Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, as a fellow gnarled veteran, speaking in this debate with so many maiden speeches vividly brings back the nerves of some 27 years ago. I have to say that the standard of those maiden speeches has improved significantly, as have those of the responders, and I congratulate them all.

I congratulate the Members of this House who have engaged in this Bill, particularly my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who made the powerful point about access to the capital markets for privatised industries and the challenges, both political and commercial, of no longer being able to access those markets. However, my interest in this debate looks at how public/private sector partnerships can and must work in this sector. My intention is to share my experience and try to inform the debate, and particularly to respond to the challenge of how we improve rail services in the devolved areas and cities, as was put forward to us by the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin.

I declare my interest as chair of Amey, a provider of full life-cycle engineering, operations and decarbonisation solutions for transport infrastructure and complex facilities. Amey, as many in this House know, has a major involvement in the rail sector in the UK.

I thought it would be helpful to show what it takes for public ownership, when engaged with private sector infrastructure management, to work effectively, creating a classic example of future models in line with the consequences of this Bill. So I have chosen an example in Wales, where arrangements will not change from those that worked effectively under the last Government.

In October 2020, the Welsh Government announced that a franchise was to be transferred to a publicly owned Transport for Wales Rail, following significant falls in passenger numbers and revenue due to the Covid-19 pandemic. All staff, rolling stock and services operated by KeolisAmey Wales were taken over by the nationalised operator on 7 February 2021.

However, as part of the original agreement, Amey continued to be responsible for infrastructure on the core valley lines, where the South Wales Metro upgrade is taking place. In addition, Keolis and Amey continue to assist and work with the nationalised operator to provide improvement services on the franchise, such as rolling stock and ticketing services. The contract aimed to deliver much-needed investment in the Welsh network, including investment in trains, the modernisation of 247 stations, and the new build of five new metro stations, along with hundreds of extra services from Monday to Friday and a major push for extra Sunday services.

As stated by the Government, the Bill will extend to Wales and Scotland while recognising that cross-border rail services are a reserved matter. To provide more information on the project, the core valley lines network, which radiates out from Cardiff up the valleys and accounts for 155 train miles in Wales, carries 56% of all Welsh and Borders Transport for Wales passage services each day, where commuting into the Cardiff capital region is set to grow by 144% by 2043. To be busier—as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said—is the objective of all concerned. It is a working example of how the public sector can run the rail services and achieve the objectives of the Welsh Government through engaging the private sector as a delivery partner.

This summer, I was invited to address a meeting of the directors of the Office of Rail and Road. I am pleased members of that board will be visiting the Cardiff-based core valley lines project later this month to see how the model can bring sufficient benefits to passengers and all the parties involved in the running of this service; above all, how it can be safe and well regulated.

The starting point lies with the Welsh Government. They have created a clear political structure to embed their vision of a customer-centred, high-quality, safe, integrated, affordable and accessible transport network to meet the aspirations of the Welsh people, for it is they who will benefit. Transport for Wales, therefore, had to set out a clear remit, which it did; it adopted the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act. The objectives of the national strategy Prosperity for All were embedded into the project, and the principles set out in the Active Travel (Wales) Act created the operating framework within which the infrastructure manager of the CVL network operates.

Transport for Wales has devolved franchising powers from the Department for Transport. The TfW procurement process for the operator of the Wales and Borders rail franchise work included the transfer of the CVL network from Network Rail to the Welsh Government. The project is interesting and unusual. It is most interesting, because it can become a case study for what the Government intend to achieve in the future.

The procurement brief is critical to the success of these projects, but it was structured around output and underpinned by the legal status of the future generations Act in Wales. Rather than a technical specification, the brief was

“better access to jobs and services, more frequent and faster services, better quality, and environmental improvements”.

It was pioneering work with Transport for Wales that required moving the core valley lines from an ageing network to a contemporary, electrified, metro-style service. Acting as an end-to-end infrastructure deliverer, manager and operator, we had to design the innovation solution, and manage and operate the new and existing assets on a day-by-day basis. The Welsh Government wanted much more than an infrastructure project. They identified the need to provide a catalyst for transforming the economic and social prospects of south-east Wales.

A major challenge was designing the project to meet the needs and challenges of the historic railways of Wales. This task was particularly demanding due to the ageing infrastructure, where historic structures along the route, such as bridges and tunnels, were too low for standard electrification methods. Traditional solutions, such as demolition or track lowering, were impractical, costly, environmentally demanding, and time-consuming. By working with Amey’s consulting division, we were strongly encouraged by the Welsh Government to develop new technologies to keep over 50 bridges in place by introducing non-live overhead cable sections to allow trains to switch to alternative multimode power capabilities, such as battery and OCS, to enable trains to transition through current-free sections, making discontinuous electrification possible. This current-free intermittent technology allowed over 50 bridges to stay in place.

This has changed how companies in the sector, such as ours, respond to public sector entities. It has led to stronger public/private partnerships. It means getting to know your client earlier, understanding the challenges better, responding to ESG issues as a priority, working closely with local communities, and putting the environment and the natural world in which we work at the top of the agenda, as in the trans-Pennine route upgrade, which the Minister mentioned in her opening speech and which will benefit our jointly beloved city of Leeds.

In response to the demand of the Welsh Government and public sector ownership, the private sector is capable of working within a contractual framework to reduce costs and carbon emissions, avoid the challenges of obtaining consents for listed structures, and provide a new model for UK railways, offering a framework for similar projects around the UK. The transfer of the CVL infrastructure from Network Rail’s ownership to being managed and operated by a private company is a UK first that combines the four key objectives of decarbonisation and energy efficiency, infrastructure resilience and safety, a nature-positive approach with full engagement with local communities, and net-zero priorities—a first which I hope will be carefully studied by the Minister and her department in the context of their plans for the future of passenger railway services in this country.