services on rural branch lines. That clearly would not be possible with a decent long-term rail strategy and a consequent business plan to which a Government should agree.
Amendments 80 and 81 relate to the Clause 13 provision allowing GBR to charge for its functions. I agree that GBR must act reasonably while setting charges, and I assure the noble Lord that there are already safeguards in the Bill to ensure that charges are reasonable. GBR has a duty to ensure that railway service providers, such as other operators, can plan, invest and make decisions about their own businesses, so GBR must set charges that are consistent with this and do not undermine other people’s ability to run viable and successful businesses.
Competition law will apply to GBR, ensuring that charges it sets are not anti-competitive. In this context, an additional reasonableness test is duplicative without delivering any material additional protection. It is also important that GBR can recover appropriate costs from those who access and benefit from the services it provides. If it were prevented from doing so, the burden would ultimately fall on the taxpayer and passengers.
Amendment 81 would provide an appeal route. All I say to the noble Lord is that an appeal route to the ORR across every possible charge that GBR could levy is disproportionate. I have already mentioned the safeguards in existing law to ensure that those charges are fair.
On the private sector growth target referred to in Amendment 114, nothing in the Bill seeks to exclude or marginalise the contribution of the private sector, but I do not agree that a statutory target is the right approach. The Bill is absolutely an opportunity for the supply chain, but in that case, we have to let the market determine its contribution.
On Amendment 305 from my noble friend Lord Berkeley, I assure him that existing legal rules already allow railway operators to seek recovery of costs and other losses through civil law. A substantial amount of cost recovery is achieved already, and the limit to it is to do not with legal powers but with the identification of perpetrators who drive off. Given what I have set out, I encourage noble Lords and noble Baronesses not to press their amendments.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I begin with a craven apology to my noble friend Lord Harper for my comments about the Sunak Government. For the avoidance of doubt, had the last general election been fought solely on the question of his conduct of the office of Secretary of State for Transport, I am sure the result would have been very different and more favourable to the Conservative cause.
I will not refer here at any length to the question of functions, except to say that it is a mess. At the end of this debate, everybody in the Room who has thought about it can probably see that it is a mess. However, the Minister kindly offered me a meeting to discuss this, and I think my noble friend Lord Lansley is now very much included in that invitation, and possibly other noble Lords. I ask that that meeting takes place reasonably promptly as these issues will return at later stages in Committee rather than being left to the end of Committee and rushed through just ahead of Report. A sensible meeting on that could be very valuable.
I will comment about the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton. I do not agree that there should be a single employer as such, although I think there will be one because I think the unions will get their way. My noble friend Lord Harper explained the danger to the public of going down that route. I fully expected—and was disappointed—that the noble Lord, given his background, would refer to the difficulty with pensions, particularly the fact that all these organisations currently have individual pension schemes within the Railway Pensions Scheme. Is the Minister satisfied that it will be possible, in the timescale he is working towards—namely, the designation of GBR in the second half of next year—for the Railway Pension Scheme trustees and Railpen to achieve a smooth and lawful transition of pension arrangements in that time? He may not be able to answer that question now, but we must find some way of coming back and discussing this because pensions are a very important aspect of the remuneration of the employees.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a very powerful debate. I am grateful to all noble Lords who tabled amendments and for the contributions of noble Baroness, Lady Alexander, and the noble Lord, Lord Beith. About the only thing that I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, on is that this is not railway related. I think it is, it is about selling railway travel, but I have huge respect for her experience of other markets, as I have for the noble Lord, Lord Holmes.
I reassure noble Lords that we are absolutely aligned with the intentions of these amendments. We want an open and competitive retail market, and we completely support the benefits that independent retailers can bring. I may not have time to answer the points that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has just made, but if I do not do so now, I will later because there are other ways in which the railway can derive data about its customers. I do not think the acquisition of data is sufficient justification for only the railway to sell its product, but I must have a railway that is able to sell its own product because I want its staff, managers and directors to care about its income and its passengers.
Once GBR is established, it will have a retail function, as provided for by Clause 3. Crucially, this will be accessible via all channels—through station ticket offices, ticket vending machines, onboard trains, access through gates, ticket inspectors and online—ensuring that it serves passengers however they buy their tickets. GBR’s future online retailer, its website and app will operate in a fair, open and competitive market. To be clear, independent retailers help drive innovation, improve passenger experience and increase choice for customers purchasing rail tickets.
We realise that the dual role as a retailer and the provider of certain cross-industry systems and services could create potential conflict of interest risks. That is why we have announced a robust package of safeguards specifically designed to address these concerns. In response to the CMA report in 2025, mentioned by noble Lords in the debate, we are proposing an industry retail code of practice owned by the Office of Rail and Road and backed with the force of a GBR licence condition ensuring that the ORR will enforce GBR’s compliance with it. For the record, paragraph 5 of Schedule 1 is the place where the ORR is required to create the code and enforce it.
I can confirm today that the draft code will require GBR to adhere to a range of principles. These include ensuring access to products, providing services and data on fair, transparent and non-discriminatory terms and supporting new market entrants. We are determined that all retailers can sell all tickets. The draft code will also require safeguards around our decision to separate decision-making between GBR’s retail activity and its cross-industry systems and services, supported by appropriate information protections. This provides more protection for third-party retailers than exist today when competing with myriad train operators.
If GBR does not comply with the code, the ORR can employ enforcement measures up to and including a legally binding mandatory order for GBR to change its actions. These enforcement measures can be employed in response to a third party raising an issue with the regulator or where ORR identifies an issue through its routine monitoring. The full draft code will be published when the ORR launches its consultation before the end the next recess. This follows extensive engagement it has already undertaken with industry. It will consider feedback from the consultation informing the final draft of the code of practice in 2027. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, we are expecting the CMA to respond to the consultation that the ORR will launch.
As noble Lords have suggested, we want the ORR to be adequately resourced to carry out these functions. Noble Lords who came to the session we had last week, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Young, will have heard reassurance from the senior leadership of the ORR that they intend to do this and are prepared to do so.
I should also be clear that GBR will be required to comply with competition law. The ORR and the Competition and Markets Authority will continue to oversee the market, and both already have powers to act where anti-competitive behaviour is identified. Alongside that existing framework, the code will create a framework that represents a more extensive form of regulatory assurance than is currently found in most comparable European rail markets. The Government therefore believe that the objectives of these amendments are already being delivered. The code will provide meaningful protection for independent retailers and can adapt as the market develops.
Amendments 49 and 181 were tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and concern cross-subsidisation—
Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. Before he moves on, I may have misunderstood, but I do not think he addressed whether GBR would be subject to the Subsidy Control Act.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am about to get there. In turning to Amendments 49 and 181 concerning cross-subsidisation and subsidy control, I can offer further reassurance. The advantage of interventions is that you make your point; the disadvantage is that you stop hearing. As a public body, GBR is required to comply with Managing Public Money principles and relevant subsidy control legislation. The Public Service Obligations in Transport Regulations is the relevant subsidy control legislation that applies to retail specifically.
GBR’s passenger services business will therefore operate within a clear financial framework, ensuring that public funding is used appropriately and fairly. GBR will be required through its business plan to set out its activities, such as its broad retailing function, the costs of these activities and how it proposes that these costs are met. The business plan must cover everything that GBR does, so there should be no concern about transparency.
It is important to note that GBR will be operating a transport service of which retailing is a part. It will have to use all available channels to serve passengers, however they buy their tickets. If it is allocated more funding for retail than would be needed for a simple online retail platform, it is simply because it also has an obligation to provide physical ticket sales—I listed those activities before—including for people who pay cash. They are far more costly to provide, and other retailers are most unlikely to provide them.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Young, it will not be possible for GBR to subsidise retail from infrastructure budgets, for example, as ticket offices are not classed as infrastructure. GBR will not be overcompensated to deliver retail functions in a way that distorts the market. Funding will be allocated based on the costs of delivering those services to passengers.
It will also be subject to the oversight of the ORR as the sector specialist competition regulator, alongside the Competition and Markets Authority. In that role, the ORR will be able to take enforcement steps against GBR, should it suspect that GBR is using public funds to act in an anti-competitive way.
Lord Harper (Con)
Before the Minister moves on, can I press him on two of the things that he has said? In his opening summary, he set out the Government’s view. The problem is that if the retailers do not buy it—they do not, at the moment—whatever he thinks, they are not going to be investing, innovating and developing because they will not be able to justify that to their shareholders. Part of the problem is the need to take some steps to persuade retailers that they will be treated fairly.
Secondly, I think the Minister inadvertently made this point about accounting. I know about the ticketing and settlement agreement to my cost and about some of the ways that retailing has to be done. If GBR is, in effect, doing different things—if it has an online operation but has to do all this other stuff—it will be even more important that there is clear accounting and transparency about where the money is going. Otherwise, it will be impossible to work out whether it is subsidising its online operations, which are competing with third party retailers, by bringing in more money for its other services.
Frankly, it is really important for the taxpayer that we know how much it costs to retail through ticket offices and how cost effective that is because, at some point, Ministers will have to grasp the issue—I started to grasp it but had to ungrasp in the end—that providing things through ticket offices when hardly anyone buys tickets that way will have to change at some point in the future. There has to be some clear and transparent cost information to enable the right decisions to be taken.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I simply say to the noble Lord, first, that there will have to be 100% transparency because, apart from anything else, GBR will have to put all the costs into its business plan. My other point about his first point is that there has been a lot of investment already, with very little protection. Part of what we are doing is to give greater protection for retailers in the future, which they need because they have invested. That is a valid point.
Amendments 47, 51, 52, 53, 136 and 139 concern oversight. The retail code of practice will, as I said, be administered and enforced by the ORR. It is the appropriate body to assess complaints and determine whether GBR has complied with its obligations, but GBR will also be fully subject to competition law, alongside the existing oversight of the Competition and Markets Authority. Nothing in the Bill prevents the CMA from acting on competition challenges in rail, and nothing prevents retailers from referring issues to the CMA—either competition issues relating to the code of practice or wider competition issues. So a second opinion is always available and, of course, if they wanted to appeal to the courts, they could judicially review those decisions further.
Currently, at least, additional approval requirements and further statutory appeal routes simply duplicate the existing regulatory arrangements without providing meaningful additional protections, and transparency, as I have referred to, is already baked into this framework. It is a core regulatory principle for the ORR, which has historically publicised the launching, and formal outcome, of railway licence investigations, and I would expect it to continue to do so. The Bill retains the requirement for the ORR to give notice for any decision not to issue an enforcement order following a licence breach, providing a legislative backstop for this transparency.
I move to Amendments 136 and 139. It would not be appropriate for the ORR’s general duty to promote competition to apply to rail retailing wholesale. If it did, the competition duty would conflict with the ORR’s role in fairly and objectively enforcing the safeguards that the Government have charged it to deliver via the code. Enforcement of the code should be fair and evidence-based, determined simply by whether GBR has complied with the code of practice or not. It should not be subject to other goals, which might cause the ORR to judge operators’ compliance unfairly. This is usual practice for enforcement provisions.
However, I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, that the competition duty will absolutely apply to the ORR when it is writing the code of practice, so the code itself will have competition principles embedded within it. My officials wrote to her on that subject. The noble Baroness put to the Committee a number of clear propositions that I will consider carefully as a consequence of what she said. I believe I have answered many of them, but I will look at what she said further, and of course the publication of the draft code of practice will help considerably. I will also consider what the noble Lord, Lord Young, the noble Baroness, Lady Alexander, and other noble Lords said. As I said, we expect the CMA to respond to the consultation, so we will see what it says.
On Amendment 17, the Government fully agree that appropriate oversight and scrutiny of public spending is important. However, the amendment is unnecessary. The government policy has long been that GBR will retail tickets online through a high-quality website and app, as the train operating companies do now and have done for many years, without fees to passengers.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, these amendments look to ensure a fairness between Great British Railways operations and open access and freight operators in terms of charges and access to the track, and concern the change to the current role of the Office of Rail and Road. Since the publication of the Bill, there has been a big debate in the sector about this over the past 18 months or more. Amendment 16 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, seeks to change Great British Railways’ functions so that decisions about access to and the use of railway infrastructure would instead be carried out by the Office of Rail and Road, as is the case now, as he said. On the other hand, Amendment 221 approaches this differently, with a subsequent right of appeal to the ORR after going through the dispute resolution process set out in the Bill. It would leave the function with GBR but bring in more of an appeals function.
The Bill is a real change to open access operations on the railway and it is right that we scrutinise how it will work in practice. As we have heard, a number of innovative open access operators are running good services with competitive fares. With the vast majority of passenger services being in public ownership, there needs to be confidence that Great British Railways is operating in a clear and transparent way, with an appropriate mechanism for challenge set at the right bar. There is concern that removing the current function of the Office of Rail and Road with regards to access will mean that Great British Railways will always prioritise its own services and may choose to not continue open access operations in the future—some of which are very successful, but there is a fear out there.
We have some concerns over this shift in power between the Secretary of State and the Office of Rail and Road. We want to see the publication of decisions and any evidence that has supported decisions, as well as real engagement with passengers and representative bodies as timetables are developed and services are changed. Of course, freight comes in here too. Freight will be critical to help move lorries off our roads and grow our regional economies, so freight access is equally important. We need transparency and openness between Great British Railways and the other parties in this space in terms of track charges and access. I hope that the Minister will provide the assurance that industry would like to hear on this important change in legislation.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for Amendment 16 and for this short debate. In the groupings for Committee, there are some very substantial numbers of amendments about access in groups 26 to 31, so I will answer these amendments very briefly because I am sure we will have very detailed debate subsequently. Indeed, I will leave some of the points that noble Lords have made this evening in order to come back to them when we get to groups 26 and 31.
I want to be very clear that the existing access framework is, in our view, not fit for purpose. It is built on 30 years of complex legislation, regulations, contracts and codes. It requires Network Rail and the ORR to take decisions using inconsistent criteria, based on differing duties and objectives, with no common vision. Fundamentally, no single party is responsible for planning the best overall use of the network and ensuring that access decisions deliver that plan. The current system has too often been characterised by fragmentation and delay, and it is clear that nobody is in overall charge. That has led to inefficient use of capacity and decisions that serve neither passengers nor freight well.
There are clear examples of the consequences. The May 2018 timetable failure—the original catalyst for rail reform—saw punctuality and reliability plummet across large parts of the network. Keith Williams’ review highlighted how this was the result of a complex, fragmented system with no single person in charge. Timetables are often built by trying to piece together layers of past decisions and contractual rights. On the east coast main line, the current system resulted in years of decision-making paralysis, with neither Network Rail, the ORR or operators able to agree a timetable. Service improvements that were supposed to result from £4 billion-worth of taxpayers’ investment were delayed by several years. The only way this could be resolved in the end was by me, as Rail Minister, stepping in to make the decision that no one else wanted to, which is clearly not an acceptable outcome at all.
Noble Lords will recall last December, when the ORR ruled that the 0700 from Manchester Piccadilly to Euston would have to run fully staffed but with no passengers on it, against the wishes of both the operator and the network provider, which agreed that it should run. The ORR itself acknowledged that it did not have all the facts when it took that decision.
The current system has failed to unlock meaningful freight growth. Too often, the needs of freight operators and their customers have been put to the back of the queue. Paths labelled as “strategic freight” are not strategically planned at all and may not even join up, as they are often just a mixed bag of surrendered paths and leftovers.
In the current system there is no overarching strategy—no overall plan for how to make best use of the network—and where no single body has end-to-end authority, critical information can be missed, escalation is unclear and blurred accountability leads to capacity being used in ways that increase disruption, letting down both passengers and freight customers.
An integrated railway under GBR’s leadership is the only way to fix this. As the single directing mind for the railway, GBR will proactively plan how to make best use of the network. It will be empowered to ensure that access decisions take proper account of that plan, implementing an achievable and reliable timetable that makes the very best use of the limited capacity available. Better co-ordination of the timetable will minimise delays, improve reliability and reduce costs—and may well open space for new routes and services. For freight operators, the new system will provide much greater certainty about the capacity available for them to grow their services, with GBR enabled and empowered to protect that capacity. The truth is that, if we leave it as it is, the system will never change.
I will deal with the crucial distinction between Clause 60 and 63 when we get to the detailed debates, but in the meantime I do not accept Amendment 16, which would fundamentally undermine the purpose of these reforms. It is unacceptable and I urge the noble Lord to withdraw it.
Amendment 221 would require the access and use policy to set out not only a process for dealing with disputes but a right of appeal. Of course I agree that GBR’s strong leadership under the new system must be accompanied by strong accountability. That is why the ORR will act as a robust and independent appeals body for access, capacity allocation and charging decisions made by GBR on its network. The ORR’s appeals function will provide a clear, credible and accessible route to challenge those decisions.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
I understand that we will be having a separate debate on this, but is the Minister able to give the assurance that I asked for that the abstraction rates will not be changed?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. I will not give it now but will come back to that in the debate. I should also say for the benefit of the Committee that Network Rail is publishing the access and use policy consultation tomorrow, which will apparently address the noble Lord’s questions on abstraction. I am sure we can debate his points further when we get to the detailed debate.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, it will not wash. The noble Lord did not give any explanation of why there should be an appeals system which cannot look at the merits of the case and cannot bind GBR. He says that we are going to come back and discuss this again. I am sure we will and I hope we will. We should be discussing it several times in Committee, and we will certainly be discussing it on Report. At the moment, I beg to withdraw my amendment, but I am absolutely clear that this will not wash.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, these amendments rightly question the impact of this legislation on Scotland and Wales and the role of Scottish and Welsh Ministers in decisions, including cross-border ones. The discussion we have had is about what devolution really means in this context and the democratic accountability. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on these important points raised by noble Lords.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, the first thing I should say about this group is that the Scottish and Welsh Governments have been intensely involved in drafting the Bill, and both Governments are very supportive of it.
I turn to Amendment 21. Clause 4 enables Scottish and Welsh Ministers to make arrangements for their functions to be exercised by GBR, a GBR subsidiary or a company jointly owned. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, spotted that correctly; he is absolutely right. It is an enabling power designed to support integration where that is considered beneficial. It does not prevent devolved Ministers from continuing to exercise their functions themselves, nor is it intended to provide a general power to delegate functions to any body corporate.
Indeed, under Clause 27, Welsh Ministers will continue to designate Wales-only services and Welsh components of cross-border services. Under Clause 31, Welsh Ministers may either provide those services themselves or secure their provision through the award of public service contracts. Similar powers exist for Scottish Ministers under Clauses 26 and 31. Of course, Scottish Ministers can decide to run their services through GBR or through their own operator. The Government therefore believe that the Bill strikes an appropriate balance between preserving devolved responsibilities and enabling closer integration with GBR, where that is desired by Scottish or Welsh Ministers.
Amendment 22 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, would require the ORR to be consulted. Clause 4 already requires consultation with both the Secretary of State and GBR before such arrangements are made, varied or revoked. That is because GBR is the body that may be responsible for carrying out the function, while the Secretary of State has an interest in the wider operation and integration of the railway system, and because GBR will be operating devolved functions alongside reserved ones. They are therefore the parties best placed to provide input on these arrangements. Although the ORR plays an important role as the railway’s independent regulator, these arrangements concern the exercise of devolved functions and national versus devolved governance, rather than regulatory matters. We therefore do not consider an additional statutory consultation requirement to be necessary.
On Amendments 145 and 146, the Government fully support transparency and effective parliamentary scrutiny. That is precisely why we have already published the agreed memorandum of understanding with Welsh Ministers and a framework for the memorandum of understanding with Scottish Ministers. That has enabled Parliament to consider the proposed arrangements alongside the Bill. The memoranda of understanding are intended to provide a basis for joint working between UK Ministers and Scottish and Welsh Ministers on matters relating to rail services and funding. They are not legislative instruments but practical agreements to support effective intergovernmental working.
The amendments would require the MoUs to be published at the same time as the rail strategy and would impose a two-month period before they could come into force. However, the rail strategy and the MoUs serve distinct and seperate purposes. The rail strategy sets out long-term priorities and objectives for the railway, while the MoU supports collaborative working between the UK and Welsh or Scottish Governments. Requiring the two documents to be published at the same time would create unnecessary friction and delay. Similarly, requiring a two-month waiting period before an MoU could take effect would add process without materially improving oversight or outcomes.
Lord Harper (Con)
Can I just check that the rail strategy that the Secretary of State will produce will be a strategy for Great Britain, and that the memorandum of understanding will be about how that interacts? If the Secretary of State’s rail strategy is for England only, that does not make sense. What the Minister just said implies that the Secretary of State will produce a rail strategy for Great Britain, in which case there would not be any friction from ensuring that those documents were published together.
Lord Lansley (Con)
Before the Minister responds to that point, I add that I am slightly confused because Clause 15, “Rail strategy”, says that the Secretary of State “may not” include provision relating to the functions of the Scottish Ministers, so it may be a rail strategy for Great Britain, but it cannot deal with the functions of the Scottish Ministers.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I say in response to noble Lords that the long-term rail strategy is for the whole railway. The Scottish and Welsh Governments are being consulted, but Scotland will also have a strategy covering its own functions because that is the meaning of devolution. I hope that is clear.
Lord Harper (Con)
I do not want to overly labour this point, but that is not very clear. The way it works at the moment is that the Scottish Ministers have a role in helping to shape—
Lord Harper (Con)
As I was just saying before we resumed, the advantage of a break is that I had a chance to slightly firm up my question. Before we broke for the Division, I was saying that I thought that not synchronising the rail strategy publication and the memorandum of understanding potentially meant not having a clear, joined-up strategy for Great Britain. I was asking the Minister whether the strategy that the Secretary of State had to produce was for Great Britain and, if so, whether it would not make sense to synchronise that with the memorandum of understanding.
Having had a chance to look at Clause 15, it is indeed the case that the Secretary of State is producing a strategy for the rail network in Great Britain—that includes Wales and Scotland—but it specifically must not contain provisions about functions of the Scottish Ministers, because that is clearly what the memorandum of understanding is going to do. In this case, I think the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan are very sensible. Otherwise, you will publish a rail strategy for Great Britain that has quite important functions for Scottish Ministers because they make the call on what Network Rail does on infrastructure in Scotland, for example. It does not make sense to not have that joined up.
I am very happy for the Minister take this away, because it will obviously have consequences, but synchronising those two events will drive very sensible and good behaviour in the way the department interacts with the Scottish and Welsh Governments and will be an improvement in having a better rail strategy for the whole of Great Britain.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, and I, too, have done a little bit of homework while we had the Division. The important thing he draws our attention to is Clause 15(3). Because
“The rail strategy may not contain provision about functions of the Scottish Ministers”,
in effect, it is the rail strategy for England and Wales. Because the rail strategy for Scotland is the function of Scottish Ministers, they will publish a strategy to cover Scotland. It will reflect the devolution funding arrangements and the responsibility for the railway in each country. We are working very closely with Scotland, and GBR will have to work very closely with Scotland, as will the Secretary of State, to ensure that the strategies make sense and, therefore, that the GBR business plan makes sense.
Having said all that, I am still not sure that I can see the connection between the MoUs and the strategies. Indeed, we have been able to strike a memorandum of understanding and publish it with Welsh Ministers—and we have a framework for that in Scotland—without a long-term rail strategy. They are intended to provide a basis for joint working between UK Ministers and Scottish and Welsh Ministers on matters related to rail services and funding, but they are not the same as a strategy, which sets out what the intentions of those Governments are and will form the basis on which GBR will write a business plan.
I think my contention is the same. The rail strategy sets out long-term priorities and objectives for the railway, and the MoUs support collaborative working between the respective UK and Welsh and Scottish Governments. I see the difference between those two instruments—the strategies and the MoUs—but I do not see the need for a waiting period between them taking effect or for them to be co-ordinated. As I have said, we have published the MoU with Wales already and the outline of that for Scotland too.
Lord Harper (Con)
Here is my final point—as the Minister will be pleased to know. He has just, perhaps inadvertently, flagged that the drafting of the Bill in Clause 15 is not correct. The Secretary of State will not be producing a long-term strategy for the development and use of the rail network in Great Britain and the railway services that she wishes to see in Great Britain. She will be doing those things for England and Wales. The Bill should really reflect that because it is inaccurate. Again, I am happy for him to take it away, but I think he has let on at the Dispatch Box that the Bill is not correctly drafted.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord draws my attention to something which, having read it to him, I concluded myself. This is the purpose of Committee, of course: to discover things that you have not thought about. I am as willing as the next Minister, perhaps, to decide what to do. We will take that away, and I am grateful to the noble Lord. For the avoidance of doubt, I still do not accept the contention about the connections between the MoU and the strategies, but I accept the points that the respective boundaries of the strategies could be much better placed than they are.
Amendment 146 from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, goes further on the provisions on the allocation of ticket revenue from cross-border services operated by Transport for Wales. We do not think that is appropriate. Such operational and commercial matters are more appropriately dealt with through established industry arrangements such as public service contracts and the Wales and borders agreements rather than through an intergovernmental co-operation agreement, which is fundamentally about the governance of GBR, so I urge the noble Lord not to press the amendment.
I turn to Amendments 294 and 295 on consultation. The Government fully recognise the importance of ensuring that Scottish and Welsh Ministers are consulted on decisions that have a significant impact on their nations. That is precisely why the Bill already places a duty on GBR to consult them before making such decisions. The amendment would go further by requiring devolved Ministers to determine whether consultation was required. That would add significant delay for no practical benefit, as Scottish and Welsh Ministers would be required to review decisions that would often be irrelevant to them before steps can be taken. The approach could create uncertainty about when decisions can proceed and risk shifting the focus from effective engagement to procedural questions about whether consultation is required. Scottish and Welsh Ministers will also continue to have important mechanisms through which they can influence the railway, including their respective rail and transport strategies, their powers, which are strong, and guidance. The Government therefore consider these amendments unnecessary.
Finally, Amendment 296 from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, specifies that GBR should consult on access decisions where they impact Welsh Ministers. Clause 82 already requires that GBR consults Wales on issues affecting it. That requirement would also extend to access decisions. Therefore, I can reassure the noble Lord that his intent has already been achieved by the Bill but, bearing in mind what he said in support of his amendment, I will write to him, and copy it to other noble Lords, about the ownership and control of infrastructure in Scotland and Wales now and in the future so that he and other noble Lords—though I see the noble Lord is not in his place—can be clear about the present and future arrangements, since I think what he said expressed a degree of confusion about them.
I finish by saying again, as I started with, that Scotland and Wales have been intensely involved in the drafting of the Bill and that both Governments are very supportive of it. Therefore, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, we see a pattern—there is always an argument as to why the bear in the front room should be able to make the decisions without constraint, and here we go with Scotland and Wales. If the Minister tells me that Scottish and Welsh Ministers are happy that Great British Railways, a largely unaccountable body that is largely concerned with English railways, should make a determination as to what is of economic significance to Scotland and Wales, and that they have had that question put to them, considered it squarely and come back and said “Yes”, then of course that is what the Bill should say. It strikes me as odd and not consistent with the general approach that the Scottish and Welsh Governments would take to these things. Beyond that, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Harper on drawing out various points. I feel a swathe of government amendments coming on Report.
Lord Moylan (Con)
I think there will have to be others as well. None the less, for the moment, I have done my best to defend the devolution settlement, keep up the policy of the Prime Minister and give Scotland and Wales a say over the future of their own economies in so far as they are affected by public transport. Having done that, I will subside and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill ExcerptsMonday 20th July 2026
(2Â months, 2Â weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL] 2026-27 View all Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL] 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 40–I Marshalled list for Third Reading - (17 Jul 2026)
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, I will now make a short statement on the position regarding legislative consent on the Bill. The Government accept that legislative consent from the Northern Ireland Assembly would be required for Clauses 1, 5 and 11. These clauses cover areas that aim to modernise air passenger rights, strengthen consumer protection enforcement and enable updates to airport slot allocation. The Government have written to the Northern Ireland Executive on this matter, and my expectation is that these issues will be fully addressed during the Bill’s passage in the other place. We remain committed to sustained engagement with the devolved Governments for the remainder of the Bill’s passage. I beg to move.
Schedule 1: Direct enforcement of consumer protection legislation by CAA
Amendment 1
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would remove provision that is unnecessary because the statement of policy prepared by the CMA under paragraph 16F of Schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 will apply to all direct enforcement authorities.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, the Government have brought forward a minor and technical amendment. Schedule 1 to the Bill currently amends Schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to refer us to a statement of enforcement policy prepared by a direct enforcement authority. However, under paragraph 16F of Schedule 5, the statement will always be prepared by the Competition and Markets Authority and not a direct enforcement authority. The amendment therefore removes this provision to correct the drafting accordingly. I assure noble Lords that this is a very minor technical amendment that tidies the Bill without changing policy intent.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased that we are reaching the departure gate for this Bill’s passage through your Lordships’ House.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I know—sorry. There is only one more like that. The Bill is focused on strengthening consumer rights and protections, reforming aviation regulation and enhancing aviation safety. Your Lordships’ contributions have ensured that the Bill leaves this place in a stronger shape. This is particularly true with regard to improving the experience of disabled people and those with reduced mobility while flying. I hope that in turn the Government have shown that we are willing to listen to and work with your Lordships.
Moving to thanks, I first give my gratitude to my noble friend Lord Katz, who supported me on the Front Bench. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan; throughout the Bill’s passage, he has consistently assured the House that he supports its objectives. Indeed, he was so supportive that he felt obliged to test, challenge and interrogate almost every mechanism for achieving them. His contributions have, however, been thoughtful and constructive, and I thank him for that.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for the prudent and measured perspective they brought to our debates—particularly on consumer rights and the importance of ensuring that the Bill commands public confidence. Although we have not agreed on every point, their contributions have been consistently informed, probing and constructive. I am grateful for the spirit in which they have engaged with both me and my officials during our consideration of the Bill.
The noble Lords, Lord Holmes of Richmond and Lord Blencathra, the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Grey-Thompson, and my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley all campaigned effectively to improve accessibility and highlight the importance of inclusive transport, for which I give my thanks. This has resulted in the Government tabling a package of amendments that I believe will really improve the experience of flying for those with disabilities or reduced mobility.
There have been other contributions. The noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, the noble Lords, Lord Harper, Lord Grayling, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Empey, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Foster of Oxton and Lady Finlay of Llandaff, have provided wise words and, as ever, I am grateful for their contributions. I have enjoyed discussing the merits of general aviation with the noble Lords, Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate and Lord Davies of Gower, and my noble friends Lord Barber of Ainsdale and Lord Tunnicliffe, who raised issues of importance. Finally, I extend my personal thanks to all the officials who supported me, especially the Bill team, policy and legal colleagues, the drafting team, parliamentary counsel and others.
In conclusion, the Bill has completed its passage through your Lordships’ House. It now takes off for the other place, and I would expect any return journey to involve only limited turbulence. I beg to move.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak at Third Reading. I begin by thanking the Minister for the constructive way in which he and his officials have engaged with this House throughout its passage. I also record my gratitude to noble Lords across the House for the contributions they have made to the Bill at every stage. The scrutiny that this House has brought to bear, often from very different perspectives, has strengthened this legislation. I do not think that improvement would have happened without it.
I particularly welcome the Government’s agreement to bring forward a consultation on the experiences of disabled passengers—an addition to the Bill that I hope will make a real and lasting difference. For too long, disabled passengers have been left without the convenience or dignity that ought to be a basic expectation of air travel. I am glad that this House has secured a firm commitment embedded in the legislation to examine and address that failure properly.
I also welcome the corrective amendment the Minister has tabled for Third Reading, which addresses a technical deficiency identified by the Minister since Report. That kind of responsiveness does not always attend legislation of this kind, and it should be acknowledged.
I return to the principle that has guided my and my colleagues’ contributions throughout the passage of the Bill: that reform of aviation regulations should be directed first and foremost towards improving the passenger experience. The protections we have secured for disabled passengers and the standards the Bill now sets are what I will be watching for closely as it is implemented. Passengers do not experience aviation policy as clauses and statutes. They experience it as to whether they are treated with courtesy when a flight is delayed, whether they can travel with the support they need and whether the system as a whole is built around their interests rather than around convenience for everyone but them.
Too often in the past, passengers have been an afterthought in regulatory design. The Bill is an opportunity to correct that imbalance. I hope the Government will treat this not as the end of that work but as a foundation on which future improvements can and should be built. I close by expressing my thanks in particular to my Liberal Democrat Peer colleagues who have contributed to the Bill. My particular thanks, above all, go to Adam Bull in our Whips’ Office, for his diligence and unwavering support throughout its passage, for which I remain deeply grateful.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, this was a pretty dreadful Bill when it was introduced to your Lordships’ House, in terms of its conception but also its drafting. It leaves it in somewhat better shape, which is very considerably due to the fact that the Minister paid attention in Committee to the many amendments and proposals that were made, and came forward on Report with an astonishingly large number of amendments to change the Bill—all of which, it is fair to say, noble Lords felt responded to their concerns, and which they were willing to support. I thank him for that.
Also, as was just referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, a large part of Committee was taken up with discussions of the treatment of disabled people in the course of flying. Amendments brought forward by the Minister characteristically represent an improvement in the approach that government will take to those issues in the future, for which I thank him.
I also thank his officials for their engagement and the Public Bill Office for its support in drafting the amendments we put forward. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for her important contribution to the debate. I am sure I will have forgotten some, but I also thank my noble friends Lady Bray of Coln, Lord Grayling, Lady Foster of Oxton, Lord Harper, Lord Young of Cookham, Lord Reay, Lord Redwood, Lord Davies of Gower, Lord Holmes of Richmond, Lord Goschen and Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate for the experience and scrutiny they brought to our proceedings.
This is fundamentally an administrative Bill. As I say, it changes decision-making processes in the wake of our departure from the European Union. But we remain concerned that the Government have chosen to use the legislation to transfer not only those European Union powers but also powers that the Government themselves possessed to the Civil Aviation Authority, to be carried out in many cases—fewer now, as a result of the Minister’s amendments—with no external scrutiny, certainly no scrutiny from Parliament, that would indeed have occurred under the previous system. This is a retrograde step in terms of parliamentary scrutiny.
We are also concerned that the Government have said, quite explicitly, that they want to use their new freedoms in order to align more closely with the European Union. It is a very strange conception of Brexit that the Government seem to have developed. British aviation is a world-leading industry, and it succeeds because of innovation and competitiveness. It needs to have regulations made for it that are suitable for the success of British aviation.
There was also one amendment passed by your Lordships’ House on Report that did not have the Government’s favour. Naturally, one suspects, the Government will use the passage of the Bill through the other place to try to remove it, but I hope very much that they will not. I wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Empey, in this regard. Although it was my amendment that passed, that was as a consequence of the numerical placement on the Marshalled List. He had an amendment achieving a similar effect, which related to the drop-off charges made at airports that have now become scandalously excessive. Families and other travellers are charged simply for trying to pick up or drop off somebody, very often with no feasible alternative for doing so. There may be a lack of public transport or it may be unsuitable for somebody to seek to travel to an airport other than by car, for example, because they are wheelchair-bound or have some other mobility impairment that prevents them travelling on ordinary public transport, even where it exists. The amendment that was passed calls on the Government to conduct a thorough review of airport drop-off charges. It is as simple as that; it requires nothing more legally. We will look at that at ping-pong—or perhaps we will never get to ping-pong because the Government will take the advice of your Lordships’ House and accept the amendment that was passed.
With that, I am sad to bring an end to my involvement with this Bill. I hope that it becomes a route—I will not make a silly pun—or path to better regulation of aviation. If it does, it will be very much because of the efforts of Members of your Lordships’ House.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, no more puns. I have two brief points. First, the noble Lord just referred to the new Clause 7; we will see what happens in the other place on that.
I am particularly pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, spoke this afternoon. I am quite clear that what I said to him when he raised the point about the Secretary of State taking action to support regional connectivity was not in fact correct. I am very happy to correct the record on that and am pleased to confirm that the Bill’s powers on airport slots and schedules would enable the Secretary of State to take action to support regional connectivity if that were considered necessary. The Government’s current assessment is that such intervention is not required, but I am happy to put the record straight for the noble Lord. I thank all noble Lords.
Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill ExcerptsMonday 13th July 2026
(2Â months, 3Â weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL] 2026-27 View all Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL] 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 1–R–I(b) Manuscript Amendment for Report (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (13 Jul 2026)
Baroness Grender (LD)
I thank the noble Lord. We think that driving for this principle cuts across the stronger consumer rights that we have been talking about all through Committee.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, before addressing these amendments, I thank all noble Lords for their continued contributions to the Bill. It is clear that we share the common goal of improving the aviation sector. The Government have carefully reflected on the arguments that have been put forward during the Bill’s passage. The amendments in my name respond to that constructive engagement and I hope that they will be welcomed by your Lordships.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for bringing Amendment 1 forward. We discussed in Committee how the Bill will promote economic growth. Having considered the arguments made then and, indeed, the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, just now, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, and others, the Government’s position remains unchanged. I fully recognise the intention behind the amendment, which is to ensure that, alongside consumer protection, we would continue to support a competitive and growing aviation sector. Those are objectives that the Government strongly support. As I set out in Committee, growth and competitiveness are already central to the Government’s aviation agenda. Beyond this Bill, we are also taking forward airspace modernisation, supporting innovation through the Future of Flight programme, embedding a pro-growth approach across regulation and backing airport expansion where it can deliver economic benefits and meet planning and environmental requirements.
The amendment also seeks to protect the rights and interests of air passengers. On that point, the Government have listened carefully to concerns raised during the Bill’s passage and have brought forward amendments requiring the Secretary of State, while exercising the powers in Clause 1, to have due regard to strengthening air passenger rights and to principles relating to dignity, accessibility and support for disabled passengers and those with reduced mobility. We have done so because these considerations are directly relevant to the exercise of those powers.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that this issue is important and relevant to economic growth. However, I do not consider Amendment 1 necessary. Economic growth, investment and competitiveness are already important considerations in aviation policy and regulation, and these priorities are reflected in the Secretary of State’s engagement with the Civil Aviation Authority. On the authority, I note the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Oxton, from her extensive experience, that the CAA is an excellent regulator. The noble Baroness will, I hope, note my later amendments on the proposed delegations and controls when we get to that section of the Bill.
More fundamentally, Amendment 1 would require the Secretary of State to give statutory regard to a specific set of objectives when exercising powers under the Bill. Although those objectives are important, they are not the only relevant consideration. As I noted in Committee, this list does not include safety, which is fundamental to aviation and underpins the measures in the Bill. Nor does it capture the full range of factors that may need to be taken into account in particular circumstances. The Government’s view remains that it is better to preserve the flexibility to balance all relevant considerations rather than elevating a limited set of factors in legislation. I think that is also what the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, referred to, and I also note, as she did, that the Civil Aviation Authority is already subject to a statutory growth duty, which requires it to have regard to economic growth in the exercise of its regulatory functions.
Turning to Amendment 3, the Government agree that economic growth is a priority. However, consideration of growth is already embedded across government decision-making. Policy proposals are assessed for their impact on growth and departments are required through options, appraisal and impact assessment processes to demonstrate those effects before decisions are taken. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Harper, carefully and he referred to the call for evidence about the valuation methodology, which will involve constructive engagement with the aviation industry ahead of the 2029 revaluation. I note his view that airports should not be considered as out-of-town warehouses, and we will see what happens with government in the future about that. For all those reasons, I am unable to support the amendments, and I respectfully ask the noble Lord not to press them.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I am disappointed to hear the noble Lord’s response; I would largely be repeating myself if I were to explain in any detail why. I think the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has been responded to by my noble friend Lord Harper. I will be second to none in admiring the valiance of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, in this debate—I am with her entirely in that regard. None the less, I have no embarrassment in saying, even if we are the only party in your Lordships’ House saying it, that we are the party of economic growth. It is about time those words meant something. This amendment seeks to make sure that they do. I will test the opinion of the House at an appropriate moment. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 1.
Lord Harper (Con)
My Lords, I will comment very briefly on my noble friend Lord Moylan’s Amendment 4. There are two parts to it. The first part, as he explained very carefully to the House, is the 25% reduction in administrative costs, which is the Government’s own target. We discussed this in Committee and I asked the Minister if he would set out the progress that the Government have made in achieving that 25% cost reduction in the areas that are the responsibility of his department. Clearly, we are two years into a five-year Parliament, so if the Government were on track, other things being equal, one would expect a 10% reduction in cost or an explanation as to why it was going to be loaded towards the back end of the Parliament. We did not get a lot of information, so I would be grateful if the Minister could tell the House what work is going on in the Department for Transport to track progress in reaching that 25% reduction in administrative costs. What information is currently available and published by the department about hitting that target? As my noble friend Lord Moylan said, if we received a lot of that information it would make the amendment unnecessary.
My second and final point is just to reflect on the point that I made on the earlier group. The wording of my noble friend Lord Moylan’s proposed new subsection (1B) is very sensible. It does not rule out the imposition of costs, but it challenge the Government to make a judgment as to whether the cost increase is disproportionate to the consumer benefit. It absolutely would allow some regulations to be introduced that had a cost but it would require the Government to look at the benefit that those regulations delivered to passengers and assess whether that balance was correct—in other words, whether the benefit to passengers outweighed the costs that were levied on the airlines. That is a good test for the Government. We do not want to have costly regulations which have a big economic burden but do not result in significant benefits to passengers. That is a perfectly sensible point and one which I think addresses the perfectly sensible point that the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, made about making sure that the focus on economics does not lead to a reduction in passenger support.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, before I address these amendments, I thank noble Lords for their constructive engagement with the Government on passenger rights and accessibility in Committee, in meetings since and in the debate today. In particular, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Grey-Thompson, Lady Finlay of Llandaff and Lady Foster of Oxton, my noble friends Lady Kennedy of Cradley, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath and Lady Griffin of Princethorpe, and the noble Lords, Lord Holmes of Richmond and Lord Blencathra. Their contributions have greatly strengthened the Government’s approach to accessibility in the Bill, including the government amendments on this topic.
First, I turn to government Amendments 18, 19, 71 and 72 in my name. These amendments are intended to ensure that the Bill fulfils its potential to strengthen air passenger rights, with particular emphasis on improving protections for disabled and less mobile passengers. Amendment 19 will place a statutory obligation on the Secretary of State to consult on accessibility issues and identify what changes may be needed to existing law. Any necessary reforms could then be made through Clause 1. The consultation will cover issues raised in your Lordships’ House, such as compensation for breaches of assistance duties, protections for passengers with allergies and complaints handling, but it will not be limited to those matters.
The Government will consult disabled passengers and persons with reduced mobility and their representative organisations, alongside airlines, airports, the Civil Aviation Authority, passenger rights advocates and wider stakeholders, as appropriate. This will support a genuinely pan-disability approach grounded in lived experience and expert evidence. We will begin the consultation as soon as possible after Royal Assent, while allowing sufficient time to consider the full range of accessibility issues. It will focus on legislative reform and sit alongside the non-legislative work already undertaken through the Aviation Accessibility Task and Finish Group, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, to whom the Government are grateful. Amendment 18 is a technical amendment enabling government amendments on accessibility, and Amendments 71 and 72 deal with commencement.
I turn now to Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. The intention of Clause 1 is to strengthen and enhance air passenger rights, and this aligns with our obligations under the trade and co-operation agreement to achieve a high level of consumer protections. I recognise the noble Baroness’s intention to ensure that this clause is used only to make things better for air passengers. However, such a requirement could limit what the clause is used for, which may ultimately work against passengers’ interests. The Government share her objective of strengthening passenger rights and have tabled amendments to support that aim, including some which will be discussed in the next group.
I turn to Amendment 4, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. The Government are committed to reducing administrative burdens. The Bill is expected to reduce business costs over time, as set out in the published impact assessment. In Committee, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Harper, I gave some examples of changes made within the department towards this target. However, it would not be appropriate to place a fixed numerical target in primary legislation, as targets may change over time. It is the Government’s overall target; it is not split by department. But, to be clear, aviation is included. I also reject any notion that these amendments adversely affect efficiency, because they will facilitate disabled people playing a full part in economic life and making their contribution.
I turn to Amendment 6, tabled by my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley and the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Brinton. The Government are clear that aviation must be accessible to all who wish to travel. Clause 1 has been drafted deliberately broadly to support a pan-impairment approach. It relies on existing legislative definitions that would already capture all the conditions and impairments specified in the noble Baronesses’ amendment. By contrast, a more detailed statutory list risks unintentionally excluding passengers whose impairment or condition is not specifically mentioned.
The Government recognise the importance of adequate protections for passengers with allergies travelling by air. Allergies and wider accessibility issues can be considered through the consultation required by government Amendment 19, which I have already outlined. Persons with allergies must be consulted as part of that process. Any reform shown to be necessary will then be made using Clause 1. I will ensure that noble Lords continue to be engaged as that consultation develops. This consultation will sit alongside the excellent work of the Aviation Accessibility Implementation Group, which is focused on non-legislative work with the industry to improve accessibility across the sector. In answer to my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley, I will be happy to arrange a meeting with the co-chairs of the group to discuss what more could be done in a non-legislative capacity.
Lord Harper (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, can I press him on his point about the Government’s plan to reduce the administrative burden on business by 25%? In Committee, he said that the Department for Transport was working closely with the Department for Business and Trade, which I presume owns this target across government—the Minister is nodding assent. What expectations for delivery has the Department for Business and Trade set out for the Department for Transport? Unless each department is going to deliver something, the Government have no hope of hitting this target. If the Minister is not able to tell me that now, he committed in Committee to write to me with further information, which has not yet happened; I would be perfectly happy if he were to furnish me with that information in writing.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord is right: I am pretty sure I did commit to write to him, I am pretty sure I have not yet and I am pretty sure I will do shortly.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I will be brief because a whole load of people have arrived for a particular purpose. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for mentioning the ICAO and some of the international progress we need to make. I also thank the Minister for giving us a hint that we will hear a bit more about that in the next group, so I am excited to get on to the next bit of business. We have made quite a bit of progress in this group, especially on the government amendments, so I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I start by paying tribute briefly to the Minister who, over the last 15 years or so that I have known him, has taken issues about disabled access on transport systems very seriously and made a personal commitment to them. I am delighted to say that the efforts made by noble Lords who suffer disabilities and the arguments that they made in Committee have found a resonance with him and, therefore, he has been able to come forward with amendments. They do not necessarily give everybody what they want—I suppose that is the nature of the way the legislative process works—but, generally speaking, they take this issue forward in practical terms. We support those amendments, as we indeed support the case that has been made by various noble Lords in the course of this debate.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I begin with the government amendments in this group and start with Amendment 24, tabled in my name, which establishes duties and principles to guide the future use of Clause 1. It is intended to ensure that the power is used, wherever possible, to strengthen air passenger rights and to address barriers faced by disabled passengers and those with reduced mobility. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Grender and Lady Brinton, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for their time and expertise to strengthen broader air passenger rights, which has helped lead to this amendment.
The amendment seeks to ensure that all air passengers are treated with dignity and have their individual physical and mental health needs respected, and that those with disabilities or reduced mobility are afforded access to air transport services equal or comparable to that afforded to other passengers. The examples that we have heard, in particular the powerful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, set out exactly why we need to do better. I hear the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and I am sure that noble Lords agree that there are many individual members of staff who are good. However, we have also continuously heard that there is terrible, and unacceptable, inconsistency. That is clearly too frequent an experience.
I turn next to Amendment 25, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, which would amend government Amendment 24. I understand the noble Baroness’s concerns, but I reassure her that the use of the word “desirability” does not allow the Secretary of State to shy away from their obligation to have due regard. I want it to be clear that Clause 1 is intended to strengthen and enhance air passenger rights, and that this duty reinforces that. It requires the Secretary of State to have due regard to improving passenger rights every time the power is used. However, the impact of policy changes must always be considered holistically—for example, safety, cost, deliverability and wider impacts. The word “desirability” ensures that the regard to strengthening air passenger rights is properly weighed alongside those other factors, so that the Government can act on the full picture.
The second government amendment in this group removes the compensation cap for damaged or lost mobility aids on domestic UK flights. Many wheelchairs and mobility aids are highly customised, specialist pieces of equipment that can cost many thousands of pounds, well in excess of the current Montreal convention liability limit. Removing the cap for domestic UK flights allows passengers to recover the full cost of repair or replacement. That reduces a barrier to travel, gives passengers confidence and gives carriers a far stronger incentive for careful handling.
I turn to the amendments tabled by noble Lords and begin with the amendment from the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Brinton, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley, seeking minimum standards for passengers who need assistance. I recognise the intention behind the amendment and the important issues identified by the Aviation Accessibility Task and Finish Group, under the leadership of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. The Government greatly value that work and will ensure that it informs the next stage of policy development. As I noted previously, government Amendment 19 requires a statutory consultation on accessibility issues following Royal Assent. That consultation will consider all the matters raised in this amendment, alongside wider issues affecting disabled passengers and passengers with reduced mobility, with any necessary reforms capable of being taken forward under Clause 1.
On the amendment on complaints procedures, the Government agree that passengers, in particular disabled passengers and passengers with reduced mobility, should have clear and effective mechanisms for raising concerns when standards fall short. However, the detail needs careful consideration. Legislating now risks creating a provision that is either too vague to enforce or too rigid to work well. Government Amendment 19 therefore identifies complaints procedures as a specific area for consultation, with Clause 1 providing powers for any resulting reforms.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has also tabled an amendment seeking clarity on the timing of the consultation under government Amendment 19. As I said on the last group, we will begin that consultation as soon as possible after Royal Assent. The wording is designed not to delay the process but to ensure that the Secretary of State has sufficient time to consider the full range of accessibility issues properly before reporting on the outcome. As I said on the previous group, we will meet interested noble Lords two months after Royal Assent to show what has been done, what is being done and what will be done under my amendments.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for Amendment 23, which concerns who should be consulted. She is right that the consultation must be informed by those with relevant expertise and lived experience. This Government are committed to the principle of “nothing about us without us”. The clause uses a non-exhaustive list so that the right people can be consulted on the right issues without requiring every listed group to be consulted on every matter. We will draw on expertise—including from the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee—to identify who should be engaged at each stage.
In tabling the government amendments in this and the previous group, we recognise that aviation operates within an international framework of conventions, agreements and regulatory arrangements. There are limits to what any one country can achieve through domestic legislation alone. However, as we have heard, that is not an argument for inaction. Rather, it is an argument for leadership. These amendments are a significant step forward for United Kingdom passengers. We have long been a leader on accessibility and the Government will use their influence internationally to press the higher standards for disabled passengers. Specifically, through our work at the International Civil Aviation Organization and the European Civil Aviation Conference, we will use appropriate fora to champion the UK’s approach to accessibility, promote improvement of standards and seek international alignment.
We will take every opportunity available to raise these important issues at all relevant meetings, starting with those following Royal Assent, such as, but not limited to, the ECAC sub-group on the transport of persons with reduced mobility and the ICAO working group on accessibility in international civil aviation. By strengthening passenger rights at home and placing accessibility at the centre of our approach, the United Kingdom can continue to use its influence internationally and in its engagement with partners across the sector to advocate for higher standards of accessibility worldwide. I note the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, to convene an international meeting. I will discuss with the Aviation Minister and the Secretary of State in the other place when we might do that.
The noble Lord, Lord Harper, asked about standards and enforcement. Both are needed—hence the powers in the Bill for enforcement by the Civil Aviation Authority, which cannot currently impose penalties. That is the reason for Clause 2.
Taken together, the government amendments relating to air passenger rights provide a significant and practical step forward for passengers, in particular disabled passengers and passengers with reduced mobility. I therefore hope that the House will support the government amendments in this group and that noble Lords are reassured that the issues raised in their amendments will be addressed through the consultation process and the powers provided by the Bill. On my own position, I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, that I wish for everybody else only the experience that I have myself when I travel by air.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I make two very brief points. First, it was neglectful of me—in fact, rude of me—not to thank the Minister for the government amendments, particularly government Amendment 24, which will deliver nearly everything that we have been asking for. I echo the wise words of my noble friends Lord Moylan and Lord Holmes of Richmond in thanking the Minister for all the work that he has been doing to help disabled passengers over the past 10 or 15 years. I am grateful for that.
Secondly, on delays at check-in, what annoys me most is not just the delay I suffer but the delay that the people behind me suffer, and the grumbles, muttering and hateful looks that I get. An able person checking in may take three or four minutes. If I am held up for 15, 20 or 30 minutes, there are 10 people behind me who have formed a hostile opinion of everybody a wheelchair. It is also a horrible feeling that I have held them up. The top priority for me is to speed up that check-in process through training so that we do not hold up the disabled people and antagonise a dozen people behind us.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his noble thoughts on both points.
Baroness Grender (LD)
I am a little hesitant to start the Front Bench responses before I triple-check that nobody else wants to speak.
I thank the noble Lords, Lord Moylan, Lord Grayling and Lord Young, for raising these important issues. On the theme of parliamentary scrutiny, we on these Benches support the spirit of Amendments 16, 17 and 29 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. They seek to mandate the affirmative procedure for regulations, and we attempted to suggest similar amendments in Committee. The Bill delegates vast, unscrutinised powers to the Secretary of State to redefine passenger rights, so it is only right that Parliament retains the ability to debate and approve these changes before they take effect. I have previously mentioned signing a blank cheque that allows for the fundamental alteration of consumer standards via the negative procedure. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, I also acknowledge that the Minister has changed his position on that and signed one of the amendments from the noble Lord on this issue.
I will not revisit or rehearse my comments in Committee about the need to deliver on the threat of a fatal Motion, which we have got into in the past. Sometimes, the muscular possibility of delivering on that threat is the only way of dealing with these procedures. I fully recognise that both the Conservative Benches and the Labour Benches have a long-standing tradition of not doing that.
We welcome government Amendment 28, which requires the CAA to report annually on its enforcement functions. We see this as a necessary step towards the transparency that we called for in Committee. However, while we welcome the technical corrections in government Amendments 30 and 31 regarding the concurrency arrangements, we remain concerned by the potential for regulatory fragmentation. Probing Amendments 7 and 12 rightly ask why both the CAA and the CMA require overlapping powers. We believe the regulator must have teeth, but those teeth need to be clearly seen and defined. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on that.
On Amendment 13 from the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, while we support proportionality, we feel that confining financial penalties only to “systemic failure” risks leaving individual passengers in the lurch. We worry that it might defang the regulator in a way that prioritises industry margins over individual dignity—a common theme that I have already pursued on previous groups.
On Amendment 65 from the noble Lord, Lord Young, I read more on this issue this weekend than on almost anything else to do with the Bill. The only thing I can say is that we on these Benches still have an open mind on this issue. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. Normally we would follow the noble Lord through hell-fire, but I have had discussions with Commons colleagues and have read everything I can on this issue. We wait to hear the Minister’s response.
Finally, Amendment 15 would require a statement on international alignment. As we have previously argued, any divergence from EU standards must be used as a lever for enhancement, not a race to the bottom. If we are to move away from established protections, the public deserve a clear technical explanation of why that divergence is in their interest. I look forward to the debates that this has thrown up and to the Minister’s response to these amendments.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I will begin with the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, on financial penalties and powers of entry. Clause 1 does not create financial penalties or powers of entry; it simply enables such powers to be conferred by future regulations if evidence shows that they are needed. Their scope should be determined when those regulations are made, on the basis of the evidence available at that time. It would not be appropriate to fix a systematic failure test in primary legislation now, particularly as the CAA already addresses breaches causing collective harm, rather than individual disputes.
Powers of entry would require reasonable grounds to suspect a breach and would be used only where less intrusive methods had proved insufficient. Similar powers already exist for other regulators, including the Financial Conduct Authority and the Information Commissioner’s Office but not the Civil Aviation Authority. Appropriate safeguards are essential but are best considered when any regulations are laid.
To help the noble Lord, I was assured, having asked a former chief executive of the Civil Aviation Authority, whom the noble Lord knows well, that these powers will be essential to allow the CAA to effectively use the powers it is being given through the Bill to enforce consumer regulation. It has faced some difficulties with that in the past.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would apply the definitions in clause 1 to my new clauses (Consultation) and (Matters to which Secretary of State must have regard).
“Consultation(1) The Secretary of State must, before the end of the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, begin the process of consultation under subsection (3) (but the Secretary of State need not complete the process within that period).(2) After completing the process the Secretary of State must publish the Secretary of State’s response to the consultation.(3) Consultation under this subsection is consultation with the persons mentioned in subsection (4) about the provision that should be made by regulations under section 1 concerning—(a) the compensation that should be paid for breaches of requirements to provide assistance to disabled persons and persons with reduced mobility;(b) the measures that should be put in place to protect persons with allergies when using air transport services;(c) the procedures that should be put in place by air transport service providers and airport operators for dealing with complaints;(d) the provision by air transport service providers and airport operators of wheelchairs suitable for use in aircraft;(e) any other matters that appear to the Secretary of State to be of particular importance (4) The persons mentioned in this subsection are—(a) air transport service providers,(b) airport operators,(c) such disabled persons, persons with reduced mobility and persons with allergies who are users or prospective users of air transport services, or such organisations appearing to the Secretary of State to represent such persons, as the Secretary of State considers appropriate, and(d) such other persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult on the provision that should be made by regulations under clause 1.
“Matters to which Secretary of State must have regard(1) When considering whether and how to exercise the power to make regulations under section 1, the Secretary of State must have due regard to—(a) the desirability of strengthening the rights of persons who purchase or use air transport services, in particular where the persons whose rights would be affected are or include disabled persons or persons with reduced mobility, and(b) the principles set out in subsection (2).(2) The principles are—(a) that all persons travelling by means of air transport services should be treated with dignity and that their individual physical and mental health needs should be respected;(b) that disabled persons and persons with reduced mobility should be afforded access to air transport services that is equal or comparable to that afforded to other persons;(c) that where assistance is required by disabled persons or persons with reduced mobility the assistance provided should meet their needs;(d) that independent journeys by disabled persons and persons with reduced mobility should be facilitated wherever possible.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would introduce (i) a duty concerning strengthening air passenger rights, and (ii) principles where the Secretary of State is to make consumer protection regulations under clause 1
“Non-international flights: compensation for damage to wheelchairs etc(1) Council Regulation (EC) No 2027/97 of 9 October 1997 on air carrier liability in respect of the carriage of passengers and their baggage by air is amended in accordance with subsections (2) and (3).(2) In Article 3, after paragraph 1 insert—“1A Article 22 of the Montreal Convention applies in relation to carriage by air performed by a UK air carrier within the United Kingdom as if—(a) at the beginning of paragraph 2 there were inserted “Subject to paragraph 2A of this Article”, and(b) after paragraph 2 there were inserted—“2A In the carriage of wheelchairs or other mobility equipment or assistive devices, the liability of the carrier in the case of destruction, loss or damage is unlimited.””(3) In the Annex, in the entry relating to destruction, loss or damage to baggage, after “at fault” insert—“In the case of carriage within the United Kingdom of wheelchairs or other mobility equipment or assistive devices, the liability of the air carrier for destruction, loss or damage is unlimited.”(4) Schedule 1 to The Carriage by Air Acts (Application of Provisions) Order 2004 (S.I. 2004/1899) (application of the Montreal Convention: non-international carriage) is amended in accordance with subsections (5) and (6).(5) In Part 1, ​after paragraph (4), insert—“(4A) In Article 22.2, at the beginning, there shall be inserted “Subject to paragraph 2A of this Article,”.(4B) After Article 22.2, there shall be inserted—“2A In the carriage of wheelchairs or other mobility equipment or assistive devices, the liability of the carrier in the case of destruction, loss or damage is unlimited.””(6) In Part 2, under the heading “Article 22—Limits of Liability in Relation to Delay, Baggage and Cargo”—(a) at the beginning of paragraph 2 insert “Subject to paragraph 2A of this Article”;(b) after paragraph 2 insert—“2A In the carriage of wheelchairs or other mobility equipment or assistive devices, the liability of the carrier in the case of destruction, loss or damage is unlimited.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would remove the current compensation cap in relation to destroyed, lost or damaged wheelchairs or other aids for non-international flights.
“(2) In section 21 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982 (CAA’s annual report), in subsection (2), after paragraph (b) insert— “(ba) must include a summary of what the CAA has done during that year in the performance of its functions under—(i) Part 3 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (enforcement of consumer protection law), and(ii) Schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (investigatory powers etc);”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the CAA to report each year to the Secretary of State on the performance of its enforcement functions.
(b) another direct enforcement authority (“the relevant direct enforcement authority”) is also capable of exercising its direct enforcement functions in respect of that commercial practice.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would correct the position on concurrency arrangements between the CMA and other direct enforcement authorities, to ensure that those arrangements operate as intended.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, airport drop-off charges are a constant source of frustration to the travelling public. Although neither amendment is in my name, these Benches will support whichever amendment is taken forward.
These measures are a common-sense attempt to bring transparency to what often feels like a stealth tax at the terminal door. So far on Report, we have not talked about how people are often captured the minute they enter the door of an airport. This is not a choice; people are captured and are given these charges. They cannot instantly withdraw their custom and go to a different airport, because they are pretty much locked in both to the airline and to the airport that they have gone for. They cannot shop around, because all of them are doing it.
It seems to us that it is right to support the amendment. For too long, the rules of the game around these levies have been opaque. It feels similar to the bundling and poor practice that we have seen in ticketing, and it is only right that we shine a light on it. I see it as quite useful that we should at least look at this and try to create a bit more transparency.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Empey, for re-tabling their amendments on airport drop-off charges. I will address them together.
I understand the concerns behind these amendments. Passengers should have clear, accessible information about travel options to and from airports, including drop-off, short-stay parking and free alternatives. The Government expect airports to act transparently and fairly, and reinforces this through regular engagement with the sector. However, these amendments are neither necessary nor proportionate. Most UK airports are privately owned and responsible for managing their roads and parking. Their arrangements are already subject to consumer protection law, competition law and industry standards, with enforcement and redress where practices are misleading, unfair or non-compliant. There are also established mechanisms to review airport drop-off charges where concerns arise.
The CAA has already examined airport surface access, including competition, consumer issues and the transparency of information on options and charges, and found insufficient evidence to justify a competition or consumer law investigation. Private parking operators are expected to comply with the sector’s code of practice, including requirements on clear signage, accessibility, penalty charge notices and appeals. The Government will continue to expect airports and operators to provide clear, accurate and accessible information before passengers travel. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, that if the information at Belfast City Airport is as unclear as she describes, she has a valid complaint.
Drop-off and parking charges support airports’ wider commercial and operational management. They can reduce congestion, improve traffic flow, support surface access strategies and fund passenger facilities, including cleaner transport options. Restricting them in primary legislation risks shifting other costs to passengers and undermining airports’ ability to manage congestion effectively. Almost all airports that charge for terminal drop-off provide free alternatives, such as shuttles. Airports should ensure that these options are clearly communicated in advance so that passengers can make informed choices. For those reasons, while I understand the noble Lords’ concerns, I ask them not to press their amendments.
Lord Empey (UUP)
Before the Minister sits down, he used the phrase competition, but is it not the case that, in the vast majority of cases, we are talking about monopolies? There is nobody to compete with because you have no choice. If you want to go to Heathrow, yes you have Gatwick as an alternative but it is miles away. There is really no competition here.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am referring to choices in the method of access to the airports, rather than the choice of airport itself.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I thought that was a deeply unsatisfactory answer that failed to address the amendment. The Minister said there was no case for restricting these charges in primary legislation. Who has proposed that? Nobody has proposed that. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, and I have asked for a survey, an examination or a report to be done on the effect of these drop-off charges. There is no proposal to restrict them. That was a deeply unsatisfactory answer, so I fear I will insist on testing the opinion of the House on my Amendment 33.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I begin with Amendments 34 and 37, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. The department takes cabin air quality seriously. Commercial aircraft must already meet certification requirements for ventilation and cabin airflow, and operators must report and investigate suspected toxic cabin air incidents. The CAA’s medical experts review such incidents and can take action where necessary.
The committee on toxicity’s most recent review, in 2024, concluded that reported concentrations of chemical contamination in aircraft cabin air are unlikely to cause adverse health effects in air crew following either acute or long-term exposure. However, I understand the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and she made a strong case when we met. Nevertheless, if necessary, the Civil Aviation Authority could use the new powers in Clause 8 to make further regulations relating to cabin air quality. As discussed with the noble Baroness, I am happy to facilitate a meeting as soon as possible between noble Lords and the Civil Aviation Authority to discuss this matter and existing evidence. Depending on the outcome, I am prepared to meet them myself if that were needed. I hope that this reassures noble Lords and that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, will withdraw Amendment 34.
I turn to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, which would require aviation safety regulations to be made by the Secretary of State rather than the Civil Aviation Authority. This would undermine a core purpose of the Bill and maintain the status quo. As drafted, the Bill will enable the Civil Aviation Authority to make aviation rules more quickly and more efficiently, reducing the current backlog, which has been an issue since we left the European Union and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.
Previously, that agency’s regulatory changes became law via implementing regulations, and although the existing body of EU law was transcribed into UK law, any additional changes must be made by statutory instrument, which has caused the backlog. Any Government would have run into these problems without the reforms being brought forward in the Bill. It also preserves the Secretary of State’s power to make rules by statutory instrument and to intervene through backstop powers where appropriate.
I turn to amendments giving effect to the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which the Government have accepted in full. I am grateful to the committee for its scrutiny and recommendations, which have strengthened the Bill. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for tabling amendments to give effect to this. We support his Amendment 62—he got to that subject first—which would make the reserving power in new Section 61A(7) subject to the affirmative procedure. I hope noble Lords will support it, too.
Government Amendment 56 in my name gives effect to the committee’s recommendation to clarify the principles underlying the exceptions to delegated rule-making. This sets out these principles in the Bill. It would require the Secretary of State to consider matters such as national security, the wider public interest and passengers’ interests, including accessibility, when deciding what should remain reserved to the department. I hope that noble Lords will support this.
Amendment 57 from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, would remove the requirement for the Civil Aviation Authority to agree the Secretary of State’s priorities and objectives. The Civil Aviation Authority is the UK’s independent aviation safety regulator, and I place real emphasis on that independence from government. As the CAA’s experts will deliver the rule-making programme, the CAA must be satisfied that it is deliverable. Requiring it to implement priorities with which it disagrees would undermine that independence. Where disagreement arises, the Secretary of State can still reserve matters and make regulations herself. I ask the noble Lord not to press the amendment.
Indeed, were there to be a disagreement, Amendment 58 in my name requires any directions issued by the Secretary of State to the CAA under Clause 8 to be laid before Parliament, as well as published. This responds to concerns raised in Grand Committee by the noble Lords, Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate and Lord Barber of Ainsdale, and it will support Parliament’s scrutiny of these powers. I trust that noble Lords will support it.
The noble Lord’s Amendments 59 and 60 would require the Civil Aviation Authority to republish the entire rulebook after every change, however minor. The Civil Aviation Authority already publishes its rulebook online and will keep it updated. Republishing the full, approximately 12,000-page, rulebook for minor changes would be disproportionate and costly. Instead, the Civil Aviation Authority will update individual rules as they change and publish consolidations where appropriate.
The noble Lord’s next amendment would remove the power to make consequential amendments relating to the CAA rules. As safety rule-making moves to the CAA, the Government need a mechanism to keep related legislation consistent with the new framework. This standard power will be used only to enable and facilitate the CAA’s rule-making function. Secondary legislation made under this power will be subject to normal parliamentary scrutiny, including the affirmative procedure where primary legislation is amended.
Finally, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Empey, seeks a review of flight time limitations. The CAA already ensures that cabin crew and pilots comply with legal flight time limitations and has enforcement powers to support that role. The CAA is reviewing flight time limitations with stakeholders, so it would be premature to create new provisions before that work concludes. Flight time limitations are in DfT-owned secondary legislation and, if changes were needed, the CAA could propose amendments, or my department could act directly. I hope that this reassures the noble Lord that the matter is already under active review.
Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, on flight time limitations and who takes charge of this, the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, may remember that prior to 2012 when the flight time limitations were dealt with by the European Union, we came under what was called CAP 371, so the Civil Aviation Authority was always responsible for the flight time limitations for pilots and cabin crew. EU flight time limitations came through the European Parliament and those limitations then were enforced EU-wide. But we are now reverting. In my view, the CAA would take back control of flight time limitations under the normal civil aviation procedures.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I defer absolutely to the noble Baroness’s far superior knowledge. I think what she is referring to is the review that is currently being undertaken.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the offer of a meeting with the CAA. I see from her head, which is about to nod off her shoulders, that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, agrees that this is a good idea, so I thank the Minister for that. It is a helpful contribution.
To the noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Oxton, I say that I would not wish at any point to frighten people away from aircraft. I feel I almost live in one as it is, and we all use them. However, we must remember that, as well as being a conveyance for passengers, an aircraft a workplace, which is the big difference. We have learned all about minute contamination. If we look back at the regulations that were enforced on what was supposed to come out of the nuclear power plant in the north-west of England and the levels of contamination that was allowed initially, which people said did no harm to anybody, we see that that is now down to about a thousandth of that. These things evolve with time, knowledge and so on. Nevertheless, the Minister has made a fair and reasonable offer and that is most helpful. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 34.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, some very important points have been made about consultation. I just want to be clear that I understand what points are being made. I believe these amendments are not about airport expansion. On airport expansion, I would say that, especially as it is subject to a process under planning law—namely, the development consent order—there will not be a shortage of consultation as a result of that development consultation order. Certainly, in the case of Heathrow, if it expands, the consultation will take place.
I think that the amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, put forward is not about expansion but about airspace modernisation. Although I would not want to commit myself to the wording of her amendment in particular, she has a point which the Government need to be quite clear about and they need to reckon what the difficulties are; that is, the reorganisation of flight paths will have winners and losers. It is not simply that flight paths might be moved from one corner, one area or one approach to another; part of the purpose of airspace modernisation is to concentrate flights, so there could be quite a lot of winners but some very bad losers as a result of this. The Government need to take people with them as they do this. There is a strong case for doing it, and we support modernisation, but the Government cannot leave their successor in a position where people have not been given a chance to be brought along.
My Amendment 39A in this group is about charges for air traffic and air navigation services in Clause 6. I drew attention in Committee to the sheer incoherence of the drafting of this clause. The Government have come forward with an amendment which improves it somewhat, but it slightly misses the point—it still leaves it saying something quite incoherent. I offer this only because I like to see properly drafted legislation. There is no politics in this; the Government should be doing their job properly in the first place. Clause 6(3)(c) says:
“Persons may be specified … if the services concerned are available for their use”—
note that phrase—
“or benefit, and it is immaterial whether or not the services are actually used or could be used by … them”.
I understand the part about it being immaterial whether they are used: “It is available for your use, but you did not use it; we’re still going to charge you”. That may be right or wrong, but that is what the law says. That is the situation. How can the services be available for their use, but they could not be used by them? You could still be charged for them even if they could not be used by you. How is that consistent with them being “available”? I do not understand it. I just think it is very poor drafting.
Anyway, I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. I am glad he has corrected the other part of it that was incoherent; we are getting somewhere slowly. Maybe he will come forward with some sensible amendments at Third Reading so that the Bill makes sense in some key areas.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, the next group concerns airspace modernisation, consultation and charging. I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for retabling her amendment, and I have also heard the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bray, on this matter.
I have considered this carefully, but the Government’s position remains unchanged. The environmental assessment and consultation are, and will remain, fundamental parts of the airspace change process. Nothing in these powers removes or weakens existing requirements for thorough consultation or robust assessment of environmental and noise impacts.
Any procedure or policy the Civil Aviation Authority puts in place, or any decision it makes to change airspace, must be exercised in accordance with the duties set out under Section 70 of the Transport Act 2000. These require the Civil Aviation Authority to take account of the Secretary of State’s guidance on environmental objectives, as well as the interests of any person in relation to the use of airspace.
In practice, sponsors of an airspace change must undertake detailed assessments of potential impacts, including noise exposure and greenhouse gas emissions, and consult meaningfully the affected communities, airspace users and other relevant stakeholders. The CAA then scrutinises these assessments before any proposal can be approved. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, my understanding is that the CAA will bring forward only one proposal at a time.
Lord Moylan (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, he has again misconceived the point. It is not that you can be charged for something that you do not use. He says that this is a well-established principle. I have already said that it might be rough justice, but if it is what the law says then it is what the law says. What he has to explain is how something can be available—it has to be available before there can be any charge at all—yet be something which the person being charged could not use. What does he understand by “available” in that case, bearing in mind that, unless it is available, there is no charge at all, as that is the first condition?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I think I have explained that to the noble Lord. I certainly feel that I have.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for participating in this debate. I am sure that we are all keen to move on to the next group. The Minister has been very patient in our meetings and recognises that we will not let go of this issue lightly. We will keep on referencing what we see as this critical need. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that the amended section 75(7) of the Transport Act 2000 accurately reflects the intended operation of charging arrangements for air traffic and air navigation services.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, any debate on aviation is enriched by a contribution from my noble friend Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate. I am grateful to him for what he said.
The House benefited too from the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Barber of Ainsdale. I have some slight concerns about his amendment. I appreciate that there may be a crisis in the supply of pilots, but I would be very anxious if the Government were to become involved in workforce planning in this sector. I understand entirely that his amendment does not quite call for that, but the last part of it points in the general direction that the CAA should be taking an active role in this, and that would be a very bad thing. Aviation is a very successful part of our private economy, and it should be for the industry itself to take responsibility for recruiting and training the people it needs in order to operate. That is the first principle.
However, the noble Lord does an important service in bringing to the House’s attention the cliff edge that is allegedly being faced. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I begin with Amendment 41. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate, for this and for his kind remarks. I also heard the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, and other noble Lords clearly on this subject.
General aviation is an important part of the UK’s aviation industry, covering a wide range of public service, commercial and recreational activities. As the noble Lord remarked, it plays an important role in introducing people to aviation and helping to develop the skills pipeline for future aviation careers.
Clause 6 seeks to provide the CAA with greater flexibility as to who can be charged for air traffic services provided under a licence. This will ensure that, as the UK’s airspace evolves, the costs of providing those services can continue to be recovered fairly and proportionately, in line with the well-established “user pays” principle.
As the noble Lord will be aware, these costs are currently recovered primarily from commercial airlines, while general aviation is largely exempt. Any future changes would be subject to the CAA’s statutory consultation process, with affected parties retaining rights of appeal. The Civil Aviation Authority also has an obligation under the Transport Act 2000 to further the interests of operators and owners of aircraft, including in relation to the availability and cost of licensed air traffic services. This would and does naturally include considering impacts on the sustainability and growth of general aviation. Given those existing safeguards, the established charging process, and the fact that there are currently no plans to introduce new charges for general aviation users, I do not believe the amendment is necessary.
I turn to the amendment from my noble friend Lord Barber of Ainsdale, which would require the CAA to report on anonymised demographic trends among commercial pilot licence-holders. Demographic trends among skilled aviation personnel are a matter of interest to the industry, the Government and the Civil Aviation Authority.
The Civil Aviation Authority already collects demographic information on commercial pilots and other skilled personnel. This supports robust regulatory decision-making, enables the CAA to identify relevant trends and allows it to publish data on licence-holders where it considers that useful. Indeed, the CAA has published annual data on different categories of licensed pilots, including commercial pilots, broken down by age and sex, since 1994.
The proposed requirement to publish such statistics and analysis with a particular frequency could impose additional costs on the CAA. These would have to be met from the CAA’s scheme of charges and thus would be a burden on the aviation sector. For those reasons, I consider the amendment unnecessary and ask my noble friend not to press it.
More broadly, I reassure the noble Lord, as well as my noble friends Lord Barber of Ainsdale and Lord Tunnicliffe, of the importance that the Government place on maintaining a robust pipeline of flight crew, particularly pilots. The department is addressing workforce challenges through targeted programmes, such as Generation Aviation, and through evidence-based assessments of skills needs. The department will shortly commission a skills gap analysis across all aviation professions as a follow-up to analysis that was conducted in 2023. This will consider factors including retirements and sector growth, helping to identify emerging workforce pressures at an early stage.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, the Government recognise and value the important role aerodromes play in their local communities. That is why the National Planning Policy Framework ensures that planning authorities consider their economic, leisure, training and emergency service roles when making planning decisions about them.
I thank noble Lords for their engagement on this matter and I trust that, as a result, they feel reassured. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
I feel that the matter that I brought through this amendment has been well aired. I am grateful for the contributions of my noble friends Lord Goschen, Lord Grayling and Lady Foster. I am particularly happy that my noble friend Lord Moylan, our spokesman, is satisfied with a very slight chastisement of me. I go away humble, of course, but not humiliated. I am delighted that the Minister has responded in the way he has. I am pleased that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Barber, has been discussed, because it is also important in this group. As a result of that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for saying that she would support them. Both would change the making of regulations from the use of the negative procedure to the affirmative procedure. I shall not say anything more about them.
Both my noble friend Lord Grayling and the noble Lord, Lord Empey, have made very important points. I have great sympathy with my noble friend, who is trying to ensure that the Government interfere as little as possible with the allocation of slots. I equally understand, and I do not think there is a tension with, what the noble Lord, Lord Empey, says about the importance of maintaining regional connectivity. In fact, as I recall, not that long ago the Minister was the tsar of regional connectivity and wrote a very important report about it for the Government, so I look forward to hearing what he has to say, drawing on his experience and knowledge of the subject.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for these amendments and for the thoughtful debate we have had on the slots regime. I will deal with the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, before turning to those from the noble Lords, Lord Empey and Lord Moylan.
The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, seek to limit intervention on slot allocation to specified circumstances. I certainly understand the intention behind the amendments but we believe that they would unduly constrain the flexibility that the Bill is designed to provide. The airport slots regime operates in a complex and rapidly changing environment, and future circumstances cannot be anticipated. Limiting intervention to a prescribed set of scenarios could impede timely and effective action in the public interest, particularly in exceptional and unforeseen circumstances. The Government therefore consider it preferable to retain a sufficiently flexible regulation-making power, subject to the appropriate parliamentary scrutiny of any regulations made under it.
Amendment 47 would require statutory consultation before any regulations on slots are made. The Government recognise the importance of proper engagement before changes are made to the slots regime. I commit that, where new policy is developed under this power, there will be appropriate consultation, including with industry and, where relevant, communities. However, it would not be appropriate to place an inflexible statutory consultation requirement in the Bill. This power may need to be used in response to urgent disruption in the aviation sector, as we saw during the pandemic. In those circumstances, the Government must be able to act swiftly and proportionately.
Amendment 48 seeks to require consultation, transparency and regard to commercial allocation for the slots regime. The Government do not believe that this amendment is necessary. A core principle of the slot allocation regime is that slots are allocated by an independent co-ordinator. In the UK, this role is carried out by Airport Coordination Ltd. This principle is reflected in global guidelines, which require co-ordinators to act independently so that scarce airport capacity is allocated fairly, neutrally and without bias towards any airline, airport or government. That independence helps prevent conflicts of interest, protects new entrants and maintains confidence in a transparent global system.
Amendment 50 questions whether criminal offences are needed under the slot allocation regime. I do not believe that this amendment is necessary, as the Government have tabled an amendment to remove the power for any amended slots regime to include provision for new criminal offences. However, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, for prompting a debate on this matter.
I turn to Amendments 45 and 49, tabled in my name. These amendments provide greater clarity and place a clear limit on the regulation-making power. In particular, they remove any ability for future regulations to create new criminal offences. At the same time, they preserve the effective operation of the existing slot allocation regime and make it clear that, where the existing regulations are restated, any offence already contained in those regulations may also be restated. This strikes an appropriate balance. It avoids conferring an unnecessarily broad power to create new criminal offences, while ensuring that restatement of the current regime does not inadvertently remove or undermine existing enforcement mechanisms. The amendments therefore support legal certainty, maintain continuity in the regulation of airport slot allocation and respond proportionately to concerns about the scope of the delegated powers on slots. For these reasons, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, will not press his amendments, and that he and other noble Lords will support my amendments.
The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Empey, seeks to require that
“adequate slots at hub airports are allocated to flights from regional airports in the United Kingdom”.
The Government recognise the importance of strong regional connectivity and are committed to ensuring that people and businesses across the country benefit from effective air links, including access to major hub airports. However, the slot allocation regime gives airlines rights to equivalent slots in future seasons where usage requirements are met. This amendment could therefore require the reallocation of slots currently held by incumbent operators, raising legal and practical concerns. Of course, the slot regime applies only where capacity is constrained.
Lord Empey (UUP)
Can I get some clarification on the Minister’s point about Amendment 46? Let us assume that, at this point in time, regional connectivity is adequate, which I believe it is. Therefore, I am not suggesting that existing slots be removed from an existing airline. What I am concerned about is this: if an airline decides to reallocate its slots for international flights, say, to the detriment of the regions, does the Secretary of State have any power to intervene to ensure that regional connectivity is maintained? I am not talking about new capacity or limiting capacity in existing slots. But, in the event that those slots might be reallocated to the detriment of a region, does the Secretary of State have any power to intervene, or are the Government merely a spectator?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The answer to that is that the Secretary of State does not have any power to intervene because, as I said, the core principle of the slot allocation regime is that slots are allocated by an independent co-ordinator. There are suggestions from noble Lords opposite that in fact the Government should have less power here, so I am not sure that I see that the Secretary of State can easily intervene in something that is already allocated fairly neutrally and without bias towards any airline, airport or Government.
Lord Grayling (Con)
My Lords, I will pick up that latter point. The Minister has perhaps misunderstood my points. I set out the four areas where I felt the Government did have a role, and I said that the legislation goes much further than that. I cited the example of proposed new subsection (4), which appears to give the Government the power to do absolutely anything they want in this field. The issue is a Government who want to be able to control everything, and we are saying that there are only a certain number of things they should be involved in.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that regional connectivity is one example. I mentioned the easyJet situation to the Minister. A lot of the commentary has been around the value of that business being much higher by breaking it up, stripping out new plane orders and the rest. As we know, slots at Heathrow have huge value, and you could well imagine a situation where slots that were important within the United Kingdom were auctioned off for another purpose. So, yes, I believe in a more constrained slot regime, or more constrained government involvement in the slot regime, but I am not arguing and I have not argued that the Government should have no involvement in that regime. Regional connectivity is one area where the noble Lord, Lord Empey, has made some good and important points.
However, I can see that the Government are not going to concede on this point tonight. I simply ask the Minister to reflect further ahead of Third Reading, particularly on the regional connectivity point. In the interests of progress this evening, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment 42.
Member’s explanatory statement
This would clarify that the power to restate the Airports Slot Allocation Regulations 2006 includes power to restate the offences created by the regulations.
Member’s explanatory statement
This would remove the power for regulations under section 34A of the Airports Act 1986 to include provision for criminal offences.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness makes some important points, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in reply.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Grender and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for their amendments on airport expansion. I addressed the relationship between the Bill and airport expansion in Grand Committee. Having considered the arguments put forward then, the Government’s position remains unchanged.
This Bill is concerned with aviation consumer protection and the aviation regulatory framework; it is not a Bill about airport expansion. The measures in the Bill are needed regardless of whether any airport expansion proposal comes forward and regardless of the outcome of any such proposal. The Government are supportive of airport expansion where it can deliver economic and connectivity benefits and meet the relevant environmental and planning requirements. However, decisions on airport expansion are taken through separate planning processes, not through this Bill.
Indeed, during Committee, the Government published the draft Heathrow expansion national policy statement for consultation. This underlines the fact that airport expansion proposals are considered through dedicated planning processes, with their own consultation, scrutiny and parliamentary oversight. The Bill does not alter those processes or predetermine their outcome.
The Government are concerned about the practical effect of Amendment 63. Its scope is not limited to Heathrow or to any specific airport expansion proposal. By preventing powers being used “in connection with” the facilitation of expansion, it could create uncertainty around routine regulatory functions that are not themselves about approving airport expansion. For example, slots regulation does not create airport capacity; it manages capacity once it has been approved through the planning process. However, the amendment could potentially call into question the use of such powers where they relate to approved airport expansion.
Regarding the consultation requirements on slots regulations put forward in Amendment 51, the Government are committed to meaningful community consultation and robust environmental and noise assessment before any airport expansion proceeds. These requirements are already addressed through the statutory planning process.
As I have said, slot regulations do not determine whether airport expansion takes place. The Bill simply ensures that, where necessary, slot regulations can be updated to make effective use of new capacity at co-ordinated airports. The amendment would therefore add little, as consultation and assessment on airport expansion already take place through the planning system before slot allocation becomes relevant. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his infinite patience on this issue and for being accessible at all times for discussions on it. I wish to associate myself with all the other comments that we have heard this evening, and I thank the Minister for some of the movement that we have had, particularly in other areas and in earlier parts of the debate. My reason for saying this now is that I do not intend to speak on the next couple of groups, so this is an opportunity for me to say thank you to the Minister and his officials for having been so accessible throughout the process.
I understand the Minister’s objections to this. It will not astonish him to hear that, as with Amendment 46, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, it is possible that we will return to this. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
“61EA Considerations for exercise of power under section 61A(7)(1) When considering whether and how to exercise the power to make regulations under section 61A(7) the Secretary of State must, in particular, consider whether the Secretary of State should retain responsibility for the following—(a) anything that would significantly affect the public interest, including in particular the public interest in protecting national security, promoting economic growth, protecting the environment and ensuring the efficient operation of the civil air transport industry of the United Kingdom;(b) anything that would involve matters of public policy, or legal issues, of general importance;(c) anything that would involve the imposition of requirements on the CAA in relation to the exercise of its functions;(d) anything that would involve the imposition of significant and unexpected financial burdens on any person;(e) anything that would directly affect the interests of passengers using air transport services, in particular where the passengers whose interests would be affected are or include disabled persons or persons with reduced mobility; (f) anything that would involve changes to other legislation that cannot be made by regulations under section 61J.(2) In this section “disabled persons” means persons with a disability within the meaning given by section 6 of the Equality Act 2010.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would set out matters to consider when making regulations under section 61A(7) of the Civil Aviation Act 1982, addressing a concern raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in their report on the Bill.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require directions under section 61G, and variations or revocations of them, to be laid before Parliament as well as being published.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I have listened carefully to the debate. We do not support the amendment.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for this amendment. The Government are actively reviewing the case for access to the European geostationary navigation overlay service, or EGNOS. This includes engagement with organisations that have been affected by the loss of the service, as well as those who could benefit from it in the future. I noted in Committee the importance of the service to connectivity; for example, for outlying islands and throughout all seasons of the year.
The output of the current work is expected later this year, but any move to rejoin EGNOS would in any case require agreement with the European Union. It would not be appropriate to pre-empt that review by accepting this amendment. For these reasons, I am unable to accept it. I hope that my noble friend will withdraw it.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful for that short debate and for my noble friend’s response. I did not expect anything else, but he will get a copy of this paper and I hope—indeed, I am sure—that he will be true to his word and follow it through and that we will have one or two more debates on it in the future.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, very briefly, or perhaps at length, Amendment 70 would remove a Henry VIII power that allows the Government to rewrite primary legislation. It would do so on the grounds that the Government—or the department—have said in their memorandum to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that they have identified all the legislation that is affected by this Bill. Therefore, they do not need a Henry VIII power to make amendments to Bills that may yet appear, because they have already identified all the Bills. Indeed, I must say, they have not just identified them but made the corresponding adjustments to ensure that this Bill is in conformity with existing legislation, or that amendments are made to it through this process.
The power is entirely redundant. It is also offensive in general to your Lordships’ House that Henry VIII powers should exist. The Minister has been so good about accepting, at least in part, many of my suggestions in Committee and today on Report. However, it would be the cherry on the cake and would seal his reputation with all Benches in this House if just at this last minute, before we conclude, he were to rise to his feet and simply say that he accepts the amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
How disappointed the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is going to be. Without Clause 10, any amendment to existing legislation which is consequential to this Bill, however minor or technical, would require further primary legislation. That would be an unnecessary and disproportionate use of parliamentary time and that of your Lordships’ House. This clause is needed to ensure that the statute book appropriately reflects the changes made by this Bill and to avoid any potential inconsistencies following the Bill’s enactment.
Powers of this nature are a well-established feature of legislation. They ensure that the statute book continues to operate coherently once Parliament has enacted new legislation. This clause is drafted no more broadly than is necessary. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that the clause is both necessary and appropriately limited. It cannot be used to make substantive policy changes or revisit decisions taken by Parliament in the Bill. Where it is used to amend or repeal primary legislation, regulations are subject to the affirmative procedure, ensuring scrutiny by both Houses. For those reasons, the Government remain satisfied that Clause 10 strikes the right balance between ensuring a functioning statute book and providing appropriate parliamentary oversight where primary legislation is affected. I therefore invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, you can always tell whether the Minister is speaking in his own voice or merely as a tool of departmental officials. I will leave it to noble Lords to decide which category that speech fell into. For the moment at least, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would provide for the consultation requirement, duty and principles relating to regulations under clause 1 to come into force on Royal Assent.
Railways Bill
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts(2Â months, 3Â weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill
That the Railways Bill be committed to a Grand Committee and that it be an instruction to the Grand Committee that they consider the bill in the following order:
Clauses 1 to 11, Schedule 1, Clause 12, Schedule 2, Clauses 13 to 91, Schedule 3, Clauses 92 to 96, Schedule 4, Clauses 97 to 102, Title.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, perhaps we could have a bit more of an explanation from the Government as to why this Bill is being taken not on the Floor of the House but in Grand Committee. This is a major piece of legislation which affects every rail user up and down the country. It was first announced in the first King’s Speech of this Session and, unusually, repeated in the second King’s Speech, so it is not as if it is something new. This was supposed to be a priority. It is a priority which is taking a long time to deliver. It has incredibly important consequences and should be discussed not in Committee but on the Floor of the House. Perhaps the Minister will explain why the Government want to take this Bill into Committee rather than deal with it on the Floor of the House, as we usually do with most of the controversial pieces of legislation before your Lordships’ House.
Lord Sentamu
What I want to say is that the numbers towards the end of that Bill were not as big as people suggest. Look in Hansard; the numbers were less.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, what a joy it is to hear from three former Transport Secretaries whom I have worked for. I predict hearing from a former deputy chair of Transport for London whom I have worked for shortly as well.
I know, as many do in this Chamber, that passengers and taxpayers have had enough of the current failed system. Change to our railways cannot come soon enough. I want to get on with fixing the railways by starting the scrutiny of this Bill as soon as possible. Divisions such as this simply delay the job that we are all here to do. It is perfectly normal for Bills to be committed to Grand Committee. A significant number of Bills, many of which propose significant legislative change, are committed to Grand Committee each Session. In the last Session of the previous Government, much important legislation was scrutinised in that way.
As my noble friends have confirmed, Grand Committee is not a lower standard of scrutiny. Any noble Lord can participate and proceedings are broadcast, as my noble friend just said. Its use means that the House’s time can be managed more effectively. It does not hinder, curtail or prevent detailed scrutiny of legislation. The Bill will return to the Chamber on Report.
Maritime and Coastguard Agency
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts(2Â months, 3Â weeks ago)
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Lord Hendy
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effect on recruitment and retention of Coastguard Rescue Officers of the decision of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to cease on-call payments.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, in the light of a Westminster Hall debate last week, representations from coastguard rescue officers and unions, and other information, the Maritime Minister in the other place has been clear on the need to listen and to reflect on the way forward, which he is doing. That is why further scheduled engagement by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency this week has been paused.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble kinsman for that Answer.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
I have waited a long time to use that expression, and it is a pleasure to do so. The judgment of the Court of Appeal on 14 January was entirely predictable: that coastguards are what lawyers call limb (b) workers. However, the decision of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, in response to that, was not predictable. It has degraded that status to nothing at all and removed the protections that Parliament bestowed on limb (b) workers for our heroic coastguards. Those coastguards are no longer entitled to the national minimum wage for the hours they work—indeed, to any payment at all. They are not entitled to paid holiday, to apply for protection from unlawful deductions from wages, to the protection of whistleblowing or to seek recognition for collective bargaining. Following the Court of Appeal case, which turned on this issue, they are not entitled to a trade union representative in a disciplinary hearing. Can my noble kinsman say whether he will use all the weight he can bring to bear to lean on the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to get it to reverse this awful decision?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am not sure that I am as grateful to my noble kinsman as he is to me—but, as usual, I will answer his questions. This change has not taken place yet; it is due to take place in September. There is time for my colleague, the Maritime Minister in the other place, to listen and reflect. I have talked to him three times today and I will talk to him again after this Question. He will reflect deeply on what he has heard and what needs to be done.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, the staff survey on which the Maritime and Coastguard Agency has relied in making its case has been reported in the press as having been misrepresented by the agency to Ministers and, consequently, by Ministers to Parliament. In that light, do the Government still have confidence in the chief executive of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency? Do they continue to rely on that staff survey?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I have two things to say. First, in the course of the Maritime Minister reflecting on what he has heard, he will reflect on the accuracy and veracity of the information he has been given. Therefore, it is far too early to say what the consequence of that might be. Secondly, he has asked his officials to tell him the data that can be legitimately released so that Members of Parliament in the other place and Peers in this Chamber can hold the Government to account.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that making it so much harder for working people on low incomes to serve as coastguard rescue officers may jeopardise this life-saving service? Therefore, in this period of reflection that he has described, will he ensure that assessment is made of the impact on the diversity of workforce in this context?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I will say two things. First, the Government recognise and are fully grateful for the extraordinary service of brave and selfless volunteer coastguards. Secondly, the noble Baroness is absolutely right that, in the course of this contemplation, we need to reflect on the diversity of those volunteers. Decisions should not be made that adversely affect that.
Baroness Bull (CB)
Can the Minister say what discussions might have taken place with other government departments to compare the approach that could be taken to the coastguard with the retained firefighter model? There is a risk that, from September, both will provide on-call emergency services, often at great personal risk, but one will be recognised as a worker and remunerated while the other will not be.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am grateful for that question. I am not currently aware of those discussions, but clearly there are similarities between some of the things that we ask selfless people in our society to do. I am sure that the Maritime Minister and the department will reflect on that with other appropriate government departments.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
My Lords, the cuts proposed by the MCA have been resisted by the GMB union, as well as by coastguard rescue officers themselves. Is the Minister certain, at a time when we see more people around the coast of Britain using the sea for leisure, that the potential reduction in staff that could come from this will not put people at risk?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The course of action that needs to be taken needs to recognise that the volunteer coastguards have attended over 14,000 incidents each year for the past three years and rescued over 4,000 people annually. The Government have no intention of putting any of those people in danger. That is why my colleague in the other place is thinking so carefully about what to do next.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)
My Lords, it was a delightful surprise to find that there are two Lords Hendy in this House. Who knew? We are very familiar with the Minister’s skills. He will be aware that more than half of our coastguard rescue officers will leave this vital service if the Government continue on their present course. The Minister mentioned the magic word “September”. I ask him to reconsider that. We are now entering the peak risk period on our coasts, when our coastal waters are full of swimmers and sailors, and when the work of the coastguard rescue service is in peak demand. Do the Government plan to overturn the court decision on which all this stands? Given the risk, how soon should they do so? September is too late. The risk is now.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
There are at least two of us in here who knew that there were two Hendys in the House. Maybe that is common knowledge now.
The noble Baroness is right: September is not far away. I put in the present tense the fact that the Maritime Minister is considering this because it needs to be considered right now and for the reasons that the noble Baroness said. Whatever course of action he decides to take needs to be taken very quickly to avoid the service being in anyway affected and to ensure the safety of people on the coast and in the sea.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s total budget last year was £450 million, of which coastguard volunteer allowances cost under £6 million—around 1%—for which we, as a public, get a 24/7, 365-day emergency response network covering 11,000 miles of our coastline by 3,500 volunteers, who get a call-out allowance of £11 an hour, which is a tiny fraction of the 1,200 paid staff in the agency? This is a petty, punitive and pernicious cut, which I urge Ministers to reverse.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My noble friend is entirely right about all the statistics he quoted. That is why I said that the Maritime Minister is currently considering what needs to be done as a result of what he has heard, what I have heard in this House this afternoon and the other information available in order to make the right judgment about how to proceed.
Lord Harper (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s opening Answer, when he noted that the Maritime Minister was reflecting. This sounds like a case where it would be better to embrace the court decision, recognise the worker status and take the steps necessary to properly reward people who do incredibly valuable work. As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, it is very good value for the taxpayer. The MCA is an executive agency of the department; the Minister should take the right decision and direct the agency to carry out its instructions. That is what we expect Ministers to do, and I am sure that the Minister will impress that course upon his Commons colleague.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I do not need to do that, because the course of action that he will take, after having listened and reflected, may well be the course of action that the noble Lord suggested.
Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill [HL]
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill Excerpts(2Â months, 4Â weeks ago)
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Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill
That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:
Clauses 1 and 2, Schedule 1, Clauses 3 to 5, Schedule 2, Clauses 6 to 13, Title.
Railways Bill
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill ExcerptsTuesday 7th July 2026
(2Â months, 4Â weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Railways Bill 2024-26 View all Railways Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 10 June - large print - (10 Jun 2026)
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill
That the Bill be now read a second time.
Scottish and Welsh legislative consent sought.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to present the Railways Bill for Second Reading today. Before turning to the substance of the Bill, I would like to acknowledge that today marks the 21st anniversary of the 2005 attacks on London's transport network. As a former commissioner of Transport for London, my thoughts are with those who were, and continue to be, affected by that day. I also pay tribute to the extraordinary courage and resilience of Londoners, including those in emergency services, transport staff and members of the public who responded in the face of events which were completely shocking.
This Bill has been a long time coming and it is my absolute privilege to speak to it today. I look forward to the debates to come on the detail but, for now, I will speak to the Bill in general terms. The need for reform of our railways is clear. Parliament, including noble Lords in this Chamber, regularly draws attention to service shortfalls, poor and inconsistent customer service and very substantial costs for the taxpayer—all realities that I and this Government accept and which stem from the fragmented system that has been in place for decades which leaves no one but the Secretary of State ultimately responsible. No one takes responsibility when things go wrong. Indeed, it was the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, who first commissioned the independent review by Keith Williams that would lead to the recommendation to create GBR—Great British Railways —after the timetable fiasco in 2018.
The issues are myriad. Passengers are consistently faced with a confusing ticketing system, where seeking the fairest price and a valid ticket are often a trial. The timetable, and performance against it, is also a source of disagreement and chaos, meaning that disruption and cancellations are far more frequent than they should be. Thanks to reforms that this Government have already made via the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act, which your Lordships’ House passed in 2024, we are already beginning to see progress.
Nine passenger train operators are now in public hands and performance among public operators is outstripping those still in private hands. More operators are continuing to move into public ownership regularly. Once all these services are in house, the taxpayer will save up to £150 million a year in fees that would otherwise have been paid to private franchise owners. Passengers will also find more money in their pockets, due to the first rail fares freeze in 30 years. But these measures are not enough; much more work still needs to be done. There is only one solution to fix these problems—fix the railways, put the customer first and restore the industry to a place of national pride—and it is this Bill.
The Bill builds on and replaces the public ownership Act. That Act was a vital step that allowed us to bring passenger services into public ownership and proceed with some degree of integration. This Bill goes further and will give the Secretary of State the powers to create Great British Railways, one public body that will act as the directing mind for the railway. GBR will bring together 17 different organisations involved in the day-to-day running of the railway, harmonising track and train and seizing opportunities that would not be possible under the current system.
The Bill does far more than just establish GBR. One essential element is a powerful voice for passengers, in the form of the passenger watchdog. The watchdog will set consumer standards for the railways, investigate poor service and provide an independent ombudsman service to resolve disputes between passengers and operators, including GBR and its subsidiaries. It will have a specific duty to consider the interests of disabled passengers, and it will have tools to act where there are repeated issues affecting passenger experience. The watchdog will be a champion for passenger interests, ensuring that the reformed railways deliver on the promises to passengers that we make here today.
I would like to speak about accessibility, and I underline that it will be at the heart of what GBR is and does. I know that passengers with accessibility needs often find railway travel challenging, frustrating and distressing. I know that, all too frequently, facilities and assistance do not meet expectations, so accessibility will be part of GBR’s DNA. For the first time, an accessibility duty will apply directly to a body responsible for both the operation of passenger services and the management of railway infrastructure.
Information, fares and ticketing have in many ways become the face of the industry’s problems, with many different websites offering conflicting information and fares. The Bill enables GBR to simplify the customer offer. A new GBR ticketing app and website will make it easier to plan journeys, purchase tickets and access a range of support consistently in one place. GBR’s online retailer will charge no booking fees and will enable disabled passengers to book passenger assist in the same place as their ticket. This means that, in the future, passengers can better understand the fares system and be confident that what they are getting is correct and good value.
The railway has not had the ability to plan ahead for many years, leading to much less than optimal spend on railway enhancements and higher project costs. That is why the Bill also requires the Secretary of State to publish a long-term railway strategy. The strategy will be the first of its kind. It will give GBR clear direction on the Government’s priorities for the railway over the next 30 years. It will guide the long-term choices that GBR makes, ensuring that the railway is aligned with wider government goals, such as economic growth, jobs and homes, and the environment. The railway undoubtedly faces challenges, ranging from climate change to technological change, and from demographic shifts to financial sustainability. That is exactly what the long-term strategy will examine and consider. The Bill gives GBR and its stakeholders the tools to solve these challenges, placing them on the front foot from the very beginning, and obliges GBR to consult on and publish a business plan setting out how it will meet the strategy.
I turn to network access. The existing process of allowing access to the track—the valuable infrastructure owned by the nation—does not work. Currently, Network Rail designs the timetable but the Office of Rail and Road takes access decisions, and both organisations suffer from not having sight of the wider context of the network. Applications to run trains on the network are, in effect, considered on a first come, first served basis, rather than by reference to any long-term plan for how to make the best overall use of the network, and no one is considering which services are best for the public. That is bad for passengers, bad for freight users, bad for taxpayers and bad for the economy. A single directing mind is the only answer to this problem.
In future, GBR will be able to strategically plan access to the network and implement a reliable, achievable timetable to make best use of our limited capacity. This improved co-ordination will reduce delays and costs and improve reliability. It will stop nonsenses such as the ORR prohibiting the 0700 Manchester Piccadilly to Euston from carrying passengers, and me, as rail Minister, having to authorise the east coast main line timetable. Crucially, the ORR will hold GBR to account for taking fair and even-handed decisions on access, ensuring that it acts lawfully, fairly and reasonably. I am sure we will discuss this at length during the debates on the Bill.
On devolution, the Bill is not about centralising power; in fact, quite the opposite. It brings a whole host of benefits to the devolved nations and regional governments across the country. In Scotland and Wales, the Bill enables further collaboration with the Scottish and Welsh Governments, through Transport Scotland and Transport for Wales, and includes further potential for the integration of both operations and infrastructure, which could lead to improved services and co-ordination within and across our shared borders.
In England, the Bill empowers GBR to work locally in a more integrated and accountable way, and to address the place-making and economic and spatial development plans of strategic authority mayors. This means a statutory basis for structured partnerships with mayoral strategic authorities, and a duty for GBR to have regard to their local plans. The approach enables a full range of partnership options, ensuring that GBR can reach agreements that are suitable for the ambitions of mayors. This includes the ability for mayoral strategic authorities to directly fund GBR activity. There will be clear expectations for GBR to meaningfully engage with all local authorities, including those with and without mayors. In any case, GBR will be more locally focused, with its local business units directly involved with the areas they serve, and with local management engaged with local people and their elected representatives, meaning that the needs of the community are never ignored.
I highlight and underline the benefits the Bill will bring to rail freight, which is, and will remain, a commercial activity critical to improving economic growth and meeting our net-zero targets. GBR will have two statutory duties regarding freight. The first is to promote rail freight, and the second is to have regard to the statutory rail freight target set by the Secretary of State and any freight target set by Scottish Ministers. As the single strategic body, GBR will be well placed to fulfil our ambitions for freight, and it will have the levers to drive progress towards our targets. Before I close, I would like to say that I am looking forward to hearing the valedictory words of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, later. He has dedicated his life to public service, and I am pleased that the Bill’s Second Reading provides the opportunity to hear his remarks.
The Bill is a major step forward. While a detailed scrutiny of its contents—something I am looking forward to taking on—will undoubtedly be required, I know I have the support of the general public in sponsoring it. Public ownership of our railway continues to be popular, with over three-quarters of the public consistently supporting public ownership since this Government were elected. As I open the debate to the Floor, I will leave noble Lords with a final thought. The fragmented nature of the railway industry is plain to see and needs to change. That fragmentation began with the last major railway legislation in 1993, which resulted in over 100 companies being formed. This Bill establishes just one: a single directing mind that can get to grips with the mess, mismanagement and misery that so many rail users have experienced for years. Together, we can rebuild the railway so that the public can finally have a railway they can be proud of. I beg to move.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this thorough and thoughtful debate. I would like to start by paying tribute to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson. His distinguished record of service in this place and the Civil Service is a beacon of dedication and commitment to public good. He has brought to our proceedings a deep experience in the heart of government and his contributions are always thoughtful, measured and influential. As always, he is well informed about the railways. Gladstone made provision for the nationalisation of railways in the 1844 Railway Regulation Act. It was not pursued, but it was an early indication that running the railway as one system might be a good idea. I know that the House will join me in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, for everything he has done and wishing him all the best for the future after he retires in September.
Turning to the debate at hand, we have heard that everyone across the House can agree that the railways require reform. The current system is clearly no longer working for passengers, operators or taxpayers. Services have been unreliable, customers have been unhappy and the system has provided poor value for money. We have begun taking services into public ownership, but that was never a long-term solution. The Railways Bill is the answer to the issues that have plagued our railways for far too long, providing new leadership, accountability and long-term thinking to the sector and better meeting the needs and expectations of those who rely on it. The Bill continues the great work of the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024, enabling us to finally reform the wider railway and provide a better service to taxpayers.
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have expressed support, with one exception, in my doing this job in the future. I am sure everything they have said will have no effect whatever on the new Prime Minister. I also will not tell my wife. The noble Lord, Lord Evans of Guisborough, referred to me as the “guiding mind”. I just say to him that the one thing that the Bill is designed to produce is to stop Ministers being the guiding mind of the railway. The purpose of the Bill is to have a body of people that can run the railway and who are professional and committed to it.
This has been a varied debate. I am going to do my best to cover as many as possible of the topics that were raised. As ever, it is subject to my handwriting and the vagaries of my notes, and I may write to noble Lords in some cases.
I want to start with access reform because the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, said that the infrastructure was not used efficiently. He is right, actually. He talked about digital signalling, as did the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, and they are both right. One of the issues that we have had is that we have not had a long-term plan for the railway. We have not had a long-term strategy in which to decide where to put those investments and where the capacity that they would give would be best utilised. That is one of the reasons for the provisions in the Bill.
On open access, which was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Moylan, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley, and others, the truth is that open access has been severely constrained recently. Most of the applications that have been made to the ORR have been declined simply because the view of the ORR is that there is insufficient capacity on the main lines in Britain to accept more trains. I would contend that one of the reasons for that is that, without a whole system look at the use of the infrastructure, we will never create more paths.
Interestingly, that whole system view of the infrastructure on the east coast main line, which took place several years ago but was not implemented—it could not be implemented because there was nobody to authorise it until I did—did create more capacity. The chances are that, if GBR looks at the job that the Bill will give it, to correctly look at capacity across the railway, I think it is far more likely that there will be capacity on the main lines and that therefore open access will in fact have more chance in the future than it has had in the recent past.
On freight, I thank all those who have said that the freight target is welcome. As the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, said, it will drive the Government’s net-zero policies. The noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, was looking for clarity that there was no intention to interfere in private sector infrastructure. I am happy to give her that clarity: there is no intention to interfere in that. The private sector has invested in rail connections to warehouses and so forth, so I am happy to give that assurance.
The noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, referred to fares and in particular to Delay Repay. There is great inconsistency in the way that that is done currently. I welcome her support for some consistency, as we will talk about elsewhere in the Bill, because that is one of the things that is simply lacking in all the retail arrangements of the railway. It is one of the reasons to move forward with the Bill.
The noble Baroness, Lady Harding of Winscombe, talked about ticket retailing, as did the noble Lords, Lord Dixon of Jericho, Lord Harper and Lord Moylan. We have asked the Office of Rail and Road to provide an industry code of practice, which will also have a clear enforcement regime. We remain in discussion with independent ticket retailers, including the one dominant player, and there will be separation of decision-making between GBR’s retail and other functions.
The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is right: I am keen on open data. It is important that GBR will share open data. As the noble Lord, Lord Dixon of Jericho, said, open data is vital. I am very sympathetic to the development of alternative websites, but it is equally important that we rationalise the 14 that we already have, which either are in or will come into public ownership. If noble Lords listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, they will have heard about the inconsistency in approaches to ticketing, particularly for people who need help and are disabled. That is one of the things that we propose to remedy.
That subject of accessibility, as I said when I introduced the Bill, is a major issue. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson, Lady Brinton and Lady Humphreys, and the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Holmes of Richmond, all remarked on the need to make this better and to do more. I completely agree. It is really important. Again, the fragmentation of the railway has led to great inconsistency. It is one of the things that badly needs to be sorted out. We had several debates during the passage of the public ownership Act and I am sure we will have some more this time. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, that getting the passenger experience right will also get accessibility right. I know that we will come back to that subject; it is one on which the Government place great importance.
As for a passenger target, the implication that there is somehow no incentive to do that if it is not written in the Bill is wrong. The noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Pidgeon, and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, all raised this. There will be a great incentive to grow passengers for GBR, as well as to reduce costs, because GBR will need growth and will need to treat passengers properly in order to reduce the cost to the taxpayer of running the railway. I think there are sufficient incentives in here, but I am sure that we will discuss them further.
Several noble Lords referred to the possibility of the Secretary of State micromanaging the railways. The first thing to say is that that is already the case. The present circumstances leave civil servants, reporting to me and the Secretary of State, deciding how long trains are, where they stop and what the timetable looks like at every station in Britain. You cannot get more micromanagement than that. The intention of the Bill is to turn that round; we do not want the Secretary of State to be deciding those sorts of things, we do not want the Rail Minister to decide them, and we do not want civil servants to decide them. We need a body that will take an overall view of the value of the provision of passenger services and freight on the railway and derive the best timetables with the best train service to achieve it. I am very clear that one of the intentions of this Bill is to stop that.
The Secretary of State will, of course, have significant powers, as one would expect, bearing in mind the amount of public money that goes into the railways, but these powers exist in other places in government. They are not commonly used. The Oil and Gas Authority has received only one ministerial direction in its 10-year history. That contrasts with the situation for several years now where the Secretary of State or the Rail Minister has been invited to approve detailed business plans every year, which more or less go down to the trains stopping at every station. That is something that we need to stop.
There are clearly different views about the powers of the regulator, the Office of Rail and Road. The noble Baroness, Lady May, deprecated the apparent reduction in its powers, as did other noble Lords. I always listen very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who has long experience in this. He has said to me, both outwith the discussions today and in the course of this debate, that the regulator should not be in charge; of course there is a role for regulation, but the regulator should not be in charge of the railway. The sad history of the fragmentation of decision-making on the timetable is good evidence that having the regulator deciding how the system is used is not the best way of doing it.
I turn to a long-term railway strategy, which we have not had for 30 years. My noble friend Lady Alexander of Cleveden is right that a long-term railway strategy makes it possible for GBR to drive economic growth in regional and local communities.
The noble Lord, Lord Grayling, raised the question of enhancements. I agree with him about the challenges to standards. I do not think the fragmentation of the railway between operations and infrastructure led to any significant challenge on standards—it was certainly difficult to achieve it in a railway infrastructure organisation. There is more likelihood of this challenge in the future where operators will be challenging the cost of running and enhancing the railway, and there is also far more chance of the right schemes being authorised because a long-term plan will set out the best things to do with the best returns on the railway, the best capacity increases, in a way that we have not seen for a very long time. We can discuss the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley—
Lord Grayling (Con)
I hate to disagree with the Minister, but he will know that the programme of enhancement set aside for CP6 was carefully discussed with him and the executive of Network Rail and represented a significant plan to do precisely the things that the industry said would make the most difference. The tragedy is that it did not happen, and even now under this Government, it is still not happening.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Recollections are a great thing. I recollect that not one of the of schemes that I was invited to by the predecessor of the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, had a business case attached to it. It was a list of schemes that was just a list of schemes. I think that we can do a lot better than that. A long-term railway strategy that invites the railway to list and make business cases for the right schemes is entirely right.
My noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester made the most important point, which is that if you do not have a list of schemes prioritised by business case, you have no chance of getting private sector contributions to railway enhancements which create growth and wealth. That is an important point and something that a long-term railway strategy and the resulting GBR business plan will deal with.
On private sector involvement, the first thing to say is that this Government are not fundamentally opposed to it at all. At the end of this process, when this Bill becomes an Act, 60% of the expenditure by GBR, once established, will be spent in the private sector.
On the balance sheet implications raised by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, I say that the Railways Bill will not impact the way that the rolling stock leases will be classified by the ONS. I have previously discussed with him the confidence of the rolling stock leasing companies that this will not be the case. The story that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, told about how Network Rail crept back into the public sector in 2014 is absolutely right. It did go back on the balance sheet. No fuss was made about it at all. It turned out to be—all the time—a nationalised industry.
The experience of the franchises in recent times is interesting. A number of noble Lords said that concessions could have been adopted. Of course, the last Government had the chance to do that. They already had four private sector operations in their control, but they did not choose to do anything with any of them; that is an interesting feature. One noble Lord—I am afraid I omitted to note the name—said that, in fact, the private sector operators before the last election were not enamoured at all of that model and, therefore, they were not very keen on it. The truth of it is that the railway had stagnated, and this Bill is the way of retrieving the situation.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, Platform4, which is a successful amalgamation of the Network Rail property function and London and Continental Railways, will undoubtedly continue. The railway has an important role in developing land on and around stations, and the rest of the railway land. It is very important that the railway plays its part in the economic development of the places that it serves.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, raised the question of funding certainty. Of course, the Bill continues the infrastructure funding in five-year periods, and it is shown through the provisions of the Bill to continue. The Bill also gives the opportunity to Ministers in due course to give longer funding periods for the operations, but I think that most Ministers would want to see GBR making a success of its job to do so.
As to passenger safety, the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, rightly draws the attention of noble Lords to the importance of passenger safety. GBR will have to face this subject directly; I think it will be more equipped to do so than the current railways. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that the safety of women and girls is crucial. This is true in relation to personal safety but also, frankly, for encouraging more travel by half the population.
The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, referred to staff safety. I am happy to confirm to her that the Office of Rail and Road will continue its function of managing safety on the railway and, indeed, prosecuting where that is the appropriate thing to do.
A number of noble Lords raised questions about the passenger watchdog and I know we will have a lot of discussion about this. The noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, raised the question of a passenger charter and the importance of passengers, which is of course right. I am sure that we will have some discussion about how much power the passenger watchdog should have. I disagree, as I generally do, sadly, with the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. I think that enforcement of what the passenger watchdog wants to do in relation to the Office of Rail and Road is quite sufficient, and I do not see any problem in doing it.
On devolution issues, which the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, raised first, the limitations of some of this are the limitations of railway geography as opposed to political boundaries. As the still current Mayor of Greater Manchester has discovered, very few train services within mayoral boundaries are wholly within the boundary. The other point is that they run on lines which are part of a national network. That does not at all mean that devolution cannot be done with success, and it does not at all mean that mayors cannot have the passenger services they want. Look at the growth of the Overground network in London. In some cases, those services go outside the London boundary, as several noble Lords will recall from their history in London government.
The way that we achieve that is through intelligent discussion about the balance between the network and its local influence and the network and its national influence. The provisions in the Bill are currently quite sufficient and will allow for a discussion between mayors who have an aspiration for economic development in their part of the country and on the connections that their cities and towns need to have with other parts of the country. The Bill is drafted in precisely the way it is for that reason. My current belief is that the Bill allows that to happen and gives sufficient powers for them to influence how the railway is structured.
The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, raised several points about Wales. He will know, of course, that the Barnett formula and how it is applied are matters for His Majesty’s Treasury and the Chancellor. I am sure that the new First Minister of Wales will be asking any new Prime Minister shortly about not only that but fiscal devolution in general. All I can say is that the £445 million that this Government have provided for rail enhancements in Wales is far in excess of that of any previous Government. It includes the north Wales coast and Wrexham, and it is a very good start to the Transport for Wales investment plan, which the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, referred to. I am sure it will continue like that. I have already met the new Transport Minister for Wales and I am sure we will have some powerful discussions.
As to the design of GBR, I hope noble Lords will know that the Government’s firm intention is to devolve GBR to a route and regional basis. It is quite clear that it should not be some grand, centralised and distant organisation. There will have to be functions that are centralised—the access and use policies are one such example—but, in general, this Government want the railway run by people who are identifiable to elected politicians and the local communities they serve. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, is right that it is about leadership—not mine, but the leadership of people who can be appointed to run both operations and infrastructure and produce a better service.
One thing that was lost in the previous 30 years is that franchisees changed quite regularly and so did their managements. Local communities and elected Members could never quite get used to who was in charge because it changed quite regularly. That is not right. I have told the people we are appointing now to integrated business units that they should behave as though they are there for the rest of their careers and that they should get on with it.
I am told my time is up, so there is a limit to what I can answer, other than—
Lord Grayling (Con)
It is a procedural point. There has been a discussion about whether the Bill is going to be committed to the Moses Room or to the Chamber, and there is no Motion before us tonight. Could the Minister reassure us that the discussion now is with a view to having Committee stage in the Chamber?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am sorry I gave way because I cannot answer that question—it is not for me to answer.
A large number of noble Lords talked about the history of the railway, whether good or bad—I meant to say more about this, and I am sorry I did not. It is part of British society and we need to run it properly. I will talk separately to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, about heritage railways. The railway has a glorious past and it could be better in future. The Bill is designed to make it better. It puts forward the tools with which we can shape the railway of the future, and I encourage all noble Lords to support it.